Specialty Maize Breeding Group
The main goal of this breeding program is creation of specialty maize hybrids with high yielding potential and quality.
Great genetic variability of maize kernel traits provides the opportunity of quality and quantity alternations in its chemical composition. Due to its traits and their genetic control, specialty maize types need special attention during the breeding process, but also later in seed production and commercial production. In order to achieve advances in breeding and selection, evaluation of certain traits are performed such as determination of popping volume and quality of popcorn, and determination of sensory traits in sweetcorn, sugars content, and length of the harvesting interval, etc.
Breeding program of Specialty Maize Breeding Group encompasses:
- Creation and improvement of sweetcorn, popcorn and white kernel maize synthetic populations
- Breeding and improvement of sweetcorn, popcorn and white kernel maize inbred lines
- Breeding of high yielding and high quality sweetcorn hybrids
- Breeding of high yielding and high popping volume popcorn hybrids
- Breeding of high yielding and high quality white kernel maize hybrids
The main result of specialty maize breeding program is a large number of released hybrids up to now: sweetcorn hybrids – 49; popcorn – 15; white kernel – 16.
