Maize

Researcher gets NSF grant to create mutant maize lines

A Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) researcher at Cornell University has received a grant to help assemble a unique database of DNA mutations in maize (corn). The project not only will allow researchers to study the effects of knocking out the function of single genes, one at a time, but also will create seeds for each mutation, or disrupted gene. The seeds will be made widely available to r...

Genetically modified maize not found in southern Mexico

Contrary to what many scientists thought, genetically modified (GM) corn has not yet spread to native maize crops in southern Mexico. The finding surprised the researchers, said Allison Snow,...

Kenya halts first field trials of GM maize

Kenyan authorities began destroying the country's first genetically modified (GM) maize growing in open field trials. Wilson Songa, Kenya's agriculture secretary and chair of the Natio...

University of Arizona plant scientists to unravel maize genome

Researchers at The University of Arizona's plant sciences department and UA's BIO5 Institute have received a $29 million federal grant as part of a consortium to unlock the genetic code of the corn plant. The knowledge gained from the Maize Genome Sequencing Project will enable plant scientists and breeders to improve agronomically important traits in cereal crops more rapidly. The Nationa...

Mummy's amazing American maize

The far-reaching influence of Spanish and Portuguese colonisers appears not to have extended to South American agriculture, scientists studying a 1,400-year-old Andean mummy have found. The University of Manchester researchers compared the DNA of ancient maize found in the funerary offerings of the mummy and at other sites in northwest Argentina with that grown in the same region today. ...

Researchers attach genes to minichromosomes in maize

A team of scientists at the University of Missouri-Columbia has discovered a way to create engineered minichromosomes in maize and attach genes to those minichromosomes. This discovery opens new possibilities for the development of crops that are multiply resistant to viruses, insects, fungi, bacteria and herbicides, and for the development of proteins and metabolites that can be used to treat hu...