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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #229448
Title: Variation among Physical, Compositional, and Wet-Milling Characteristics of the F1 Generation of Corn Hybrids of Introgressed Exotic and Adapted Inbred Lines

Author
item TABOADA-GAYTAN, OSWALDO - ISU
item Pollak, Linda
item JOHNSON, LAWRENCE - ISU
item FOX, STEVEN - ISU
item MONTGOMERY, KEVIN - MONTGOMERY CONSULTING

Submitted to: Cereal Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/29/2010
Publication Date: 5/3/2010
Citation: Taboada-Gaytan, O., Pollak, L.M., Johnson, L., Fox, S.R., Montgomery, K.T. 2010. Variation among Physical, Compositional, and Wet-Milling Characteristics of the F1 Generation of Corn Hybrids of Introgressed Exotic and Adapted Inbred Lines. Cereal Chemistry. 87:175-181.

Interpretive Summary: Much of the corn seed industry evaluates and likely uses breeding lines that are partly from exotic germplasm as developed by the Germplasm Enhancement of Maize (GEM) program, so it is important to know how these lines affect end-user quality. For wet milling, we previously found that two of ten GEM lines actually had similar or better starch yield and starch recovery than Corn Belt checks after laboratory wet milling. Our objective was to evaluate wet milling traits of hybrids made by crossing the ten lines to three Corn Belt tester lines. There was great variation found in wet milling traits in the hybrids. These results show that exotic germplasm can be used to improve U.S. hybrids for wet milling efficiency. The tester lines produced hybrids that had different traits. A high-starch tester line produced hybrids that had better starch content, higher starch yield after wet milling, and better starch recovery of the starch in the grain. This means that developing inbred lines with high starch content may be preferable if hybrids with high starch yield are needed. Our results indicated that easy-to-use Near-Infrared Transmittance technology may be useful for initial screening of GEM lines with appropriate milling characteristics. This information will be useful to the many private and public GEM cooperators who are using GEM lines in their breeding projects to develop germplasm for the milling industry for products like starch and sweeteners for food and ethanol for fuel.

Technical Abstract: Corn (Zea Mays L.) is the main cereal crop in the United States and starch yield is the most important recovered fraction from the wet milling processing of corn. Starch yield represents an indication of the millability, or ease with which kernel components are separated. New hybrids with high grain yield and higher starch, protein, or oil content have been developed and are available to corn growers. However, these hybrids are the result of crossing adapted inbred lines and rarely have corn lines from exotic germplasm been crossed with elite inbreds to develop new and useful breeding lines. This study was conducted to determine whether Corn Belt lines introgressed with exotic materials from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Cuba and Florida have appropriate wet milling characteristics in their hybrids. Ten lines from the Germplasm Enhancement of Maize project with different starch content were crossed to three adapted inbred lines used as testers. The B73xMo17 hybrid was used as a control. The F1 generation of these 30 experimental hybrids was analyzed using both the Near-Infrared transmitance (NIR) technology and 100-g modified wet-milling procedure. NIR technology may be used as a predictive tool to screen early progeny for high starch content and extractable starch and save time and costs in a corn breeding program directed to the improvement of the wet-milling efficiency in corn. There was a great variation among physical, compositional, and wet-milling characteristics of the experimental hybrids, which suggest that genetic diversity is present and that potential to improve wet-milling characteristics of hybrids grown in the United States can be found in exotic germplasm.