Skip to main content
ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #79308
Title: ENHANCEMENT OF CORN OIL QUALITY THROUGH INTROGRESSION

Author
item WHITE, P - IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
item Duvick, Susan
item Pollak, Linda

Submitted to: Annual Meeting and Expo of the American Oil Chemists' Society
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/11/1998
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Corn lines from the Germplasm Enhancement of Maize (GEM) Project were used to enhance variation in the fatty acid composition of Corn Belt hybrids. The GEM project is a cooperative effort of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS), land-grant universities, and industry designed to diversify the United States maize populations. Exotic germplasm gathered from the western hemisphere was initially screened for excellence in agronomic traits, with the top 268 corn accessions selected from among 12,000. Additional screening narrowed the numbers of 51 GEM selections and seven tropical hybrids. Fatty acid compositions of these 58 selections had wide ranges as follows: palmitic acid: 9.6 to 15.8%; stearic acid: 1.3 to 3.8%; oleic acid: 20.0 to 46.1%; linoleic acid: 38.7 to 66.6%; linolenic acid: 0.7 to 1.3%; and total saturates: 11.3 to 18.0%. The GEM lines were crossed to adapted Corn Belt lines to introduce diversity into these Corn Belt lines. Ranges in fatty acid compositions of the resulting crosses were narrower than ranges from the original GEM lines, but much wider than the Corn Belt checks. To further improve, at a commercial level, the agronomic traits of the diversified materials, the GEM accessions were crossed with proprietary lines owned by private companies. Fatty acid compositions of the resulting 3-way crosses had ranges similar to those of the 2-way crosses: palmitic acid: 9.2 to 14.5%; stearic acid: 1.4 to 3.0%; oleic acid: 21.7 to 35.1%; linoleic acid: 50.0 to 64.2%; linolenic acid: 0.4 to 1.2%; and total saturates: 11.1 to 16.8%. These resulting materials can be used as high- yielding breeding materials to begin selecting for fatty acid compositions, as well as other value-added traits.