It’s hard to beat fresh sweet corn in the summer. Or is it? Two Iowa State University faculty are part of a major federal research project aimed at boosting sweet corn quality, using the same innovative genetic tools that have led to advancements in field corn.
“A lot of resources have gone into breeding field corn. But there has been far less effort in sweet corn,” said Thomas Lübberstedt, K.J. Frey Chair in Agronomy.
While sweet corn – fresh on the cob, frozen or canned – is one of the most popular vegetables among U.S. consumers, there are economic reasons why research has flowed to field corn used for livestock feed, food processing and manufacturing. The $800 million of sweet corn grown in the U.S. every year is about 1% of the country’s corn production. But Americans don’t eat enough veggies, and consumption of sweet corn, one of their favorites, has been trending down for decades. So the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture has been funding a research project to improve sweet corn’s flavor and resilience.
After launching in 2018, the first few years of the eight-year, $15 million project were focused largely on establishing resources underpinning the work, including a panel of more than 600 genotyped sweet corn varieties for researchers to study, Lübberstedt said.
“That’s the project’s backbone,” he said. “Now we’re figuring out how to use the information.”
Perfecting the kernels Research groups with collaborators from the University of Wisconsin, Washington State University and the University of Florida, the lead institution on the project, are working on varied aspects of sweet corn improvement. Alan Myers, a professor of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology at Iowa State, is exploring the genetic and biochemical processes that affect how carbohydrates are stored in corn kernels, hoping to heighten flavor and texture.
All sweet corn lines once owed their sugary taste to a genetic mutation which prevents the glucose that forms in kernels from crystallizing into a starchy insoluble polymer, Myers said. When its kernels are packed full of soluble glucose polymers, corn is sweet, juicy and chewy instead of hard and crunchy. In a second type of sweet corn developed about 20 years ago, the glucose in kernels doesn’t convert into polymers. That produces a sweet corn variety often used for commercial freezing and canning, but it doesn’t have the texture of traditional sweet corn.
Source: iastate.edu
Photo Credit: Iowa State University
Categories: Iowa, Crops, Corn, Fruits and Vegetables, Education, Livestock, Weather