When was hybrid corn invented

They called corn, beans, and squash, the "three sisters" and believed the three crops should be planted together. People from Europe who settled in America would not have lived through the winter without food including corn given to them by the Indians. Years later, American settlers crossed the Great Plains, cut through the thick native grasses with iron plows and planted corn and other crops. From ancient times through the first decades of European agriculture, seeds were hand picked to try to improve the quality of the crops.

Herman Goertzen says when his family picked corn by hand in the s they looked for big ears with lots of big kernels. Then they used those ears as their seeds the next spring. Carpentersville, IL. Seabrook, J. Sowing for apocalypse.

The New Yorker. Shamel, A. Seed corn and some standard varieties for Illinois. Illinois AES. The art of seed selection and breeding. Hill ed. Yearbook of Agriculture, Shoesmith, V. The study of corn. Orange Judd. Shull, G. The composition of a field of maize. A pure line method of corn breeding. Hybridization methods in corn breeding. Breeders Mag. The genotypes of maize.

CrossRef Google Scholar. Beginnings of the heterosis concept. Gowen ed. Iowa State College Press. Sizer, R. And W. Holden and the corn gospel trains. Palimpset 62 3 — Iowa State Cultural Affairs. Des Moines, IA. Sprague, G. The changing role of the private and public sectors in corn breeding.

Loden and D. Wilkinson ed. Thirty-fifth annual corn and sorghum research conference. Sturtevant, E. Varieties of corn. USDA Bul. Troyer, A. A retrospective view of corn genetic resources. Heredity 17— Background of U. Crop Sci. Temperate corn: background, behavior, and breeding. In Arnel Hallauer ed. Troyer, A F. Champaign County, Illinois, and the origin of hybrid corn. PBR — Persistent and popular germplasm in seventy centuries of corn evolution.

Smith, J. Betran, and E. Runge ed. Corn; origin, history, technology, and production. Hoboken, NJ. Adaptedness and heterosis in corn and mule hybrids. Background and importance of Troyer Reid Corn. Background and importance of Minnesota 13 Corn. Troyer Bros. Prize winning seed corn catalogue. Troyer Memorial Library. LaFontaine, IN. Troyer, C. Origin and development of some modern corn cultivars. Corn Grow. Purdue University.

Lafayette, IN. United Nations. Food and Agricultural Organization. Rome, Italy. United States Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Statistical Service. This station operated until when it was closed or transferred to the University of Illinois according to one reference and Holbert returned to breeding corn for Funk Brothers.

During his 19 years with USDA, Holbert provided free advice and breeding material to many fledgling private corn breeding programs, and developed several important early inbreds and public hybrids. Merle Jenkins as the breeder. US 13 was an early double-cross hybrid with the pedigree, Wf9 x x Hy x L Funk Brothers was perhaps the most important commercial seed corn company in the central Cornbelt in the marketing of open-pollinated corn varieties and in early hybrid development during the first third of the 20 th century.

I finally discovered the explanation in The Founding of Funk Seeds , produced by the company in about not available on the web. Apparently, at the beginning, farm publications in the US Midwest were reluctant to publish company names in their articles, only hybrid numbers. So Funk included the letters B and G in some of their hybrid names, hoping farmers would associate the letter with the company. No one seems to have recorded why B and G. By chance, G hybrids turned out to be better than B, so B was soon dropped.

Eugene Funk died in and Jim Holbert in This meant reduced attention to agronomic traits like higher yield and standability resistance to lodging that were important to farmers. The reason was that, unlike most other companies, Funk recognized that use of a source of male sterility then widely used in hybrid seed production caused susceptibility to the disease.

Funk retained use of hand detasseling in seed production and its sales soared temporarily. Sales of Funk corn hybrids plummeted. Funk hired two well-respected university corn geneticists, in turn, to lead its corn research program — Dr.

But it made no difference; Funk seed sales plunged. Funk became a public company in with the name changed to Funk Seeds International. Ciba-Geigy merged with another chemical company, Sandoz to form Novartis in and a further merger with AstraZeneca led to the creation of Syngenta in ICI later merged its various seed operations to form Zeneca.

And through a subsequent merger with a Swedish firm, Zeneca became part of AstraZeneca. Funk seed corn production and sales in Canada were managed by an associate company in the s. After the sale to Ciba-Geigy in , several of these associates formed their own company that they named Golden Harvest. The Wallace family name is legendary in Iowa starting with the first Henry Wallace who arrived in the state as a Presbyterian minister in , then became farmer, and later editor-in-chief of a publication called the Iowa Homestead.

His son Henry C. In , he became the US Secretary of Agriculture. Plants grown from show-ear seeds yielded no more. The fallacy of superiority of show corn — which had only became a popular feature of fall fairs in the Midwest during the s — impeded corn advancement for at least three decades to follow.

Support for the assumed supremacy of show corn was so strong that it affected the judgement of corn industry leaders everywhere. Varietal yield trials, up until then largely unknown, began in Iowa in about , spreading soon to other states and Ontario, and were effective in finally destroying the myth.

If anything, plots grown from seed of show-corn-winning ears often yielded below average. Henry A graduated from Iowa State College in and started corn breeding in a foot-byfoot garden behind the family home in Des Moines in This was soon followed by more extensive breeding — though still tiny by modern standards — on a nearby farm owned by his uncle.

A single-cross hybrid called Copper Cross developed by Wallace — which was a cross between an inbred from the variety Leaming and another from Bloody Butcher known for its dark red kernels — was entered in a newly created regional varietal performance trial. The hybrid yielded first in and its seed was produced on one acre of land near Altoona Iowa under contract with George Kurtzwell of the Iowa Seed Company.

Copper Cross was not a commercial success because of the low seed yield. Indeed, it was only sold for one year, and Wallace and partners shifted quickly to double-cross hybrids. But, as the first true hybrid corn sold in the US Midwest, the historical fame of Copper Cross is assured. The corn program moved to newly purchased land at Johnston, north of Des Moines, at about this time.

As well as being a visionary and entrepreneur, Henry A. Henry A became U. Secretary of Agriculture in thus ending his direct involvement with Pioneer. He later served from to as vice-president of the United States under President Roosevelt. Among other accomplishments as secretary and vice president, Henry A played a critical role in the creation of the Rockefeller-funded corn and wheat improvement program later, CIMMYT in Mexico. Wallace attracted some outstanding people to his team including a farm boy and recent ISC graduate, Raymond Baker, who joined Pioneer in Baker became head of corn research in I had the rare privilege of meeting Baker as well as author Bill Brown, then vice president of research and later to become Pioneer president, when I interviewed for a research position at Johnston in The interview occurred in a nondescript three-story red-brick building on the Johnston property that was then the headquarters for the Pioneer corn research program — a far cry from the expansive Pioneer research campus that exists there today.

My interviewers also included Don Duvick and Forrest Troyer, two outstanding corn breeders and industry leaders, and good contacts in the years to follow. Such a rare opportunity for me even though I did not take the offered job. An entrepreneur extraordinaire, Roswell Garst, persuaded Wallace in to let him produce Pioneer seed at Coon Rapids Iowa, about 50 miles northwest of Des Moines, and sell it in western Iowa and states further west.

Thomas was a minor player in the venture and his share was soon purchased by Garst. This turned out to be a financial gold mine for Garst. Pioneer Canada had a similar beginning with the initial business being that of a farmer and businessman who later sold out to the Johnston-based company. I also had the privilege of visiting Roswell aka Bob Garst and his various businesses in Coon Rapids in about Garst was a very colourful, aggressive and highly opinionated character who had became nationally famous for hosting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during his visit to Iowa.

Bob Garst would have made Donald Trump look like a wallflower. George Sprague, a USDA breeder at Iowa State College based on early inbreds with superior stalk quality reference here , 2 a huge pre-release hybrid testing program with many locations all across corn-growing regions of North America, and 3 a unique three-replicate testing process introduced by Don Duvick, then head of corn research. I recall Don discussing this this over lunch in Chicago in about I tried to persuade him to go with two reps at standard and two at plus — advise which he rejected.

He obviously made a brilliant decision that paid off hugely for the company. Pioneer became the North American leader in corn seed sales in , and I think it has been there most of the time since. The company changed its name to Pioneer Hi-Bred International in and went public in This coincided with a major company reorganization and expansion beyond North America including a new corn-breeding program in France. Pioneer was first traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange in Despite the stagnant yields, thousands of years of farming knowledge offered a possibility for the corn farmers.

Farmers knew that crossing different species or varieties sometimes resulted in more vigorous offspring. The mule, useful because of its strength and endurance, was a cross between a horse and a donkey. There were also examples of crossing donkeys with other closely related species. A similar concept was observed in plants. Archeological evidence shows that Native Americans regularly planted two different strains of corn together in some areas so that they would cross-pollinate and produce more vigorous offspring.

That traditional knowledge was supported and expanded upon by scientific experiments through the s and into the s. Several scientists found greater positive benefits in cross-pollinated plants than in self-pollinated ones. One such scientist was Gregor Mendel, who published his results in the late s.

Mendel investigated the inheritance of traits in pea plants, which he chose because he could easily control their pollination. In addition to outlining the basic principles of inheritance, Mendel noted that hybrid plants — those that were the result of a cross between two different inbred lines of "true-breeding" parents - tended to grow much more robustly than the self-pollinated plants.

This Punnett square shows the cross between an inbred line of small pea plants tt and an inbred line of tall pea plants TT. Mendel observed that all the offspring tended to be as tall as or taller than even the taller parent. Charles Darwin, best known for his ideas about evolution by natural selection put forth in On the Origin of Species , also published a book on plant breeding in — The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom.

In this book, he shared data from plant crosses and provided more support for the idea that self-pollinated plants tended to make less vigorous, less pest-resistant, lower-yielding offspring than plants that are hybrids, or crosses between two strains.

In short, there was growing evidence that for some plants, hybrids tend to be more robust. Darwin's work had a strong influence on many scientists, including William Beal, who, in the s, studied pollination control as a way to minimize the negative effects of inbreeding in corn.

Mendel was just working out patterns of inheritance; scientists didn't yet use the terms alleles or genes. The late s into the early s were times of great change in our understanding of traits and inheritance.

At this same time, corn farmers in the US had a problem. They had tried to increase yield by saving their best seeds, but they weren't able to maintain the increased quality and yield they sometimes found. They had a challenge that careful experimentation in the emerging areas of inheritance could possibly address: how could farmers maximize and sustain the effects of cross-pollination to increase their corn yields?

Darwin, Beale, and others noted both the negative impacts of inbreeding in corn plants and the positive impacts of outbreeding due to cross-pollination. Creating corn varieties with desired traits, however, required connecting the pollination work findings with the recently rediscovered work of Gregor Mendel - the fundamentals of inheritance and ideas about what we now call alleles.

In the early s, George Shull applied Mendel's ideas to understanding inbreeding and outbreeding in corn and conducted experiments that led to a hybrid revolution. At the same time, Edwin Murray East, a young chemist, conducted a similar set of experiments and developed a parallel set of ideas.

Watch the following video to learn more about their experiments. Cornell plant breeder Professor Margaret Smith demonstrates making crosses with corn.

Crosses between inbred lines produce hybrids and a boost in yield. In , George Shull was the first to clearly describe the heterosis concept. This idea changed the quest for desirable corn varieties. Corn breeders, as Shull suggested, gradually shifted their search from existing lines to looking for the best hybrid combinations. Heterosis - also called hybrid vigor - occurs when the hybrid offspring of two different parents displays enhanced traits when compared to its parents.

Single cross hybrids: a promising concept, but not a practical one In a paper, Shull outlined procedures for corn breeding to make vigorous, uniform single cross hybrids. At that time, however, the idea didn't really catch on. It was too difficult and expensive to produce hybrid seeds. The inbred lines of corn, which are necessary to make F1 hybrids, were not very strong or vigorous. They had low yield because they do not make much seed. They were also susceptible to pests. The biggest problem, however, was that inbred corn plants could be outcompeted by weeds.

Remember that there were no pesticides in the early s. As a result, it was very difficult and thus very expensive to produce hybrid seed! Crossing two inbred lines produces a single-cross F1 hybrid. Double-cross hybrids offer a high-yield solution However, in , D.

Jones, a student of East, developed a different type of hybrid: the double-cross hybrid. He crossed single-cross hybrids also called F1 or first-generation hybrids to produce another hybrid, the double-cross hybrid, or F2 hybrid.

Those double-cross hybrids were developed from four different inbred varieties.