Fall armyworm [Spodoptera frugiperda (J./E. Smith); FAW] is negatively impacting sustainable maize production, particularly in smallholder farming systems sub-Saharan Africa. Two sets of germplasm (commercial cultivars and experimental hybrids, local exotic inbred lines) were evaluated under managed natural FAW infestation to identify tolerant material with superior grain yield performance. Sig...

fajr (ksc 260) is an early maturity grain maize hybrid that has been developed from a cross between two inbred lines (k1264/5-1×k615/1). this cross was carried out in 1998, for the first time. several characteristics of fajr hybrid were studied in different trials (preliminary, semi final, final and on-farm trails) over several locations during 1998 to 2005. the mean grain yield of the hybrid o...

Genetic transformation of maize via Agrobacterium tumefaciens is still more art than science, with different researchers achieving substantially different transformation results. This article describes our advanced Agrobacterium-mediated transformation system in Hi-II maize. The system utilizes simple binary vectors and immature embryos for the transformation, employing the bar gene as a plant ...

Maize with high grain protein and oil contents offers great advantages for human food and animal feed. In this study, grain protein contents of 282 and 263 F7:8 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) of 2 crosses were evaluated in 4 environments within and between populations. The RILs were developed from crosses between an inbred high-oil maize line and 2 normal dent inbred maize lines. A total of 16...

The contribution of epigenetic alterations to natural variation for gene transcription levels remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the functional targets of the maize chromomethylase ZMET2 in multiple inbred lines to determine whether epigenetic changes conditioned by this chromomethylase are conserved or variable within the species. Gene expression microarrays were hybridized with R...

Maize is an especially well-suited species for studying the effects of aneuploidy on plant development. We used B-A translocations and testers that were crossed seven times into inbred W22 to generate a dosage series for 14 chromosome arms. This is the first report of dosage effects on maize morphogenesis using inbred B-A stocks and inbred tester stocks. We compared plants containing one dose o...

The effects of varieties, producing areas, ears, and ear positions of maize on near-infrared (NIR) spectra were investigated to determine the factors causing the differences in NIR fingerprints of maize varieties. A total of 130 inbred lines were grown in two regions in China, and 12,350 kernel samples were analyzed through NIR spectroscopy. Spectral differences among varieties, producing areas...

Tropical maize (Zea mays L.) represents a valuable genetic resource containing unique alleles not present in elite temperate maize. The strong delay in fl owering in response to long daylength photoperiods exhibited by most tropical maize hinders its incorporation into temperate maize breeding programs. We tested the hypothesis that diverse tropical inbreds carry alleles with similar effects at...