The 1,200 inbred lines that will be genotyped offer a solid base for accurate predictive breeding especially for Romanian maize breeders, but also abroad. The present project has the potential of boosting grain yield nationwide by generating simple crosses between genetically distant lines in order to develop hybrids that are superior to the existing one. This can have a significant socio-economic impact on the long term, making us more competitive internationally.
Our project offers a viable alternative to using seed from multinational companies, who also pressure towards the large-scale use of transgenic maize in agriculture. The Romanian growers will thus have the choice of using hybrids generated from local inbred lines that have been developed in our country. But due to the lack of knowledge in terms of genetic diversity, and therefore potential for amelioration, they have not been used for that purpose. The present project delivers that precise piece of missing information, by designing crossing schemes that would harness the full potential of genetically distant inbred lines in creating new hybrids. We do not plan to use any transgenic plants, but instead harness the power of the existing pool of maize diversity in our country. We think that this is a sustainable approach towards conserving the local maize genetic diversity and avoiding sensitive issues, like the use of transgenics.
Furthermore, in the context of existing interest of the society towards qualitative traits rather than quantity, our project can uncover “hidden” inbred lines that are amenable to producing better maize flour. However, due to their lower grain yield and susceptibility to pests they were not a preferred material for breeders. With the advent of massive parallel genotyping (i.e., RAD-seq) we can now foresee crosses between the 1,200 inbred lines to generate progenies/hybrids, which would incorporate both parental benefic alleles. Thus, quality traits necessary for flour making can be passed into hybrids that would not be susceptible to pests, due to inheriting resistance alleles from the second parent.
Because all data will be generated based on existing bioinformatic pipelines the results will be readily available for integration with previous and future studies. Thus, a much larger picture will emerge about maize genetic diversity worldwide. This will facilitate international germplasm exchanges in the interest of breeding efforts.
All the raw data will be deposited in the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA - http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena), under a unique accession number linked to the present project.
Preliminary and final results will be presented to the international maize community by participation at the two annual Maize Genetics Conferences that will overlap with the present proposal (i.e., 2018 and 2019).
We foresee the publication of minimum two articles in high impact journals, one focused on the genetic diversity of the 1,200 inbred lines and their grouping into heterotic pools, and a second one where we’ll tackle the rare alleles present in the local germplasm and their potential to further improve this crop.