An important type of heterosis, known as hybrid vigor, refers to the enhancements in the phenotype of hybrid progeny relative to their inbred parents. Although hybrid vigor is extensively utilized in agriculture, its molecular basis is still largely unknown. In an effort to understand phenotypic heterosis at the molecular level, researchers are measuring transcript abundance levels of thousands...

Epidermal and subepidermal cells in the abaxial, basal region of the maize (Zea mays L.) immature zygotic embryo (IZE) scutellum can be induced by exogenous auxin to proliferate and undergo somatic embryogenesis. Successful genetic transformation of IZEs depends not only on optimizing transformation parameters for these totipotent cells, but also on achieving high embryogenic callus induction f...

maize hybrid ksc 703 (k47/3 x mo17) produced grain yield 12.034 t/ha over seven locations in 2010, compared to ksc 704 with 12.034 t/ha, as check. during two years evealuation ( 2011-2012) over 12 locations, this hybrid revealed grain yield 11.291 t/ha, comparing to ksc 704 with 9.506 t/ha, showing 1.785 t/ha (18.8%) yield increase. on farm experimants carried out in islam abad, ravansar, mahta...

Ribosomal gene compensation and magnification that might be detected on a whole-plant basis was not found in maize. Plants monosomic for chromosome 6 (the NOR chromosome) were compared with monosomic-8 and monosomic-10 plants, disomic sibs, and parental lines. Assuming no rDNA compensation, monosomic-6 plants showed approximately the decrease expected in rRNA cistron number. Monosomic-8 had a n...

Centromere positions on 7 maize chromosomes were compared on the basis of data from 4 to 6 mapping techniques per chromosome. Centromere positions were first located relative to molecular markers by means of radiation hybrid lines and centric fission lines recovered from oat-maize chromosome addition lines. These centromere positions were then compared with new data from centric fission lines r...

Catalase isozymes of maize (Zea mays, L. hybrid Norma) were shown to differ in their sensitivity to phenolic compounds. Salicylic acid, benzoic acid, acetylsalicylic acid and o-coumaric acid caused significantly greater inhibition of CAT1 activity than of CAT2. The nature of inhibition was non-competitive for CAT1, while CAT2 was inhibited competitively. P-hydroxybenzoic acid (pHBA) was the onl...

A gene from maize that encodes a hybrid proline-rich protein (HyPRP) formed by two well-defined domains, proline-rich and hydrophobic, respectively, has been characterized at the level of its structure and expression. The proline-rich domain is composed of elements PPYV and PPTPRPS, similar to those found in PRP proteins from soybean. The hydrophobic domain is rich in cysteine and is similar to...

Two Þeld experiments were conducted in 1995Ð1996 to determine if there are common photosynthetic and vegetative growth responses among genotypes of maize, Zea mays L., to larval western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte injury. SpeciÞc variables measured from rootworm infested and noninfested plants were midday leaf photosynthetic rate, plant growth stage, and plant height d...

More than 10 years after registration of the first Bt maize cultivar in Europe, there still exists a remarkable lack of data on effects on Lepidoptera which would be necessary for a complete and comprehensive environmental risk assessment. So far only very few European butterfly species have been tested in this aspect. In our study the effect of transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) maize poll...

Water, salinity and nitrogen are the major factors affecting maize production in arid and semi-arid areas. The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of different water, salinity and nitrogen levels on yield-water relationships, water use, water productivity (WP), water use efficiency (WUE) and water uptake reduction function by maize hybrid SC-704 in a semi-arid area and ...