Location: Plant Science Research
Project Number: 6070-21220-017-017-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2026
End Date: Aug 31, 2030
Objective:
The proposed work is a joint effort to evaluate maize heirloom corn varieties for disease resistance and favorable genes that can contribute to high yielding and climate-resilient corn hybrids for the USA. The goals are to screen historic maize varieties from the USA adapted to distinct environments to identify varieties with unique and useful characteristics, identify genes underlying those traits, and develop techniques to identify maize disease onset early in crop development with image analysis and machine learning.
Approach:
Approximately 1000 historic, open-pollinated ("heirloom") varieties collected in the USA before the widespread adoption of hybrid cultivars were previously phenotyped for a range of traits. Here, we propose to complete the genotypic characterization of this sample by sequencing 10 individuals from each of approximately 200 populations that remain ungenotyped. New methods for genetic analysis will be evaluated for their capacity to identify novel and useful genes in this collection. Selected varieties will be more deeply evaluated for additional traits, including brace roots development and disease resistance. In separate experiments, modern maize inbreds will be evaluated in field trials for disease resistance by artificial inoculation, imaging with unmanned aerial vehicles, followed by image analysis and machine learning to identify signs of disease early in crop development that correlate with final disease levels.