Monsanto Step Closer To Corn Yield Answer
September 16, 2008 Scientists at Monsanto say they are a step closer to further unlocking the yield potential of corn to help enable each seed to increase its ability meet the world’s growing demand for food, feed, and fuel.
The company says it has produced a genetic blueprint of one of its top-performing elite female corn lines. The scientific achievement, important for developing better-performing corn seeds for growers, was made through the use of high throughput DNA sequencing methods, as well as data generated by the recently completed maize genome project.
"These sequencing efforts will not only identify preferred genes for our research and development pipelines, but move us into a high-definition molecular breeding era that uses a combination of sequence and markers to derive future higher-yielding hybrids globally," says Monsanto Chief Technology Officer Robert Fraley.
High throughput sequencing methods enable scientists to rapidly identify variations in the genomes of complex organisms. "In agriculture, high throughput sequencing has the potential to provide an unprecedented level of detail about our current market-leading hybrids and to point us in the direction of meeting Monsanto’s commitment to double yields in our core crops by 2030," Fraley says.
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