Apomixis in plants covers a variety of cloning systems through seeds of great potential for plant breeding. Among long-standing approaches for crop improvement is the attempt to exploit wild relatives as natural, vast reservoirs for novel genetic variation. With regard to apomixis, maize possesses an apomictic wild relative, Tripsacum, which we used to produce advanced maize-Tripsacum hybrid ge...

Transgenic maize MON88017, expressing the Cry3Bb1 toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt maize), confers resistance to corn rootworms (Diabrotica spp.) and provides tolerance to the herbicide glyphosate. However, prior to commercialization, substantial assessment of potential effects on non-target organisms within agroecosystems is required. The MON88017 event was therefore evaluated under field...

This paper presents the effect of soil supplementation with urea and magnesium on nitrogen uptake and its utilization by two different types of hybrid maize cultivars. Based on the results of 3-year fertilization studies, it was shown that for average volume of grain yield of maize, nitrogen content in grain dry matter and nitrogen uptake with its yield was significantly determined by the doses...

This document provides an opinion of the Scientific Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO Panel) of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on genetically modified maize MON 863 and the maize hybrid MON 863 x MON 810. The opinion is based on two questions raised by the Commission related to applications for the placing of the maize on the market by Monsanto under the Novel Food Regulat...

The development and diffusion of hybrid maize in Zambia since the 1970s is a major achievement in African agriculture, but other than profitability studies, analyses of how this process has affected the economic well-being of smallholder farmers have been few. We test the relationship of hybrid seed use with six indicators of economic well-being. After using the control function/instrumental va...

Water use efficiency (WUE) reflects the coupling of the carbon and water cycles and is an effective integral trait for assessing the responses of vegetated ecosystems to climate change. In this study, field experiments were performed to examine leaf WUE (WUEleaf) in response to changes in CO2 concentration and other environmental variables, including soil moisture and air temperature. We al...

ARTHENOGENETIC development of the egg in maize under the stimuP lus of pollination and normal endosperm development has been noted by RANDOLPH (1939), STADLER (1949), FORTUNO (1948) and others. Data on the frequency of haploidy are meager. RANDOLPH discovered 23 parthenogenetic diploids among 17,165 individuals in the progeny of tetraploid maize, a frequency of about 1:’750. EINSET (1942) found...

in order to evaluate the yield and nitrogen use efficiency of corn and cotton intercropping under different levels of nitrogen, an experiment was conducted as a factorial arrangement based on completely randomized block design with three replications. the experimental treatments were nitrogen fertilizers in four levels (0, 50, 100 and 150 kg ha-1) and planting pattern in three levels (maize sol...

since crosses of lines with suitable genetic distance produce excellent hybrids, the identification of genetic diversity between zea mays l. inbred lines in hybrid maize breeding programs has a high priority. a total of 27 inbred lines plus b73 and mo17 (sc704 parents) were evaluated by 15 inter-simple sequence repeat (issr) primers. inbreds were selected randomly from inbred lines from the agr...

In order to evaluate the effects of seed priming with Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) on dry matter remobilization and yield of maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids, a factorial experiment based on randomized complete block design with three replications was conducted in 2009 at the Research Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture University of Mohaghegh Ardabili. Factors included seed priming of...