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The Morrow Plots
The Morrow Plots
Located next to the Undergraduate Library and Foellinger Auditorium, the Morrow Plots is an experimental field that has planted maize, oats, alfalfa, and soybeans. Since 1867, the 6 individual plots have tested the effects of various crop rotations--in 1904, a reduction in yield in the unrotated field had reflected depletion of nutrients, while the remaining plots were used to experiment on the ideal crop rotation. Since 1904, several plots were converted to experimentation on fertilization and nutriment practices.
The Morrow Plots is the oldest experimental field, but data from 1876 to 1888 remained largely unknown throughout the United States. With the establishment of Pennsylvania State College's Jordan Plots in 1881 along with the University of Missouri's Sanborn Field in 1888, the University of Illinois started to document their research. Hundreds of early agricultural research papers cite the invaluable experimental information from the Morrow Plots. The site has been marked as a National Historical Landmark in 1968.
"Illini Supersweet" Corn
"Illini Supersweet" Corn
In 1953, a botanical professor, John Laughnan, was studying mutant corn with the shrunken-2 gene (sh2) and found that the kernels had significantly less starch, four times more sugar, and a significantly longer outlife than other sweet corn variants. Similarly, professor Dusty Rhodes discovered the sugar-enhanced variant (se), which contained less sugar than the sh2 variant. These two variants are 2 of the 3 main types of sweet corn, with the sh2 variant making up over 90% of sweet corn production in Florida.
Edward Murray East (1879-1938)
Edward Murray East (1879-1938)
Edward Murray East started his education at Case Western Reserve in 1896, but left for the University of Illinois in 1897. Here, he achieved his bachelor's, master's and doctorate from 1897 to 1907. Originally trained in plant chemistry, East was researching the chemical composition of kernels, but became interested in the genetic mechanisms of the kernels due to inbreeding and outbreeding. From 1905 to 1908, East worked on the discovery of particulate inheritance in plants, which explains that traits from the female and male parts do not merge together during breeding, but remain as separate alleles throughout the process. He began to generalize this idea of inbreeding and outbreeding into a book, published in 1919 and remained a widely cited book by geneticists on the topic of natural selection.
East's work took place at Illinois in the Agronomy building, which is now known as the Architecture Annex, home of the C-U Community FAB Lab.
Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center
Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center
The Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center is run by Marty Sachs, a colleague of Professor Bohn. Supported by the USDA and Agricultural Research Service, the Maize Genetics Cooperation is a storage center for mutant forms of maize developed across the world. Working under the National Plant Germplasm System, they store over 100,000 samples and send thousands each year. Many of these samples might not be commercially viable, but many contain valuable information about almost every gene mutation found in maize worldwide.
Here are some links for further reading and research done at the University of Illinois since 1867!
http://imbgl.cropsci.illinois.edu/world_of_rewards.html
https://aces.illinois.edu/news/oldest-us-agricultural-plots-go-digital-130-years-data-now-online
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