Recipient Organization
NUTRAMAIZE LLC
713 NORTH ST
LAFAYETTE,IN 47901
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Project Purpose:NutraMaize seeks to develop commercial Orange Sweet Corn hybrids with high levels of health-benefitting antioxidant carotenoids that will help address USDA Strategic Goal 7: Provide All Americans Access to a Safe, Nutritious, and Secure Food Supply. This technology will leverage a popular, accessible, and affordable food format to deliver more health protecting antioxidant carotenoids to Americans. In turn, this approach has the potential to help protect public health, since low carotenoid intake puts the majority of older Americans at an increased risk of developing age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss and irreversible blindness for Americans over the age of 60 that affects nearly 20 million individuals.Project Approach:The proposed breeding approach will use an innovative carotenoid biosynthetic pathway guided selection strategy that aims to pyramid multiple favorable alleles introgressed from high carotenoid field corn donor lines to achieve unprecedented carotenoid levels in sweet corn. The goal of this Phase I project is to demonstrate the technical feasibility of this approach by developing early generation proof of concept germplasm and molecular markers for a set of key carotenoid biosynthetic genes. Subsequently, these resources would be used during a potential Phase II project to develop finished Orange Sweet Corn inbred lines and commercial hybrids. Once developed and adopted, NutraMaize Orange Sweet Corn has the potential to make a meaningful impact on the amount of health protecting antioxidant carotenoids consumed by Americans.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
30%
Developmental
60%
Goals / Objectives
Primary Goal:The long-term goal of this STTR project is to develop novel commercial Orange Sweet Corn hybrids with high levels of health-benefitting antioxidant carotenoids and excellent eating quality. To achieve this goal, a marker-assisted biosynthetic pathway guided breeding approach will be developed to facilitate the introgression of favorable alleles for multiple carotenoid genes from a diverse set of high carotenoid donor lines into elite sweet corn lineages. The technical objectives below will be pursued during the Phase I project to establish the technical feasibility of this approach.Objective 1:Develop a set of high carotenoid Orange Sweet Corn backcross lineages that can be used to create finished inbred lines and F1 hybrids during Phase II.Objective 2:Develop a set of molecular markers associated with carotenoid biosynthetic pathway genes that control carotenoid phenotypes that can be used in Phase II for the marker-assisted selection of sweet corn lines with enhanced carotenoid levels.
Project Methods
Primary Method 1:Use traditional breeding techniques to develop orange x sweetcorn backcross progenies with quantifiably deeper orange color andhigher total carotenoid levels.Method 1 Evaluation:1) Use phenotypic assays for sugar concentrations and pericarp thickness to verify that sweet corn quality attributes are recovered. 2) Use visual scoring and colorimeter to verify that depth of color is enhanced. 3) Use high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to quantify total carotenoid content and verify that it is enhanced.Primary Method 2:Use genomic tools to develop a set of marker-carotenoid phenotype associations for carotenoid content.Method 2 Evaluation:Use HPLC to verify that identified SNVs are associated with higher carotenoid content in backcross QTL mapping populations.