Urbana, Illinois
March 2, 2009
University of Illinois plant geneticist Stephen Moose has
developed a corn plant with enormous potential for biomass,
literally. It yields corn that would make good silage, Moose
said, due to a greater number of leaves and larger stalk, which
could also make it a good energy crop.
The gene known as Glossy 15 was originally described for its
role in giving corn seedlings a waxy coating that acts like a
sun screen for the young plant. Without Glossy 15, seedling
leaves instead appear shiny and glossy in sunlight. Further
studies have shown that the main function of Glossy15 is to slow
down shoot maturation. Moose wondered what would happen if they
turned up the action of this gene. “What happens is that you get
bigger plants, possibly because they’re more sensitive to the
longer days of summer. We put a corn gene back in the corn and
increased its activity. So, it makes the plant slow down and
gets much bigger at the end of the season.”
The ears of corn have fewer seeds compared to the normal corn
plant and could be a good feed for livestock. “Although there is
less grain there is more sugar in the stalks, so we know the
animal can eat it and they’ll probably like it.” This type of
corn plant may fit the grass-fed beef standard, Moose said.
“The first time I did this, I thought, well, maybe the seeds
just didn’t get pollinated very well, so I hand pollinated these
ears to make sure. I found that just like the shoot, seed
development is also slower and they just don’t make it all the
way to the end with a plump kernel,” Moose said.
He explained that the energy to make the seed goes instead into
the stalk and leaves. “We had been working with this gene for
awhile. We thought there would be more wax on the leaves and
there was. But we also got this other benefit, that it’s a lot
bigger.”
Moose tested his hypothesis with other corn lines and the effect
was the same. “We essentially can make any corn variety bigger
with this gene. And it can be done in one cross and we know
exactly which gene does it.”
He noted that if you put too much of the Glossy 15 gene in, it
slows down the growth too much and the frost kills the plant
before it can grow.
One advantage to growing sugar corn for biomass rather than
switchgrass or miscanthus is that sugar corn is an annual. Moose
said that if it would attract a pest or develop a disease,
farmers could rotate a different crop the next year.
Moose said that sugar corn might make a good transition crop.
“We think it might take off as a livestock feed, because it’s
immediate,” Moose said. “This would be most useful for on-farm
feeding. So a farmer who has 50 steers, could grow this and use
the corn as feed and sell the stalks and sugar. It could be an
alternative silage, because it has a longer harvest window than
regular silage.”
For this sugar corn plant to become commercialized, it would
have to get government approval, but Moose said that this is
about as safe a gene as you can get. “It’s a gene that’s already
in the corn – all we did was to put an extra copy in that amps
it up.”
Findings from this research were published in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America. |
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