HPLC-PED soluble sugars determination and reciprocal effect of parental lines of corn hybrid seeds

• Grant number: 14/01121-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2014
• End date: July 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agronomy - Crop Science
• Principal Investigator: Roberval Daiton Vieira
• Grantee: Juliana Faria dos Santos
• Supervisor: Allan Bruce Downie
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias e Veterinárias (FCAV). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Jaboticabal. Jaboticabal , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Kentucky (UK), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 11/23257-1 - Performance of hybrid maize seeds: reciprocal efect of parental lines, physiological potential and desiccation tolerance., BP.DR

Abstract

The corn (Zea mays L.) crop, when compared to other crops, has a much greater possibility of producing seeds with high physiological potential given its morphological and chemical constitution and the advent of hybrid corn. However, to guarantee that hybrid seeds have high quality it is essential to use compatible parental lineages. In corn seeds, physiological potential problems are usually related with desiccation tolerance of the hybrids. Seeds with desiccation tolerance accumulate great amounts of Raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs) that play important roles in seeds: to function as protectors of biomembranes, proteins, and intracellular structures during seed desiccation; scavengers of ROS (reactive oxygen species) and providing a source of rapidly metabolized carbohydrate for germination. In a previous study with sugars and tolerance to high drying temperature in corn seeds, it was verified that variation in the presence of sugars among hybrid seeds exists depending on the the direction of the cross.Thus, this research aims to study the quality of corn hybrid seeds produced from reciprocal crosses of various parental lines attempting to correlate vigor with the quantity of the RFOs present in the seeds. (AU)