Researchers at the Universities of Florida, Wisconsin, Washington State and Iowa State recently received a $7.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support sweet corn breeding with innovative technology and methods.
The aim is to identify sweet corn genetics that will lead to tastier varieties that can stand up to environmental stress and last longer on store shelves. USDA scientists also will contribute to the research.
Thomas Lubberstedt, a professor of agronomy, will work on applying doubled haploid technology to sweet corn breeding. This allows for faster production of purely inbred lines of corn. Inbred lines, which are used to breed hybrids, have two copies of the same genome.
Source: kmaland.com
