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Title: Compositional assessments of key maize populations: B73 hybrids of the nested association mapping founder lines and diverse landrace inbred lines

Author
item VENKATESH, TYAMAGONDLU - Monsanto Corporation
item HARRIGAN, GEORGE - Monsanto Corporation
item PEREZ, TIM - Monsanto Corporation
item Flint-Garcia, Sherry

Submitted to: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/12/2015
Publication Date: 5/12/2015
Publication URL: https://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/61051
Citation: Venkatesh, T.V., Harrigan, G.G., Perez, T., Flint-Garcia, S.A. 2015. Compositional assessments of key maize populations: B73 hybrids of the nested association mapping founder lines and diverse landrace inbred lines. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 63:5282-5295.

Interpretive Summary: Traditionally, maize (corn) has been an essential source of food energy and nutrition to humans and livestock world-wide. Recently, maize has also become an important feedstock for ethanol production in the United States, and is used as a raw material for several industrial applications. The composition of the maize kernel is the determining factor for how the grain is utilized by an end user. An understanding of the compositional variation in genetically diverse populations is critical for improving maize kernel composition through breeding and biotechnological approaches. We evaluated compositional variation in two genetically diverse maize populations. They are hybrids derived from the Nested Association Mapping (NAM) founder lines which represented a genetically diverse set of modern maize lines and hybrids derived from geographically diverse landraces which are important for the future genetic improvement of maize. Results provided evidence of the contribution of conventional breeding to crop compositional variation, as well as valuable information on key genetic resources for the scientific community. These results are important to breeders, geneticists and biotechnologists who are involved in improving nutritional and compositional quality of maize, as well as regulatory scientists who are involved in assessing the composition of maize from the food and feed perspective.

Technical Abstract: The present study provides an assessment of compositional diversity in maize B73 hybrids derived from both the nested association mapping (NAM) founder lines and from a geographically diverse collection of landrace accessions from North and South America. The NAM founders represent a key population of publicly available lines that are used extensively in the maize community to investigate the genetic basis of complex traits. Landraces are also of interest to the maize community as they offer the potential to discover new alleles that could be incorporated into modern maize lines. The compositional analysis of B73 hybrids from the 25 NAM founders and 24 inbred lines derived from landraces reported was comprehensive and included measurements of proximates, fibers, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, tocopherols ('-, '-, and '-), '-carotene, phytic acid, and raffinose. Grain was harvested at from a single replicated site trial in New York, USA. For each dataset (NAM aAnd landrace) canonical discrimination analysis allowed separation of distinct breeding groups within each dataset. Overall, however, results highlighted extensive variation in all compositional components assessed for both sets of hybrids. The study described here provided significant information on contributions of conventional breeding to crop compositional variation, as well as valuable information on key genetic resources for the maize community in the development of new improved lines.