Title of project: Biochemical characterization of normal and specialty corn germplasm
Project funding: Institute
Duration: April 2012 to March 2017
Total approved cost of the project: Institute project

Objective:

• To evaluate chemical composition of the newly developed QPM lines
• Amino acid profiling of promising germplasm
• Evaluation of carbohydrate profile viz. sugar, starch, amylose, and amylopectin content in maize germplasm
• Evaluation of oil content in maize germplasm
• Fatty acid profiling of promising maize germplasm

Project team:

S. No.	Name, designation and institute	Status in the project (PI/CC-PI/ Co-PI)	Time to be spent (%)	Work components to be assigned to individual scientist
1.	Dharam Paul	PI	30 %	Execution of the experiments and observation of various parameters
2.	Jyoti Kaul	Co-PI	20 %	Development of QPM material for winter season
3.	Ramesh Kumar	Co-PI	20 %	Development of maize germplasm
4.	Sapna	Co-PI	20 %	Analysis of data
5.	Bhupinder Kumar	Co-PI	10 %	Development of maize germplasm

Major achievements:

• A negative correlation between protein and tryptophan has been observed in a set of 588 lines consisting of 47 populations (533 lines) and 55 CLM lines analyzed for protein quality.
• A set of nine high oil (>5%) lines {TALAR X AF 04-6-57-96-A-7-1-1-9, TALAR X AF 04-6-57-96-A-7-1-1-40, DMR WNC HOC 84, TempxTrop(H0)QPM-BBB-69-BBB, TLWQ(H0)QPMC15-BBB-64-BBB, TLWQ(H0)QPMC15-BBB-55-BBB, TempxTrop(H0)QPM-BBB-73-BBB, TempxTrop(H0)QPM-BBB-100-BBB and TLWQ(HO)QPMC15BBB38BBB} have been identified.
• Fatty acid composition of normal, QPM and high oil maize revealed that stearic acid content was significantly low in high oil normal maize (56%) and QPM (36.2 %) in comparison to low oil normal maize. Higher content of linoleic acid was observed in specialty maize as compared to low oil normal maize.
• Three high starch (>73%) lines {DMR PE6-2, HP 963-17 and NZB2012} and five high protein (>13%) lines {(CA14502/CA14509)-F2-14-BBB-CML451-BBB-OPc14S1, CML 44, EC646016, PFSR R3ÄÄÄÄ, PFSR S3} were identified out of large stock of inbreds (217nos.) analyzed at two locations under three replications.