January 2020

Welcome to the January edition of our information exchange platform.  This month we will discuss our winter nurseries and seed production activities. We will also highlight high lysine corn, blue high lysine corn, regenerative agriculture with poultry and tropical corn hybrids. Missed last month's E-Newsletter? Catch up in the  News section  of our website

GEI 5121C winter seed production 1-24-2020

GEI 2312 winter seed production 1-24-2020

Tropical Hybrid GEI 9505

Winter Nurseries

When it comes to corn breeding, winter nurseries are essential to making progress in the development of a final product. We have had many experiences sending corn to various “counter season” sites during our winter months. In the past, we have used Homestead, Florida for our winter nursery needs. Despite occasional frost threats, we were very satisfied with the service. A couple of years ago, the company decided that raising vegetables was more profitable and they closed down their corn nursery services.  We have also tried sending nurseries to Hawaii. That didn’t work because small projects get lost in the shuffle. We have sent seed to Puerto Rico before this year and found the results disappointing because the seed came back with too much insect damage.  The nursery management has corrected this problem now. We have sent seed to Chile for our nursery needs for the last three years and the results have been very satisfactory.  The seed comes back clean and plentiful. There is a declared “GMO free” area in Chile where GMO contamination is not an issue. In the past, when we had a tropical corn breeding program, we developed numerous tropical inbreds and hybrids.  Maintaining those lines is essential.  We decided to send a small nursery to Puerto Rico where tropical germplasm would do best.  We also decided that it would be good to go work on the nursery ourselves and to check out the material.  We planned ahead to be there when the corn would be at its peak.  We arrived in Ponce, Puerto Rico on January 6 th .

The morning of the 7 th , at 4:24 in the morning we were shaken awake with a 6.4 magnitude earthquake.  Everyone was ordered out of the hotel to the parking lot. There were numerous smaller quakes and continuous tremors during the week.   On Saturday, the 11 th , there was another 5.9 quake. The epicenter of the activity was about 17 miles to the west but there was extensive damage to many structures in the area and to a major power plant. The Puerto Ricans who are still recovering from Category 5 Hurricane Maria (September 2017) were decidedly unnerved. Many refused to return to their homes and chose to sleep outside.  We were able to do some nursery work and turned the rest of the work over to the local staff when we returned home on the 13 th .   All in all, this trip to Puerto Rico was a good experience under unusual circumstances.  We think we learned more about people and their reactions to peril than we did about our corn.  It is good to see how people, when facing danger, come together to support each other.  We learned a little more about people and made new acquaintances that we had not anticipated.

Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference

We attended the PFI annual conference on January 16-18 in Ames, Iowa. This conference is attended by the regular membership as well as people and organizations from other states interested in sustainable agriculture. GEI had a corn seed booth featuring the most recent specialty and conventional corn hybrids. Over the two days of the meetings we had the opportunity to greet our customers in attendance and to meet new farmers with interests in what we had to offer. There was lots of interest in our GEI blue corn hybrids.  Blue corns are usually not shown in public displays of seed products, mostly because these commercial products are tied to specific market demands.  End users usually secure the grain from grain producers operating under special contracts. The corn specialties on display brought attention to the possibilities of diversification at the farm and creating awareness of opportunities for growing a new crop.   We had a signup sheet for farmers that had an interest in receiving a copy of our monthly newsletter, strip test seed or any other interest. We will follow up and implement these signup interests during the coming weeks.

Regenerative Agriculture with Poultry

The conference program had lots of topics of interest to new and well established farmers in the grain and animal husbandry areas. Other areas of interest were soil conservation, organic farming practices, transitioning from conventional to organic farming, etc.  I attended a session on regenerative agriculture with poultry because this system blends the practices of free range poultry, rotational grazing and nutritional needs complemented according to growth stages. This system is compatible with sustainable agricultural practices and family farming.  The use of biofortified grains such as high lysine corn, high anthocyanin and high carotene corn grains changes the dynamics of the food chain conversion and diversification at the farm while contributing to sustainability and contributing to the regenerative agricultural process. This system could be implemented in rural farm settings in international environments with small farm holdings where there are limited capital resources balanced with plentiful available labor. Further information about this can be found on the Main Street Project website.

High Lysine Corn Products for Human Consumption

Artisanal manufacture of high lysine corn tortillas Nixtamalized grain Masa dough Finished tortillas cooling

High quality protein corn (also called high lysine corn) has great potential to be used as a source of good quality protein in human nutrition. Normal corn is deficient in the essential amino acids lysine and tryptophan. Protein efficiency is reduced to the levels of the amount of essential amino acids present in the protein of corn. Using percent lysine of protein as a measure of protein quality, normal corn has 50% of the protein quality of high lysine corn. (% lysine of protein in normal corn is 2.5 vs. % lysine of protein is 4.5 for high lysine corn).  The quality of the protein of high lysine corn is 94% similar to milk and egg protein.    Corn processors can extract the corn proteins to use in fortification of other flours or to enhance the level of protein of high lysine flours. High lysine corn flour can be used for making traditional corn foods and bakery products with corn.  Nixtamalized high lysine corn  masa  can be used for making tortillas and snack products such as corn chips.   One example of the use of high lysine corn is Whole Grain Milling Co. of Welcome, MN, a company that makes high lysine corn tortilla chips and high lysine corn flour products for making pancakes and corn meal for corn bread. High lysine corn is also used in overseas countries such as Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil and other developing countries in Africa to reverse malnutrition.

GEI high lysine corn

Whole Grain Milling Hi Lysine Corn Tortilla Chips

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High Lysine Corn Silage

There is an emerging interest in the use of high lysine corn for silage in the dairy industry.  Research reported by Joann Pipkin in  Dairy Herd Health Tech  indicates milk production increases and other health benefits obtained with diets supplemented with lysine. Kemin Industries Inc. markets an encapsulated product that releases lysine into the gastrointestinal tract targeting the small intestines, protecting the essential amino acids from rumen degradation. High lysine corn has shown positive results in milk production when used as a silage product. The combination of a high quality protein and the increased digestibility of the starch makes high lysine corn an ideal silage product. New silage corn trends show that silage corn breeders are looking at high lysine corn for silage in combination with modified starch mutants and the leafy gene. GEI high lysine corn hybrids and other modified starch corn hybrids such as our GEI Inka Maiz™ hybrid could contribute to the availability of this new line of silage hybrids in the market.

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New GEI Innovation: Blue High Lysine Corn

High Lysine Blue Corn Hybrid Ears

Genetic Enterprises International announces the development of a new high lysine blue corn hybrid. This new corn type combines the endosperm qualities of high quality protein, high lysine corn, high anthocyanin and high level of antioxidant content in the aleurone. We are excited about the nutritional improvement of this new corn and the possibilities of the added nutritional value of foods by the use of this corn type.

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