St. Louis, Missouri, USA
November 19, 2009
Dedicated and persistent efforts on the part of the National Corn Growers Association come to fruition as results of the Maize Genome Sequencing Project become available to the public. A longtime advocate of increasing access to agricultural data, the NCGA worked tirelessly for 12 years to obtain the funding necessary to complete this first comprehensive gene map of North American corn.
Tomorrow, results from the Maize Genome Sequencing Project will appear in the Nov. 20 journal Science. Publication of these results marks both the end of over a decade-long collaboration researching the genomic sequence of U.S. maize and a beginning. Now, both public and private scientists will take this knowledge and develop real world applications and innovative technological advances that will improve plants and expand their uses to meet growing needs for food, feed and fuel.
“This is a milestone for all of our nation’s corn farmers that will open the door for higher yields, improved grain quality traits for livestock and industry needs and, it is probably one of the greatest accomplishments since Gregor Mendel’s work 150 years ago,” said NCGA Research and Business Development Chair Larry Hasheider, a corn farmer from Okawville, Ill. “By being able to go into the corn genome sequence and unlock the genetic potentials, corn will continue to be the leading feed grain for the world.”
The data released Friday will expedite breeding programs and increase knowledge of corn’s important agronomic traits. Information encoded in the corn genome can help scientists improve water and nitrogen use efficiencies, help plants cope with disease, pests and adverse weather and allow breeders to develop innovative products for specific end users. By decreasing the inputs needed and increasing yields, these traits will also allow corn to become and even more sustainable crop.
“We used to compare a genome to a user manual, now we speak of it more like a wiring diagram. To gain the best value from this research, we need additional biological knowledge with which to pair it. Fortuitously, a dozen companion papers on maize biology will be released in tandem with our results,” said Pat Schnable, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. “The knowledge that we gain from the genome, coupled with the additional research that it has inspired, will help us produce a more environmentally sustainable crop that is resistant to environmental stresses and requires fewer inputs.”
Consumers will directly benefit from more abundant food, feed and fuel supplies. Future corn may not only be modified to increase yields, but also to enhance nutritional value.
Corn is also an important material for many industrial purposes and products including rubber, plastics, fuel and clothing. Corn is a model system for studying complex genomic structure, organization and function, and its high quality genetic map will serve as the foundation for studies that will lead to improved biomass and bioenergy resources from corn and related plant species.
This early research will continue to drive innovation by attracting quality researchers to the field of plant genomics and genetics.
NCGA saw the manifold potential benefits of this research and, early on, chose to lead the way in the fight to obtain funding for the a project that would explore the genetic makeup of corn.
In 1997, NCGA spearheaded the effort on legislation that authorized major plant genome research, which resulted in the Plant Genome Research Initiative. The goal of the initiative was to understand the structure and function of plant genes in species of economic importance at all levels. The initiative led to an unprecedented increase in our understanding of the genomics and genetics of plants and changed the way research is conducted in plant biology and helped to attract a new generation of scientists to the plant sciences field at U.S. colleges and universities.
“This type of collaboration was unprecedented, but, by bringing together so many parties, we were able to achieve something that will help provide a growing global population with food, feed and fuel,” said former NCGA Chair of Research and Business Development Pam Johnson, now a member of the organization’s Corn Board. “As a part of the public domain, the maize genome sequence is a body of work that will continually provide data for researchers hoping to develop improved varieties of corn.”
NCGA and its state partners were extremely successful in focusing attention and resources toward the sequencing the maize genome. In November of 2005, The National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy awarded $32 million to a team of university and private laboratory researchers to sequence the maize genome. All sequence data generated will be available to both the public. As public knowledge, it is open to all researchers wishing to develop better lines of corn. The Plant Genome Research Program reached a budget of more than $101 million in 2008, due, in large part, to the continued support of corn growers.
The genome was sequenced at Washington University’s Genome Center, which also conducted sequencing for the Human Genome Project. The overall effort involved more than 150 U.S. scientists with those at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and Iowa State University in Ames playing key roles.
The group sequenced a variety of corn known as B73, developed at Iowa State decades ago. It is known for its high grain yields and has been used extensively in both commercial corn breeding and in research laboratories. Among other things, research found that the corn genome is a hodgepodge of some 32,000 genes crammed into just 10 chromosomes. In comparison, humans have 20,000 genes dispersed among 23 chromosomes.
Corn is important both as a source of food, feed and fuel and to our economy as the U. S. is the world's top corn grower, producing 44 percent of the global crop. In 2009, U.S. farmers are expected to produce 13 billion bushels of corn, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with an estimated value of more than $46 billion.
The corn genome data is freely available to the public at www.maizesequence.org.
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