ABSTRACT Measures of epistasis in maize hybrids have been estimated by (i) triple-test crosses, (ii) making comparisons Certain maize (Zea mays L.) inbred lines are more successful than of single, three-way, and double cross hybrids, or (iii) others in forming elite hybrids. This study was conducted to determine measuring variance components (Hallauer and Miwhether epistatic interactions play a...

Maize (Zea mays L.) plays a very important role in human and animal nutrition in a number of developed and developing countries, worldwide. Breeding for improved protein quality in maize began in the mid-1960s with the discovery of mutants, such as opaque-2, that produce enhanced levels of lysine and tryptophan, the two amino acids deficient in maize endosperm proteins. However, adverse pleiotr...

Starch branching enzyme was purified from potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) tubers as a single species of 79 kilodaltons and specific antibodies were prepared against both the native enzyme and against the gel-purified, denatured enzyme. The activity of potato branching enzyme could only be neutralized by antinative potato branching enzyme, whereas both types of antibodies reacted with denatured po...

The grass genus Zea contains the domesticate maize and several wild taxa indigenous to Central and South America. Here we study the genetic consequences of speciation and domestication in this group by sampling DNA sequences from four taxa-maize (Zea mays ssp. mays), its wild progenitor (Z. mays ssp. parviglumis), a more distant species within the genus (Z. luxurians), and a representative of t...

In maize (Zea mays L.), chloroplast development progresses from the basal meristem to the mature leaf tip, and light is required for maturation to photosynthetic competence. During chloroplast greening, it was found that chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) is extensively degraded, falling to undetectable levels in many individual chloroplasts for three maize cultivars, as well as Zea mexicana (the ancestor...

Lady beetles (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) are important polyphagous predators in maize, Zea mays L., fields. Transgenic Cry3Bb1 maize hybrids express a coleopteran-specific insecticidal protein derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Berliner) subsp. kumamotoensis that is targeted at corn rootworm larvae. This study evaluated impacts of Cry3Bb1 protein-expressing maize, tefluthrin-treated maize, an...

The effects of aqueous leaf extracts of Tectona grandis L. and Mikania micrantha L. on germination and growth of Zea mays L. (maize) and Oryza sativa L. (paddy) were investigated during 2009-2010. The extracts suppressed the germination of paddy to an extent of 10-30% under high extract concentration and 40-50% suppression in maize under similar concentration. The growth of root and shoot of bo...

BACKGROUND Aluminum (Al) toxicity is a major worldwide constraint to crop productivity on acidic soils. Al becomes soluble at low pH, inhibiting root growth and severely reducing yields. Maize is an important staple food and commodity crop in acidic soil regions, especially in South America and Africa where these soils are very common. Al exclusion and intracellular tolerance have been suggeste...

Waxy maize (Zea mays L. var. ceratina) is an important vegetable and economic crop that is thought to have originated from cultivated flint maize and most recently underwent divergence from common maize. In this study, a total of 110 waxy and 110 common maize inbred lines were genotyped with 3072 SNPs to evaluate the genetic diversity, population structure, and linkage disequilibrium decay as w...