Corn varieties are conventionally bred to possess tolerance to disease, but the most productive varieties are not always the most disease resistant. This patented process transfers genes from corn plants with a naturally high resistance to the disease into elite, high-yielding varieties. The process is a result of research at Virginia Tech lead by M. A. Saghai Maroof , professor of crop and soil environmental sciences, with many others in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. New varieties released by Garst will be the first with this type of built-in protection, according to Al Balducchi, plant pathologist, leader for the Garst GLS project team. The technique developed at Virginia Tech uses fingerprinting with genome mapping to target where the genes that account for desired traits are located, dramatically reducing the time it would take for field testing at each level to see which traits will be expressed.
Field testing can wait until a hybrid is near commercialization.
This approach should also facilitate cloning of disease-resistance genes in other crops, and have wider biological implications.