Location: Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research
2022 Annual Report
Accomplishments
1. Enhancements in maize crop growth models improve their utility in predicting performance of maize hybrids. Predicting differences in maize hybrid performance among locations and years remains a challenge for producers, breeders, and researchers. Crop Growth models have become more widely used to simulate production systems to predict effects of weather, management, and to a more limited extent, crop cultivars. In maize research, model calibrations have not been made available or tested to determine to what extent crop growth models can predict grain yield differences among a set of maize hybrids adapted to a common region. ARS researchers in Ames, Iowa, have completed calibration and validation of crop growth models for 12 publicly available maize hybrids. Model calibration and validation demonstrated that crop growth models predict nearly 40-58% of grain yield differences among sets of maize hybrids solely on the basis of physiological characteristics of hybrids combined with weather, soil, and management data in some years and locations. These results demonstrate that crop growth models have potential to become a valuable management and prediction tool to benefit researchers, breeders, and producers.
Review Publications
Goncalves Dos Santos, L., Verzegnazzi, A.L., Edwards, J.W., Frei, U.K., Boerman, N.A., Tenello Zuffo, L., Pires, L.M., De La Fuente, G.N., Lubberstedt, T. 2022. Usefulness of temperate-adapted maize lines developed by doubled haploid and single-seed descent methods. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 135:1829-1841. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-022-04075-2.
Nankar, A.N., Scott, M.P., Pratt, R.C. 2020. Compositional analyses reveal relationships among components of blue maize grains. Plants. 9(12). Article 1775. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants9121775.
Weldekidan, T., Manching, H., Choquette, N., de Leon, N., Flint-Garcia, S.A., Holland, J.B., Lauter, N.C., Murray, S.C., Xu, W., Goodman, M., Wisser, R.J. 2022. Registration of tropical populations of maize selected in parallel for early flowering time across the United States. Journal of Plant Registrations. 16(1):100-108. https://doi.org/10.1002/plr2.20181.
