Alt— lwcastr Farwlwt, Saturday, September 13,1950
LANCASTER - Today’s
farmers probably take for
granted the com hybrids
they plant on their farms.
Hybrids have become a fact
of life for U.S. farmers
during the past 40 years.
But, behind the surface of
those high-yielding, new
hybrids introduced each
year is a battalion of people
dedicating much more time,
money and energy then you
would expect.
It can take up to 12 years to
bring a single hybnd to
market. There are several
phases through which com
breeders guide potential
hybrids - each step taking
several years.
Tracing the beginning of
one of these new com
hybrids can take one to the
far reaches of the world.
In order to maintain a
diverse source of new ger
mplasm, firms receive
material from a variety of
places.
Companies can receive
germplasm material USDA
has come across simply by
requesting it. They also go to
tropical research depart
ments. There, they may find
a native collection from
another country, or the
tropical researchers may
develop an exclusive line.
You might suspect that
eventually these sources
would run low on material to
supply com breeders, but
Dr. Keith Kauffman, who is
the manager of germplasm
resources for DeKalb, says
he annually looks at
thousands of resource
crosses. His job - simply to
locate sources and then
determine if the new
material will cross with
another source. If it does,
Kauffman passes it on to the
company’s com breeders
spread over a dozen
research locations across
the United States.
If it doesn’t cross well, the
source is put into cold
storage for possible use
later. The philosophy of this,
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How corn hybrids are
as Krull puts it is, “who
know, some day there may
be a new disease, and
perhaps one of these sources
carries resistance.”
The large research
company currently has
nearly 4000 completely
different germplasm
sources in its cold storage
room at DeKalb, Illinois.
That makes it one of the
largest collections in the
world.
Once germplasm is
collected and is shown to
cross well with others, the
hybridization process
begins.
To illustrate exactly how a
knows, some day there may
be _a new disease, and
parental inbreds must first
be developed and made
homozygous, which simply
means inbreeding them to
the degree that they will
never lose through crossing
the outstanding charac
teristics for which they were
initially selected. This
process is called selling.
“Let’s follow the
development of an inbred for
hybnd X,” Kuril says.
“One parent might be a
proprietary line, which
means it would be developed
exclusively by DeKalb,
while the other lines may be,
for example, a public line,
meaning it’s from a
university.” These two lines
are crossed and then selfed
to develop a new inbred
combining the desirable
traits of both ongmal lines.
This cross begins its way
through the selling process.
If it’s selfed once, that
means it’s 50 percent
homozygous, or having a 50
percent chance that it will
maintain its characteristics
when crossed.
Generally, new inbreds
are selfed five times,
making them 97 percent
homozygous. At this pomt,
essentially all charac
teristics of the mbred are
fixed and will transfer.
Each selfmg takes one
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year, and each year, the line
is bombarded with diseases
and insects in a very intense
selection process. Of every
1000 potential new inbreds,
seldom more than one will
pass the stress tests and
qualify for use in making a
hybrid.
“Each year, we only take
the best material to the next
generation. Krull points
out. “We’re selecting most of
all for yield, followed by
drydown, emergence, leaf
disease reaction, stalk
diseases, stalk quality and
other characteristics. By the
tune we’re done screening
these out, we only have a
handful left in five years. It’s
a numbers game. The more
material you look at, the
better chance you have of
finding something of
promise.”
As an inbred begins to look
homozygous and if it is still a
survivor of all the testing, it
moves to yet another stage.
Preliminary crossing texts
are made as the new, and
still hopeful, line is crossed
to several testers and then
yield tested to evaluate the
new inbred’s performance in
hybrid combinations.
This limited number of
new lines may go on to more
advanced screening sets,
where they are studied for
yet another year.
The better ones are sent to
DeKaib’s performance
testing plots. There, they are
grown under actual on-farm
management practices, as
DeKalb corn breeders
decide how well they will
perform m your field. Once
again, the firm limits the
number that pass this phase
of testing.
Once the line looks
promising in crosses,
breeders at each location
also begin crossing it with all
of their better lines, hoping
to come up with a good
match that will result in a
new, improved hybrid.
“We have a philosophy
that we don’t put a new
hybrid out unless it’s better
than the ones currently on
the market. That’s the
toughest test we can give it,”
Krullsays.
After the breeders develop
an improved hybrid, pilot
production is started to
obtain foundation seed. This
seed is distributed to the
numerous production plants,
where commercial' seed
supplies are multiplied.
Finally, the hybrid is
yours.
The previous example
illustrates the general steps
that the larger seed com
panies take to bring you
better hybrids. Of the 700-
some companies registered
with the American Seed
Trade Association, only a
few conduct such large
scale, in-house research
programs.
The research process is
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made
expensive and time con
suming. Normally, only the
larger companies have the
resources to conduct ex
tensive research efforts.
However, the efforts of these
companies are com
plemented by the work being
conducted at universities
and other public institutions.
It is from this souces that
most smaller, regional
companies obtain the
breeding material to develop
their hybrids.
The risk mvolved in that is
that many companies may
sell exactly the same hybrid,
even though each company
designates a different
number to it.
Most farmers probably
aren’t aware of how broad
the germplasm base for
hybncs really is. The large
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germplasm base is a natural
result of the constant search
for unproved lines by
companies with extensive
research programs. And,
working to the farmer’s
advantage is the fact that the
private seed industry is so
competitive.
The hope of each breeder
at each private company is
to be the one who develops
that new, “bam-buming”
hybrid that is better than the
competition. That means
you’re the benefactor.
DeKalb researchers,
alone, are looking at more
than 14,000 potential hybrids
this year. With those kinds si
numbers, they can’t miss ffP
the search for improved
hybrids. And, that means
you can’t either.
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