Impact Of Genomics On Maize Breeding At Dow AgroSciences

Application of Genomics tools in commercial corn breeding and crop improvement

Dow AgroSciences is a company which applies the latest technology to modern plant breeding and crop improvement. Today’s plant breeding involves the screening of hundreds of thousands of inbred lines for phenotypic and genotypic characteristics annually. Genomics tools are essential to develop markers and/or directly derive genotype information which can be used to enhance selection for yield as well as other single or multi-genic traits such as major corn diseases or other important heritable traits with high economic importance (i.e. green snap, heat/drought stress ).  GBS can be used to largely enhance the number loci covered but brings new challenges in the amount of data created. Novel Sequencing technology can also be used to study heterosis  and possibly predict combining ability for economically important traits as yield, maturity, others.  Examples will be given for such selection in corn breeding. In addition other genomics tools such as Zinc fingers proteins can be used in the creation or new crop improvement solutions which may or may not be considered transgenic in the future as they enable in-situ editing of native DNA in crop plants.  Such tools are applied at Dow AgroSciences to enable cutting edge technology development for crop improvement.