You’re in Good Hands
By David Morris

Corn breeding is a key area of corn research in Ontario. In recent years, the public corn breeding programs in Ontario have been based at the Crop Science Department, University of Guelph and at the Central Experimental Farm (CEF) of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Ottawa. This is a transitional year for these programs as they come under new leadership – Dr. Elizabeth Lee, at Guelph, and Dr. Lana Reid at Ottawa. Since these two “new” people will have a major influence on the course of research in corn breeding in Ontario, it seems fitting to profile them in this issue of Ontario Corn Producer.

Dr. Lee is truly a newcomer to Ontario – very new, in fact, having started at Guelph on April 13. Elizabeth -- or Liz as she is more accustomed to being called -- is a native of Minnesota. She grew up on a seed farm, where her family grew, cleaned and sold pedigreed seed of several crops, including wheat, barley, oats, rye, flax, soybeans and grasses for conservation seedings.

Liz attended the University of Minnesota with hopes of becoming a veterinarian. However, a “D” on her first course in zoology prompted her to re-evaluate her career path and she switched to the familiar ground of agronomy. As a student, Liz worked in a corn tissue culture lab at the university and developed an interest in corn genetics and molecular biology. She did her graduate work in corn at Iowa State and took a PhD in corn genetics at the University of Missouri. She then worked for a time at a molecular biology lab in Vermont. Her work there had nothing to do with corn, but as she says, “I guess I just had to get the molecular biology bug out of my system.” Having realized that she preferred to work with corn (rather than cell wall physiology as it related to gene transfer between species), she returned to Missouri to do contract work with the USDA in corn genetics. From there she was hired to come to Guelph.

With an early spring, Liz has certainly had a baptism of fire. When Ontario Corn Producer talked to her in early May, she had been busily working to grasp the scope of what she had inherited from Dr. Lyn Kannenberg, before the research went into the ground. Liz expects to maintain the emphasis on developing material with improved cold tolerance, suitable for the “fringe” areas of corn production in Ontario. She notes that she is coming into a well-established program from which many good inbreds and a lot of good breeding material have been released over the years. She also emphasizes that she will be paying particular attention to the priorities of Ontario corn growers as documented by OCPA.

Realistically, she does not anticipate making a big change in the direction of the Guelph corn breeding program this year. Having arrived almost in the midst of planting season, one of her main goals for the coming year is just to evaluate the various corn breeding populations that have been developed at Guelph. She wants to determine what she would like to continue developing as separate projects and what can be blended without losing too much diversity.

In time, however, Liz expects to reduce the emphasis on developing populations and to focus on locating and understanding the function of the genes that control desirable traits like cold tolerance and resistance to Fusarium. To support this work, Liz and a number of other researchers at Guelph are hoping to establish a program to identify molecular markers for corn, soybeans and wheat. This would allow them to use biochemical traits as indicators of the presence of the genes for specific agronomic or quality characteristics. That could simplify the breeding and evaluation process immensely.

Liz will also be involved in cooperative efforts with several other corn researchers in Ontario. She, along with Dr. Art Schaafsma of Ridgetown College, are establishing a breeding nursery to develop lines of white “snack food” corns suitable for use in Ontario. Some of Liz’s colleagues at Guelph are interested in cooperating with her to develop transgenic lines of corn using genes for Fusarium resistance from other species. It seems that no breeding program can be without a biotech component these days!

It’s clear that even though she’s a newcomer, Liz has already developed a good grasp of the priorities for her work here. She has certainly “hit the ground running.”

Dr. Lana Reid’s name is well known in Ontario to those with an interest in Fusarium ear moulds. She has been working as a corn pathologist at the Central Experimental Farm (CEF) since 1991 and her work has added greatly to our understanding of Fusarium ear moulds and genetic resistance to these diseases. She has also been managing a very active program devoted to developing lines of corn with resistance to a variety of pests, with special emphasis on Fusarium, funded in part with a grant from OCPA. Following the retirement of Dr. Bob Hamilton this winter, Lana was appointed to lead the entire corn breeding program at CEF, with the able assistance of her technicians, George McDiarmid and Anthony Parker, both of whom have also recently joined the corn program.

Lana grew up in the Ottawa Valley. She had always been interested in plants, and biology in general. After graduating from high school, she enroled at the University of Ottawa in the undergraduate plant biology program. The question of how plants defend themselves against pests stimulated her curiosity and for her Master’s thesis, she studied the level of chemical resistance to European Corn Borer in lines of corn from around the world. This project heightened Lana’s interest in the role of corn genetics in pest resistance, so for her PhD project, she focused on the inheritance of resistance to Fusarium ear rot in corn. Although Lana did her course work at MacDonald College in Montreal, her research plots were located at CEF. This relationship led to her being hired there as a corn pathologist to continue the work of identifying sources of resistance to ear mould and investigating ways to screen hybrids for resistance.

Initially, her work and the breeding effort to incorporate ear mould resistance into CEF breeding material were managed as separate programs. However, it soon became evident that the pathology program and the breeding program for ear mould had to be merged. So in 1993, Lana began her own small breeding program with the goal of developing inbreds with resistance to ear mould. This program has now grown into a multiple pest resistance program designed to identify sources of resistance to a wide range of insect and disease problems and to develop simplified techniques for screening breeding material. While the emphasis is still on ear moulds, this program also includes work on the corn leaf blights, eyespot, rust, common smut, stalk rots, corn rootworm and corn borer. Lana’s ultimate goal is to develop quality inbreds with resistance to ear mould and at least one of these other pests. She expects to soon start releasing inbreds with improved resistance to ear moulds on an annual basis. The target of multiple resistance is still a few years farther away.

To support the multiple pest resistance breeding program, Lana and her colleagues are developing a collection of pest resistant corn lines from sources around the world. She notes that they have recently obtained some very useful material and expertise from China. A Chinese corn pathologist, Xiaoyang Zhu, has been working with her as a visiting researcher and brought some excellent sources of resistance to leaf diseases with him. He is also a master at developing simple screening techniques and has contributed greatly to the progress of the program.

In addition to the corn disease work, Lana is optimistic about the prospects - nation-wide - for what has been dubbed “cereal” corn. This is a very early maturing type of corn that is small enough in stature to allow it to be grown and harvested using equipment designed for other cereal grains. It is intended for areas where the season is too short to grow regular corn hybrids, meaning it may become an alternative to barley in the cooler parts of the country. This year it will be evaluated in tests from Newfoundland to Alberta. (Some of you may remember the “dwarf” corns that were tested in on-farm plots about 15 years ago. In some respects, “cereal corn” can be viewed as an improved version of that concept.)

Lana also intends to continue the breeding work on regular corns initiated by Dr. Hamilton to develop early inbreds with improved cold tolerance. In addition, a colleague at CEF, Dr. John Simmonds, has been working to develop transgenic lines of corn, and she hopes to use some of the traits he has been employing in the regular breeding program. In particular, Dr. Simmonds has begun incorporating the “germin” gene for cold tolerance (originally transferred from wheat) into some of the CEF breeding material and Lana is looking forward to the challenge of developing it into usable inbreds.

The corn breeding programs at Guelph and Ottawa have both made valuable contributions to the development of corn in Ontario for many decades. With the appointment of Drs. Lee and Reid, it seems clear that the heritage of these two programs is in good hands and that we can look forward to the continued advancement of corn genetics in Ontario for many years yet to come.

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