Wiki: “Field Guide to Maize Mutant Phenotypes”

We are developing a wiki to present many mutant maize phenotypes that have been photographed and described by colleagues and myself in my 65 years as a maize geneticist.  The wiki is intended for the broadest possible audience, from someone visiting a geneticist’s corn field for the first time to established researchers who might want to compare an interesting plant variation with those previously described.  Approximately 700 high-quality images have been selected to describe, as completely as possible, the diversity of expression in corn.  The images are arranged into broad categories (morphology, stature, color, etc.) using established maize phenotypes (dwarf, lesion, ramosa, knotted, etc.).  Each phenotype will have a brief definition and one good representative image, or in some cases (such as virescent) multiple images demonstrating the range of expression of that phenotype.  Captions will describe each picture in more detail, and in some cases include information such as effects of background, temperature, etc. The wiki is hosted by MaizeGDB (http://www.maizegdb.org/), and we are grateful for the generous donation of their time and services. A preliminary version of the wiki will be available in December 2012 at http://doiop.com/maize_prelim. We are asking for suggestions and additional images and materials prior to our first full public release. Support from NSF grant (IOS-1239861) is gratefully acknowledged.