Participants to USDA- Sponsored Workshop Spend Busy days at Pioneer Hi-Bred & a private farm in Iowa
Organizers of the USDA-sponsored workshop made arrangements for the participations to visit important institutions where work on biotech crops is going on in full scale. At the conclusion of the workshop, the participants left for Iowa state. At Des Moines, Iowa, they visited the world famous Pioneer Hi-bred International establishments. In addition to maize breeding, visitors were shown bio-engineered soybean varieties, some rich in oleic acid content, some in high sucrose content, nutritionally rich GM corn varieties and corn varieties resistant to root worm and corn borer. Their future program includes bioengineering crop varieties capable of yielding biodegradable plastics, sequencing maize genome of varieties to be used to produce hybrid maize. Aided by suitable computer model, the latter program is aimed at predicting the best cross combinations for maximum yield combined with best agronomic characters. This will save the breeders to undertake myriad of crosses physically.
In order for the breeders to view the expression of useful recessive characters, at Pioneer Hi-bred stations, the breeders are growing somatic haploids. Individuals with promising characters are selected and incorporated into the breeding program. Another great advantage of haploidy is the shortening of breeding time almost into half; true breeding lines are obtained at one step through duplication of the chromosome numbers of selected haploid individuals.
On Tuesday, the participants went to Ames, Iowa, and visited a huge 3600-acre farm, run by only a handful of people. The owner showed the visitors large machinery that they use to prepare soil, plant seeds, and harvest large quantities of food grains. Each equipment costs around $100,000 which are available on loan from banks or heavy duty machinery companies lease them out.
