Investigating the genetic and physiological bases for cold tolerance in maize

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Growth and survival of agricultural crop plants early in the growing season help lengthen the growing period for crops and reduce early season run-off and weed competition. However, low temperatures inhibit this early growth, especially of crop species such as corn, Zea mays, that have tropical origins. Cold temperature tolerance and certain cold-induced physiological processes genetically vary in corn, but there is little understanding of this variation among elite cultivars adapted to Canada and little knowledge as to the degree to which these genetically variable traits are heritable. Furthermore, important physiological processes may change in response to cold stress, and the degree of these changes also genetically vary. This research will characterize genetic variation for early season cold tolerance and associated traits for a large number of maize genotypes in both controlled environment and field experiments. This research will also characterize the heritability of these traits and identify novel transcriptional responses of maize to cold and genetic variation for these responses. This research will directly contribute to the genetic improvement of maize cold tolerance, to Canadian industrial and university strengths in agricultural genomics, and to our knowledge of inheritance and genetic variation.