Michael Fields Agricultural Institute

An interim report of a project to breed high quality corn for sustainable agriculture

January 2006

By Walter Goldstein. The team leader of the project is Linda Pollak, Research Geneticist with USDA-ARS in Ames, Iowa. 1501 Agronomy Hall, Iowa 50011. Tel: 515-294-7831. Derrick Exner coordinates the Practical Farmers of Iowa part of the project: tel. 515-294-5486.

Researcher examines corn cobbCorn is the highest yielding, best-adapted cereal crop in the Midwest. Hitherto, corn has been bred by both private breeders and by the USDA team to be a high-yielding commodity for high-input agriculture. Our project, which involves USDA-ARS, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, farmers, and seed companies, is taking a breeding approach that is new. We are working to breed and develop varieties and hybrids that increase the nutritional value of corn while increasing its suitability to sustainable farming systems.

Nutritional value entails breeding for balanced proteins and higher contents of antioxidants and vitamins, as well as some selection for taste. We are breeding under conditions where sustainable agricultural practices are used and selecting for responses to slowly available forms of N and to weed pressure. Farmers are adopting and need to increasingly adopt farming strategies that reduce mineral Nitrogen fertilizer, conserve or build the soil resource and reduce or eliminate herbicide inputs. Corn varieties are needed that are adapted to perform optimally under sustainable farming systems. To our knowledge no one else in this country is striving to combine these two aspects in a breeding program with corn. Furthermore, we are breeding specialty corn varieties (high protein and high carotenoid corn, blue corn, white corn, large seeded white corn for corn nuts and posole) that will provide new market possibilities for farmers as acceptable varieties and hybrids of that kind are not presently available for the Northern Corn Belt.

We formed an advisory council to include farmers and small seed companies in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois, and this council is active in advising and assisting the project. In 2005, we had large test plots near East Troy and Elkhorn, Wisconsin, in Minnesota, South Dakota, and at 10 sites in Iowa, and we had well attended field days on many of those sites. We met with an interested group of farmers and seed company people in Dubuque on March and presented the results of the project at the Crop Science Society of America meeting in November and the NCR Corn Breeders meeting in Minnesota in the fall of 2005, at the Upper Midwest Organic Conference in LaCrosse, at the Acres USA farmers conference, and at a PFI farmers meeting this last Winter.

USDA/ARS researchers are breeding and testing high-protein corn hybrids. The cost of organic soybeans as feed makes it desirable to produce corn varieties that have higher protein contents. Inbreds have been developed and are being evaluated that have considerably enhanced protein contents.

Furthermore, Michael Fields Researchers and the USDA lab are in process of developing a quick and quantitative test for the carotenoid content of our breeding lines. Previously, we have been selecting visually for high carotenoid content in our corn breeding lines. Our new test may enable us to quickly screen our breeding lines and families for this valuable trait. We are also arranging with Organic Valley for feeding tests for poultry with our high carotenoid and methionine corns. Carotenoids are antioxidants and vitamins that are essential for eye health, corn is a major source of carotenoids for poultry, and eggs are the most bioavailable source to humans of these substances. The US population has been diagnosed as deficient in these substances, leading to problems with macular degeneration. Hence targeting part of our project to poultry should improve the general health of the American public.

The need for high methionine corn has become increasingly clear for Wisconsin Poultry Producers who produce an organic product and soon will be unable to use synthetic methionine. Organic poultry producers need high methionine corn because methionine is the first limiting amino acid for poultry health and egg production. Improving the yield of corn with high methionine and other essential amino acids is a priority for the Wisconsin program in 2007.

Though our varieties may have higher quality, their per se yields may be more competitive if we utilize hybrid vigor to obtain optimal yields. At our conferences and listening sessions we heard from farmers that feed their corn to livestock that they want the nutritional value we are breeding for, but many don't want to lose more than 10% yield. We found that we could attain to the yield levels achieved by commercial hybrids by crossing our populations with other populations or with the right inbreds. Part of our work therefore is to cross inbreds or populations from both public and private sources with our populations, test the hybrids for yield and quality, and select a few of the best combinations. Four of the MFAI hybrids we tested in 2005 yielded as high as check private hybrids used by organic farmers on 6 sites but the MFAI hybrids had much higher contents of carotenoids. This coming year we will continue tests on farms in Wisconsin and Iowa and field days in Iowa, involving farmers, seed companies, and processors. Working together with one seed company we also will multiply seed of our best hybrids from last year for testing on a larger scale by farmers. We continue to form a group of farmers and companies that will test and grow the outcomes of our breeding, and participate in the breeding and evaluation process.

Transgenic events in corn have affected farmers by reducing export markets. Pollen drift contamination from transgenic corn is a threat to organic farmers as it can cause de-certification of product and substantial loss of income. Contamination in corn can be controlled by the use of special corn genes called Ga1s and Tcb1 that cause "gametophytic incompatibility". When a corn plant carries one of these genes, its silks will only allow normal growth of pollen tubes of pollen that also carries that gene. We are breeding these genes into inbreds and high-quality populations suited to a range of growing zones in the Upper Midwest, to develop successful hybrids, and to test to ensure that they do indeed protect crops from GMO drift. The sources of these genes are popcorn and wild corn (teosinte) and we are using traditional breeding methods to transfer the genes. We made crosses last summer, and this winter backcrossed them again in a winter nursery in Puerto Rica. When this process is completed, we should be able to make corn available to farmers that will resist contamination with transgenic events and have improved nutritional value.

Our corn should eventually enhance export markets with foreign buyers who are looking for non-GMO corn with high nutritional value that is produced with sustainable practices. The value of corn to farmers should increase as the feeding value of our corn becomes recognized. Enhanced protein quality and vitamin content of corn should increase feed efficiency and animal health and reduce pollution with Nitrogen. Increasing the antioxidant and vitamin content (carotenoids and tocopherols) of corn should result in meat and egg products that are healthier for both American and foreign consumers and that have longer shelf life.

The ownership of elite corn germplasm has become increasingly concentrated into the hands of a few large multinational corporations with increasing emphasis on breeding and marketing transgenic corn. Small corn seed companies do not do their own breeding. They seem interested in being able to have access to a greater diversity of competitive seed stocks, and they are worried about growing centralization of breeding stocks by a few large corporations. Whether the varieties coming from our program are gametophytic incompatible or not, these seed companies may benefit. Quality varieties could also reduce feed costs for livestock producers. In short, the results of our project should allow farmers and independent seed producers to remain both independent and profitable, thus keeping jobs and enhancing diversity of businesses and opportunities.

 

We still need to do market research to determine the potential market for such products and the price range that we could demand from seed companies and seed companies could demand from farmers. The organic farming sector is the fastest growing sector of agriculture in the US, the Upper Midwest is a leading region in organic production, and our associates at CROPP informed us that organic dairy and poultry production are limited by a lack of corn. Our corn varieties, when they become available, will probably be of interest to other market sectors including domestic and foreign processors.

For additional information, contact Dr. Walter Goldstein.

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