Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 9:45 AM
166-7

Modeling Out Crossing Probabilities for Maize in Iowa.

Daryl E. Herzmann1, Thomas Perlick2, Raymond Arritt1, Mark Westgate3, and Susana Goggi1. (1) Iowa State University, 3010 Agronomy Hall, Ames, IA 50011, (2) Integrated Crop Mgmt., Inc., Integrated Crop Management Inc., W5014 County Highway B, Sarona, IA 54870-9367, (3) 1577 Agronomy Hall, Iowa State University, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-1010, United States of America

The development of transgenic crops as a production platform for biogenic
agents depends on a successful isolation of genes and their expressed
proteins in field environments. A modeling effort is underway to make
first tier predictive assessments of gene confinement in maize and to
produce state-wide analysis of out crossing probabilities for Iowa.
Combining the weather data provided by the Iowa Environmental Mesonet
and the knowledge of maize flowering biology, we compared our model
results with out-crossing data reported by the seed industry. For the
predictive analyses, maps of out crossing probabilities are produced
daily. For areas where predicted out crossing exceeds thresholds for
concern, an advanced, Lagrangian based, large eddy simulation (LES)
model is used to quantify the amount of local pollen dispersal expected.
The LES utilizes mesoscale wind flows to generate large field scale
patterns of pollen dispersion.  Our kernel set model then integrates the
dispersed pollen densities with local pollen densities and silking
dynamics to calculate expected levels of out-crossing.