Karl J. Mogel from Inoculated Mind dropped us a note: “as part of my graduate school research, I’m making educational videos about plant breeding, and I just uploaded the first of them to my program’s website. Please consider linking to it in one of your blog posts.”
My pleasure!
So, off I went to the University of Wisconsin Madison’s web site to see. ((At this point, I have to say that last time I was in Madison we went to the ag students’ experimental ice cream facility and I was truly stunned by the quality of their results. Is that still going strong, I wonder? And are they still deep-frying cheese in Monroe?)) I couldn’t actually see a video there, but no matter, there were instructions for how to deal with that problem, and pretty soon I found myself watching Karl’s effort.
It’s really good.
There’s lots of diversity on display and you’ll learn about much more than just pollination. I learned, for example, that nowadays the commercial production of hybrid corn seed uses a specialized detasselling tractor to cut the male flowers off the plants that are destined to grow the hybrid seed. There are genes that make the male flowers sterile, and they used to be used in almost all corn breeding, but Karl told us that although these male sterility genes are used in breeding other crops, they are “not as extensively used in maize”. He didn’t mention that the reason is that the widespread use of a single cytoplasmic male sterility gene was the underlying factor behind the
dreadful epidemic of southern corn leaf blight that devastated maize growers in 1970 and 1971. All the corn had the CMS gene, which also conferred susceptibility to southern corn blight.
The other thing that wasn’t mentioned was that if you fancy doing a bit of corn breeding, even mass selection rather than specific hybrid crosses, you need to save seeds from around 100 plants each time, otherwise you end up with inbred seed that doesn’t do very well.
Go to it, and let us know how you get on.
I probably shouldn’t have, but I had some deep-fried cheese only two days ago, so yeah, that still happens all the time around here. I’m not sure about the experimental ice cream facility – are you talking about Babcock Hall? They’ve got excellent ice cream, and there always seems to be some weird flavors available.
We thought about mentioning the southern leaf blight issue, but decided against it. There are breeders or researchers that do use male sterility, but their varieties are not susceptible to the blight. We felt that it would have taken too long to explain it without giving people the impression that the sterility itself causes susceptibility to the disease. (Of course you had to mention it on a biodiversity weblog!)
The detasseling tractors were really cool! They look like normal tractors out in the field, but as soon as they come out of the corn rows they look like they’re on stilts like in a cartoon. Our camera guys had a lot of fun filming them.
Thanks for the link, and hopefully some people might be inspired to do some crazy corn experiments in their back yards!
Yes! Babcock Hall! That was it.
About the CMS; I thought is was direct, that the Texas CMS gene pleiotropically also conferred susceptibility to the blight. But perhaps I am misremembering.
Anyway, good video. Thanks. What’s next, peas?
I think you are right about that particular gene on the issue of pleiotropy. But my adviser mentioned something about other ones that some people use today. I learned in my plant breeding class this semester that you could essentially set up a screen to find new male sterility genes in populations… not that I could <em<do it myself, though.
(lit search…)
Ah, I think I found your answer, go to page 487 of this paper:
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.py.27.090189.002411?cookieSet=1
It describes that the T-CMS is the one that has fallen out of favor, whereas there are two other sources of CMS, C, and S, that have not fallen out of favor. I think just the Texas CMS was the susceptible one.
I’ve got all sorts of plans for new media projects in the future, so there will be all sorts of opportunities to talk about those kinds of things down the road. :)
Oh yes, peas are happening later this summer. But first, Solanaceae and Liliaceae!
Babcock is right across the street from my building… so tempting on a hot summer day.
I can’t get access to that paper, but yes, the point is that Texas CMS is out of favour, and others are available.
Onion breeding: now there’s a topic.