Location: Plant, Soil and Nutrition Research
Project Number: 8062-21000-052-021-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2025
End Date: Aug 31, 2026
Objective:
The proposed work is a joint effort to identify genes that can enhance on farm nitrogen efficiency of corn, and then evaluate these genes in controlled environments and in the field. The main goals are:
1. Develop knowledge on how maize allocates nitrogen to various plant organs through the growing season with a special emphasis on the end of season allocations.
2. Develop strategies for stabilizing nitrogen on farm through experiments on biological nitrification inhibitions
3. Identify genetic variation underlying maize growth under the cool conditions common in spring.
4. Develop edited and transgenic plants that test hypothesis associated with these three research questions.
Approach:
To study how maize and its wild relative's genetic variation impact growth and nitrogen uptake and remobilization, the cooperator will collect data from environments across Texas to evaluate the impact of genetic variation on these nitrogen parameters. They will collect data using UAVs and compare their analyses to similar data coming from 6 other collaborating efforts across the US. Texas allows for consistent evaluation of remobilization under high temperature regimes, while spring growth under cool but not freezing temperature can evaluated in several regions across the state. The germplasm to be evaluated with include maize landraces, breeding lines, introgressions of maize wild relatives, and transgenic and edited events.
Remobilization of nitrogen at the end of the growing season to the roots and stabilization in the soil through biological nitrification inhibition, provide tremendous opportunities to reduce the need for fertilizer. To identify and test the genes involved, selected hybrids grown at different locations including Texas will be harvested through the growth season, and genes active during the nitrogen remobilization in different tissues will be identified. Major genes involved in nitrogen metabolism and translocation, as well as their potential regulators will be identified.
Finally, in partnership with ARS scientists across the country working on CERCA, we will collaborate to select, design transgenic strategies, and help in the screening of gene level hypotheses by cross-referencing results across the geographical and evolutional distance. To ensure, efficiency the cooperator may use a service contract in order to efficiently transform maize.