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(Ames, Iowa) -- Two Iowa State University faculty are part of a federal research project aimed at boosting sweet corn quality. Thomas Lubberstedt, the K.J. Frey Chair in Agronomy and Alan Myers, a professor of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology at Iowa State have been involved in a multi-year, $15 million research project, collaborating with the University of Wisconsin, Washington State, and the University of Florida. The U-S-D-A Institute of Food and Agriculture has been funding a research project to improve the flavor and resilience of sweet corn.
The research has looked at more than 600 genotyped sweet corn varieties. The U-S grows $800 million in sweet corn each year, which is a tiny fraction of the country's total corn production at around 1%.
Myers says when corn 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.
“What we really want is to combine that favorable mouth feel with high sugar content,” Myers said.
Lübberstedt’s group is working on refining doubled haploid technology to make the breeding method more common in sweet corn. An industry standard for producing commercial field corn seed, doubled haploid breeding shortens the process for developing inbred lines of hybrid corn from seven generations to two – saving years of time.
The project is expected to continue until 2025, but researchers’ work could find its way to consumers’ plates before then, Lübberstedt said.
“It’s possible that over the next few years what we’re developing will be incorporated into new varieties of sweet corn,” he said.