A New Marketing Tool For Corn

By Growing Produce Staff|May 4, 2010

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are part of an international team that has found a way to boost the nutritional value of sweet corn. According to ARS, this new research has the potential to help children in developing countries who are at risk of problems such as losing their eyesight, become ill, or die each year because of vitamin A deficiencies.

Corn contains carotenoids, but only some of it the body can convert to vitamin A. Beta-carotene is the best vitamin A precursor, but only a very small percentage of corn varieties have naturally high beta-carotene levels. In developing regions of the world, corn is a major staple for children and thousands of them develop health issues because corn doesn’t contain enough beta-carotene.

Marilyn Warburton, a geneticist with the ARS Corn Host Plant Resistance Research Unit in Starkville, MS; Edward Buckler, a geneticist in the ARS Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health in Ithaca, NY, and their colleagues published results identifying genetic sequences linked to higher beta-carotene levels in corn and demonstrating an inexpensive and fast way to identify corn plants that will produce even higher levels. The report, recently published in Nature Genetics, is considered a breakthrough in nutritional plant breeding.

For more information, go to www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/may10/corn0510.htm.

Source: USDA ARS