Sunday, 6 November 2005 - 1:30 PM
8-3

The Effects of Brittle and Sugary Allele Combinations on the Eating and Seed Quality of Sweet Corn.

Leah Viesselmann, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, 1614 Indian Hill Drive, Grafton, WI 53024 and William F. Tracy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1575 Linden Dr., Madison, WI 53706.

A major component of flavor in sweet corn is sugar content. Sugar content is increased relative to field corn by endosperm mutants that disrupt starch synthesis, resulting in the accumulation of sucrose and other sugars and decreased starch production. While, high sugar levels are desirable they are often associated with decreased germination. New endosperm mutant combinations could provide good levels of sweetness, while having acceptable germination. We examined the flavor and germination of two intermediate brittle1 (bt1) alleles in combination with the sugary1 (su1) allele. Hybrids homozygous for su1 and the intermediate bt1 alleles exceeded the quality of the supersweet (shrunken2, sh2) and su1 checks. The same su1 bt1* hybrids had better germination than the supersweet check. Hybrids with bt1 su1 combinations could result in high eating quality and improved germination relative to sh2 corn. We have also studied the effects of the intermediate allele at the Shrunken2 locus (sh2-i). By itself sh2-i has reduced quality relative to sh2. But the combination of sh2-i and su1 results in high quality hybrids with acceptable germination.

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