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Genetic and agronomic assessment of cob traits in corn under low and normal nitrogen management conditions

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Abstract

Key message

Exploring and understanding the genetic basis of cob biomass in relation to grain yield under varying nitrogen management regimes will help breeders to develop dual-purpose maize.

Abstract

With rising energy demands and costs for fossil fuels, alternative energy from renewable sources such as maize cobs will become competitive. Maize cobs have beneficial characteristics for utilization as feedstock including compact tissue, high cellulose content, and low ash and nitrogen content. Nitrogen is quantitatively the most important nutrient for plant growth. However, the influence of nitrogen fertilization on maize cob production is unclear. In this study, quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been analyzed for cob morphological traits such as cob weight, volume, length, diameter and cob tissue density, and grain yield under normal and low nitrogen regimes. 213 doubled-haploid lines of the intermated B73 × Mo17 (IBM) Syn10 population have been resequenced for 8575 bins, based on SNP markers. A total of 138 QTL were found for six traits across six trials using composite interval mapping with ten cofactors and empirical comparison-wise thresholds (P = 0.001). Despite moderate to high repeatabilities across trials, few QTL were consistent across trials and overall levels of explained phenotypic variance were lower than expected some of the cob trait × trial combinations (R 2 = 7.3–43.1 %). Variation for cob traits was less affected by nitrogen conditions than by grain yield. Thus, the economics of cob usage under low nitrogen regimes is promising.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Pioneer Hi-Bred for growing the IBMsyn10 population at Marion, IA in 2010 and for providing phenotyping capacities at that location. The Authors also would like to thank USDA_s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (project number: IOW05180) for funding this work. Constantin Jansen and Pedro J. Gonzalez-Portilla were supported by the Interdepartmental Genetics Graduate Program as well as RF Baker Center for Plant Breeding at Iowa State University. Yongzhong Zhang and Hongjun Liu were the visiting student at ISU, supported by China Scholarship Council.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that no conflict of interest exists.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

      Constantin Jansen, Yongzhong Zhang, Pedro J. Gonzalez-Portilla, Bharath Kumar, Ignacio Trucillo-Silva, Michael Lee & Thomas Lübberstedt

    2. Maize Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University, Wenjiang, 611130, China

      Yongzhong Zhang & Hongjun Liu

    3. USDA-ARS Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research Unit, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

      Nick Lauter

    4. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., Johnston, IA, USA

      Juan Pablo San Martin, Kevin Simcox, Jeff Schussler & Kanwarpal Dhugga

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    1. Constantin Jansen
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    Correspondence to Yongzhong Zhang or Thomas Lübberstedt.

    Additional information

    Communicated by J. Yan.

    C. Jansen, Y. Zhang, H. Liu and P. J. Gonzalez-Portilla contributed equally to this work.

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    Jansen, C., Zhang, Y., Liu, H. et al. Genetic and agronomic assessment of cob traits in corn under low and normal nitrogen management conditions. Theor Appl Genet 128, 1231–1242 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-015-2486-0

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-015-2486-0

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