While modern hybrids dominate agriculture, forgotten North American heirlooms hold untapped potential. We're collaborating with Drs. Jacob Washburn (ARS in Columbia, MO), Jim Holland (ARS in Raleigh, NC), Joe Gage (North Carolina State University), and Addie Thompson (Michigan State University) to analyze 1000 diverse heirloom varieties, and evaluate their use for future breeding, niche markets, and sustainable farming. This research is funded by USDA-NIFA and USDA-ARS.

This project focuses on identifying and utilizing heirloom corn varieties for craft whiskey production. In collaboration with Wood Hat Spirits' Gary Hinegardner, we've gathered 50 heirloom corns varieties from Missouri and are assessing them for their suitability in making craft whiskey. Ultimately, the goal is to find the ideal heirloom corn that can contribute to a unique and flavorful "All-Missouri" whiskey, i.e. a whiskey made in Missouri, with Missouri corn, and aged in barrels made in Missouri.

We're collaborating with the Pavel Somavat from the MU Food Sciences Department to develop a natural alternative to red food dye using anthocyanins from corn. To do this, we are using microscopy to identify and breed germplasm with thicker pericarps or multiple aleurone layers, where these pigments are stored.

CERCA is a large multi-institution project that aims for a greener future for corn farming. We're part of the team exploring nitrogen transportation, metabolism, and storage in maize. Our goal is to reduce nitrogen in the kernel and move it into the cob or roots as these tissues take a long time to decompose and can serve as a natural slow-release fertilizer.  This project is funded by USDA-FFAR and USDA-ARS.

The Zea Synthetic is comprised of the NAM founder inbreds and teosinte and was random mated 13 times prior to the beginning of this project.  Collaborators around the US and Europe are growing this population for five years to see how the population changes in response to environment.  

After five cycles of local adaptation, we will conduct a common garden experiment including cycle 5 from all locations to observe changes in phenotypes and look at allele frequency changes, candidate genes, explanatory environmental variables

G2F is an initiative to support translation of maize genomic information for the benefit of growers, consumers and society. This public-private partnership is building on publicly funded corn genome sequencing projects to develop approaches to understand the functions of corn genes and specific alleles across environments. Ultimately this information will be used to enable to accurate prediction of the phenotypes of corn plants in diverse environments. Our lab participates in G2F each year by growing yield trials to study genotype-by-environment (GxE) interactions.