Baby corn, essentially unfertilized young ears of corn, is a specialty food gaining interest for its high nutrition and low calorie count. It also has significant economic value as a quick-turnaround cash crop with a global market. Currently, Thailand is the largest producer of baby corn, with an estimated annual value of $64 million.
Baby corn quality and taste are greatly reduced by pollination. To prevent pollination, farmers depend on labor- and cost-intensive detasseling to remove the male flowers from the plant early in its growth, before they shed pollen to fertilize the ears and develop seeds. A promising alternative to the bottleneck of detasseling has been discovered by Iowa State University researchers who study corn breeding.
The ‘stunt of stunted silks’
They developed a new genetic variant that resulted in “the stunt of stunted silks.” This novel genetic pollination control mechanism was recently reported in the journal Plant Physiology.
“While characterizing genes and their mutants for other reasons, we observed a mutation that led to greatly reduced silks. These short silks mainly developed inside the corn husks, reducing the opportunity for fertilization,” said Siddique Aboobucker, a scientist at Iowa State at the time of the research and now an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. This unique trait of short, stunted silks was associated with deletion of a gene, ZmBMF2, using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing.
The altered corn still had silks, though they were so short that they seldom extended beyond the husks. Over four years of the study, silks emerged from the husks in only one year, and not at a level sufficient for pollination and seed set. Their finding could pave the way for an alternative pollination control mechanism, especially relevant for baby corn production.
However, if the husks are removed, the plants can still be fertilized and produce seeds – an important factor for future breeding programs, according to the researchers. They also found the mutation did not affect other traits tied to productivity, such as the number of kernel rows or the ear length.
Source : iastate.edu