Breeding of speciality maize for industrial purposes

Abstract

The breeding programme on speciality maize with specific traits was established at the Maize Research Institute, Zemun Polje, several decades ago. The initial material was collected, new methods applying to breeding of speciality maize, i.e. popping maize, sweet maize and white-seeded maize, were introduced. The aim was to enhance and improve variability of the initial material for breeding these three types of maize. Then, inbred lines of good combining abilities were developed and used as components for deriving new superior popping maize hybrids, sweet maize hybrids and white-seeded maize hybrids. Breeding was aimed at the increase of the popping volume of new inbred lines and hybrids of popping maize, then at the improvement of quality of popped kernels - flakes, and at yield increasing. Furthermore, the aim was to improve quality of sweet maize for different purposes, industrial processing and consumption as fresh food and also to improve yield and quality of white-seeded maize. As a result of such breeding, 28, 11 and 9 sweet maize, popping maize and white-seeded maize hybrids were released, respectively.

U Institutu za kukuruz 'Zemun Polje', Beograd, je pre nekoliko decenija zasnovan program oplemenjivanja kukuruza specifičnih svojstava. Prikupljan je početni materijal, radilo se na upoznavanju najnovijih metoda koje se koriste u oplemenjivanju kukuruza specifičnih osobina, tj. kokičara, šećerca i kukuruza belog zrna. Cilj je bio povećanje i poboljšanje varijabilnosti početnog materijala za oplemenjivanje ova tri tipa kukuruza. Zatim, stvaranje samooplodnih linija visoke kombinacione vrednosti koje se koriste kao komponente za stvaranje novih superiornijih hibrida kukuruza šećerca i kokičara i kukuruza belog zrna. Oplemenjivanje je usmereno na povećanje zapremine kokičavosti novih samooplodnih linija i hibrida kokičara, kvaliteta iskokanog zrna 'kokica' i prinosa zrna. Zatim, poboljšanju kvaliteta kukuruza šećerca za različite načine korišćenja, industrijska prerada i potrošnja u svežem stanju i povećanju prinosa i kvaliteta hibrida belog zrna. Rezultat dosadasnjeg rada je veći broj priznatih hibrida kukuruza šećerca (28), kokičara (11) i kukuruza belog zrna (9).