Abstract
Total and extractable starch, oil, protein, and amino acids of maize (Zea mays L.) are important to farmers and ranchers because of their various end uses including ethanol and feedstock nutrition. The objectives of this study were: (1) to evaluate grain quality traits in different water regimes and (2) to discuss the implications for breeding maize quality cultivars in water stressed (WS) environments. Ninety-four partial diallel crosses including 47 diverse maize inbreds and checks were tested in 12 WS, well watered (WW), and random drought (RDT) environments in 2013 and 2014. The changes in mean grain extractable (<1.33 %) and total starch (<0.74 %), oil (<2.2 %), cysteine (<2.91 %) and lysine (<2.81 %) contents in WS and RDT were small while the changes in grain protein (+6.58 % in WS and +3.46 % in RDT) and methionine (+4.41 % in WS and −1.86 % in RDT) content were large compared to WW environments. Additive genetic variance was most important across stresses and the largest variance was estimated in WS environments. The narrow-sense heritability (h 2) was found to be high (>0.40) for all traits in WW environments except for grain protein and amino acid contents. The mid-parent hybrid correlation was strong (>0.62) for all traits across stresses except for amino acid content (<0.55). The stress environments were largely associated for grain oil and total and extractable starch contents (>0.60). However, they were less associated with grain protein content and amino acid content (<0.49). Therefore, while breeding for better ethanol maize varieties could be based on multi-location testing in WS environments, breeding for healthier feedstock protein products could be conducted across environments.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alander JT, Bochko V, Martinkauppi B, Saranwong S, Mantere T (2013) A review of optical nondestructive visual and near-infrared methods for food quality and safety. Int J Spect 2013:1–36
Araus JL, Serret MD, Edmeades GO (2012) Phenotyping maize for adaptation to drought. Front Physiol 3:1–28
Baker RJ (1978) Issues in diallel analysis. Crop Sci 18:533–536
Bänziger M, Edmeades GO, Beck D, Bellon M (2000) Breeding for drought and nitrogen stress tolerance in maize: from theory to practice. CIMMYT, Mexico, p 68
Bari MAA, Carena MJ (2015) Can expired proprietary maize (Zea mays L.) industry lines be useful for short-season breeding programs? I grain quality and nutritional traits. Euphytica 202:157–171
Bastianelli D, Fermet-Quinet E, Davrieux F, Hervouet C, Bonnal L (2007) Calibration strategies for prediction of amino acid content of poultry feeds. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Near Infrared Spectroscopy, 9–15th April 2005, Auckland, pp. 314–318
Betrán FJ, Beck D, Bänziger M, Edmeades GO (2003) Genetic analysis of inbred and hybrid grain yield under stress and non-stress environments in tropical maize. Crop Sci 43:807–817
Blum A (2011) Plant breeding for water limited environments. Springer Science+Business Media, New York
Bolaños J, Edmeades GO (1996) The importance of the anthesis-silking interval in breeding for drought tolerance in tropical maize. F Crop Res 48:65–80
Carena MJ (2013) Developing the next generation of diverse and healthier maize cultivars tolerant to climate changes. Euphytica 190:471–479
Carena MJ, Bergman G, Riveland N, Eriksmoen E, Halvorson M (2009) Breeding maize for higher yield and quality under drought stress. Maydica 54:287–296
Ceccarelli S, Grando S, Impiglia A (1998) Choice of selection strategy in breeding barley for stress environments. Euphytica 103:307–318
Charles R Jr. (1995) Value-added grains: The market of the 1990s. Iowa State University. University Extension. Publication Pm-1634. Revised January 2002
Clark D, Dudley JW, Rocheford TR, LeDeaux JR (2006) Genetic analysis of corn kernel chemical composition in the random mated 10 generation of the cross of generations 70 of IHO × ILO. Crop Sci 46:807
Cook JP, McMullen MD, Holland JB, Tian F, Bradbury P, Ross-Ibarra J, Buckler ES, Flint-Garcia SA (2012) Genetic architecture of maize kernel composition in the nested association mapping and inbred association panels. Plant Physiol 158:824–834
Darrigues A, Buffard C, Lamkey KR, Scott MP (2005) Variability and genetic effects for tryptophan and methionine in commercial maize germplasm. Maydica 50:147–156
Dijkhuizen A, Dudley JW, Rocheford TR, Haken AE, Eckhoff SR (1998) Near-infrared reflectance correlated to 100-g wet-milling analysis in maize. Cereal Chem 75:266–270
Dong N, Laude T, Carena MJ (2012) The NDSU earlyQPM program: the next generation of healthier short-season products. Paper presented at corn utilization and technology conference, Indianapolis, 4–6 June 2012
Dudley JW (2008) Epistatic interactions in crosses of Illinois High Oil x Illinois Low Oil and of Illinois High Protein × Illinois Low Protein corn strains. Crop Sci 48:59–68
Dudley JW, Lambert RJ (2004) 100 generations of selection for oil and protein in corn. Plant Breed Rev 24:79–110
Dudley JW, Lambert RJ, Alexander DE (1971) Variability and relationships among characters in Zea mays L. synthetics with improved protein quality. Crop Sci 11:512
Dudley JW, Alexander DE, Lambert RJ (1975) Genetic improvement of modified protein maize. In: High quality protein maize. Proccedings of the CIMMYT-Purdue International Symposium. On Protein quality in maize, El Batan, Mexico, 4–8 December 1972. Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, Inc., Stroudsburg, PA, p.120–135
Duvick DN, Smith JSC, Cooper M (2004) Long-term selection in a commercial hybrid maize breeding program. Plant Breed Rev 24:109–152
Dwivedi SL, Sahrawat K, Upadhyaya H, Ortiz R (2013) Food, nutrition and agro-biodiversity under global climate change. Adv Agron 120:1–128
Edmeades GO (2013) Progress in achieving and delivering drought tolerance in maize: an update. International Service Acquisition Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), Ithaca
Eisen EJ, Saxton AM (1983) Genotype by environment interactions and genetic correlations involving two environmental factors. Theor Appl Genet 67:75–86
Griffing B (1956) Concept of general and specific combining ability in relation to diallel crossing system. Aust J Biol Sci 9:463–493
Hallauer AR, Carena MJ, Miranda Filho JB (2010) Quantitative genetics in maize breeding. Springer, New York
Hamaker BR, Mohamed AA, Habben JE (1995) Efficient procedure for extracting maize and sorghum kernel proteins reveals higher prolamin contents than the conventional method. Cereal Chem 72:583–588
Holland JB (2006) Estimating genotypic correlations and their standard errors using multivariate restricted maximum likelihood estimation in SAS Proc MIXED. Crop Sci 46:642–654
Huang Haibo, Yu H, Xu H, Ying Y (2008) Near infrared spectroscopy for on/in-line monitoring of quality in foods and beverages: a review. J Food Eng 87:303–313
Karetinkov D, Parra N, Bell B, Ruth M, Ross K, Irani D (2008) Economic impacts of climate change on North Dakota. Center for Integrated Environmental Research. http://www.cier.umd.edu/climateadaptation/. Accessed July 4 2015
Kempthorne O, Curnow RN (1961) The partial diallel cross. Biometrics 17:229–250
Lambert RJ (1994) High-oil corn hybrids. In: Hallauer AR (ed) Specialty Corns. CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp 123–145
Laude TP, Carena MJ (2014) Diallel analysis among 16 maize populations adapted to the northern U.S. Corn Belt for grain yield and grain quality traits. Euphytica 200:29–44
Lynch M, Walsh B (1998) Genetics and analysis of quantitative traits. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland
Mertz ET, Bates LS, Nelson OE (1964) Mutant gene that changes protein composition and increases lysine content of maize endosperm. Science 145:279
Mohring J, Melchinger AE, Piepho HP (2011) REML-based diallel analysis. Crop Sci 51:470–478
Motto M (1979) Heritability and interrelationships of seed quality and agronomic traits in a modified opague-2 synthetic. Maydica 23:35–44
Nelson OE, Mertz ET, Bates LS (1965) Second mutant gene affecting the amino acid pattern of maize endosperm proteins. Science 150:1469–1470
Orman BA, Schumann RA (1991) Comparison of near-infrared spectroscopy calibration methods for the prediction of protein, oil, and starch in maize grain. J Agric Food Chem 39:883–886
Osorno M, Carena MJ (2008) Creating groups of maize genetic diversity for grain quality: implications for breeding. Maydica 53:131–141
Paulsen MR, Singh M (2004) Calibration of a near-infrared transmission grain analyzer for extractable starch in maize. Biosyst Eng 89:79–83
Paulsen MR, Mbuvi SW, Haken AE, Ye B, Stewart RK (1999) Extractable starch as a quality measurement of dried corn. ASAE Paper No. 99–6023. ASAE. St. Joseph
Pollak LM, Scott MP (2005) Breeding for grain quality traits. Maydica 50:247–257
Poneleit CG, Bauman LF (1970) Diallel analysis of fatty acids in corn (Zea mays L.) oil. Crop Sci 10:339–341
Reicks G, Woodard H, Bly A (2009) Improving the fermentation characteristics of corn through agronomic and processing practices. Agron J 101:201–206
SAS (1990) SAS user’s guide: statistics, 4th edn. SAS Inst. Inc., Cary
SAS (2015) Statistical analysis software for Windows version 9.4. SAS Inst. Inc., Cary, NC
Scott MP, Edwards JW, Bell CP, Schussler JR, Smith JSC (2006) Grain composition and amino acid content en maize cultivars representing 80 years of commercial maize varieties. Maydica 51:417–423
Sharma S, Carena MJ (2012) NDSU EarlyGEM: incorporating tropical and temperate elite exotic germplasm to increase the genetic diversity of short season maize. Maydica 57:34–42
Singh SK, Johnson LA, Pollak LM, Hurburgh CR (2001) Compositional, physical, and wet-milling properties of accessions used in germplasm enhancement of Maize project. Cereal Chem 78:330–335
Sreeramulu C, Bauman LF (1970) Yield components and protein quality of opaque-2 and normal diallels of maize. Crop Sci 10:262–265
Taboada-Gaytan O, Pollak LM, Johnson LA, Fox SR, Montgomery KT (2010) Variation among physical, compositional, and wet-milling characteristics of the F1 generation of corn hybrids of introgressed exotic and adapted inbred lines. Cereal Chem 87:175–181
Tsai CY, Huber M, Warren HL (1978) Relationship of the kernel sink for N to maize productivity. Crop Sci 18:399–404
USDA (2014a) Crop production 2013 summary, USDA, National Agriculture Statistics Service. http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/nass/CropProdSu//2010s/2014/CropProdSu-01-10-2014.pdf. Accessed July 7 2015
USDA (2014b) ERS feed outlook. http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/fds-feed-outlook/fds-14a.aspx. Accessed July 7 2015
Vasal SK (2000) The quality protein maize story. Food Nutr Bull 21:445–450
Vasal SK, Villegas E, Tang CY (1984) Recent advances in the development of quality protein maize at the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo. Cereal grain protein improvement. IAEA, Vienna, p 167
Ward PJ (1994) Parent-offspring regression and extreme environments. Heredity 72:574–581
Weber VS, Melchinger AE, Magorokosho C, Makumbi D, Banziger M, Atlin GN (2012) Efficiency of managed-stress screening of elite maize hybrids under drought and low nitrogen for yield under rainfed conditions in southern Africa. Crop Sci 52:1011–1020
Wu X, Zhao R, Liu L, Bean S, Seib PA, McLaren J, Madl R, Tuinstra M, Lenz M, Wang D (2008) Effects of growing location and irrigation on attributes and ethanol yields of selected grain sorghums. Cereal Chem 85:495–501
Zehr BE, Eckhoff SR, Singh SK, Keeling PL (1995) Comparison of wet-milling properties among maize inbred lines and their hybrids. Cereal Chem 72:491–497
Acknowledgments
The research was partially supported by North Dakota and Minnesota Corn Growers Associations.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sharma, S., Carena, M.J. Grain quality in Maize (Zea mays L.): breeding implications for short-season drought environments. Euphytica 212, 247–260 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-016-1764-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-016-1764-5