Project Narrative: Improving Drought Tolerance and Aflatoxin Resistance in Maize; Education, Extension, and Translational Breeding via Altered Lipid Metabolism

Introduction Challenges of increasing population, decreasing land availability and quality, and demand for biobased products require continuing to increase our food, feed, forage and feedstock supply in a safe and sustainable manner while simultaneously decreasing agricultural inputs. Yields of crops such as maize (Zea mays L., corn) have dramatically increased in the US to meet these needs with the adaptation of modern breeding methods (Fig. 1). It has been estimated that over 50% of yield increases in maize can be attributed to plant genetic improvement, and the pace of this improvement continues to grow with enhanced scientific knowledge and techniques (Duvick, 1999, Troyer, 2006). Recently, maize improvement progress in much of the United States (US) has benefitted from a shift from public and small company breeding to increased large private company breeding in recent years. These larger companies have been able to quickly invest in and incorporate basic scientific discoveries from DNA sequencing, molecular biology, information technology and advanced statistics, into strategies for trait discovery and molecular breeding (Cooper et al., 2004). Plant breeding education as well as maize breeding in the Southern US have not yet incorporated or benefited from these innovations (Fig. 1). Much of the Southern and South Central US have warmer and even subtropical climates that differ from the temperate Northern US. Differences in climate and pests (in addition to soils and