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USDA/ARS/MWA - Soybean/Maize Germplasm, Pathology & Genetics Research Unit & University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign - Department of Crop Sciences |
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S-123 Turner Hall 1102 South Goodwin Avenue Urbana, IL 61801-4730 |
(217) 333-6631 [phone]
(217) 333-6064 [fax] maize@uiuc.edu [e-mail] http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/maize |
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8,305 seed samples have been supplied in response to 420 requests for 2011. These include 121 requests received from 26 foreign countries. This has by far been a record-breaking year for requests. The previous annual record was 332 requests filled in 2002. Most of the increase is due to the great interest in reverse genetics tools, such as the UniformMu sequence indexed stocks, which are being used as our colleagues are finding sequences of genes that their research is focused on, in the B73 genome data. Other popular stock requests include the NAM RIL populations, Hi II lines, ig1 lines, Stock 6 haploid-inducing lines, male sterile cytoplasms, and Maize Inflorescence Project EMS lines.
Approximately 6.0 acres of nursery were grown this summer at the Crop Sciences Research & Education Center located at the University of Illinois. Wet spring weather forced us to plant our crossing nurseries a couple of weeks late. There were sufficient stands for an adequate increase in most instances. During the height of our pollination season in July, 100+ degree temperatures resulted in drastically reduced seed sets on certain critical days; supplemental irrigation and timely rainfall may have helped to mitigate the damage. Because of the spread of maturities in our materials, little material will need to be replanted next year as a result of the excessive heat. Despite late plantings, the increase in heat units this summer allowed for a relatively early harvest. Moderate temperatures and low plant stress following pollination resulted in acceptable yields for most stocks.
Special plantings were made of several categories of stocks:
1. Plantings were made of donated stocks from the collections of Alice Barkan (photosynthetic mutants), Pat Bedinger (male sterile mutants), David Braun (new tdy1 and sxd1 alleles), James Brewbaker (Hi27 near-isogenic mutant lines), Inna Golubovskaya (meiotic mutants), Thomas Hartwig (na1 alleles), David Jackson (fea2, ra3, and abph1 alleles), Gerry Neuffer (new dominant EMS-induced mutants), Snook Pataky (Rp and Rpp variants), and others. We expect to receive additional accessions of stocks from maize geneticists within the upcoming year.
2. We are conducting experiments in collaboration with Jerry Kermicle in order to further characterize kernel color mottling factors. We are also trying to recover instances of the lapsed y5 locus from PI accessions of orange endosperm tropical flints. We are starting collaborations to identify the specific gene products associated with previously uncharacterized (or incompletely characterized) white endosperm/albino seedling loci.
3. Outcrosses of A-A translocation stocks grown by Janet Day Jackson were grown in 2011 observation to confirm by seed set which ones actually carry the translocation. However, with the loss of Janet’s position, keeping up with the propagation of the translocation stocks will become increasingly difficult.
4. Stocks produced from the NSF project "Regulation of Maize Inflorescence Architecture" (see: http://www.maizegdb.org/MIP/) were grown again this summer. Approximately 250 families of M2 materials that were produced in 2007 were grown to increase seed supplies and recover previously observed mutations; this also included previously phenotyped families that had limited seed supplies. In addition, 1,269 families of 2009 and 2010 EMS seed increase materials were grown for adult plant observation and 348 families were screened in sand benches for seedling traits; the materials observed include mutated A619, B73 and Mo17 inbred lines, A619xB73 and B73xMo17 hybrid, and various other inbred lines.
Insufficient funding prevented us from having a winter crop during the 2010/2011 growing season. However, we were able to have a winter nursery planted at the Illinois Crop Improvement Association's facilities in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico for the 2011/2012 season. Critical plantings of a limited number of stocks were also made in our greenhouse facilities.
We have received 4,608 additional UniformMu sequence indexed lines produced by the Construction of Comprehensive Sequence Indexed Transposon Resources for Maize project (http://www.maizegdb.org/documentation/uniformmu). We presently have 8,273 of these stocks.
Our IT Specialist has continued to make updates and improvements to our curation tools, which are used to maintain data for our collection. These tools input our public stock data directly into MaizeGDB to give maize scientists access to up-to-date information about our collection. The tools are also used for our internal database (e.g., inventory, pedigrees and requests). A new search tool has been written that allows more flexibility in locating specific items in our inventory. A tool to maintain harvest information, with features to quickly go from harvest notes to inventory and cross-referencing harvest information by the parent pedigree is in progress. Importing data from MaizeGDB into our local database has been streamlined. We work with MaizeGDB to make sure our tools continue to interoperate well with MaizeGDB's databases, plus offer suggestions on where to go in the future. Maintenance continues on our web site (http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/maize).
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Marty Sachs Director |
Philip Stinard Curator |
Shane Zimmerman Agric Sci Res Tech (Plants) |
Josh Tolbert Information Tech Specialist |