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How a hybrid becomes a hybrid
Seed corn take a long and winding road to becoming a hybrid that farmers can plant in the field. Magen Eller, commercial corn breeder for Monsanto says it is a two-step process. “The first is to create an inbred,” she says. “The second step is to combine two inbreds into a hybrid.”
Eller tells Brownfield the first step is about selecting the best traits possible. “It’s eliminating things that are going to be bad for yield,” she says. “We try to make sure our inbreds don’t have things like Green Snap, stalk lodging, or root lodging. We try to make sure they’re healthy so they are resistant to things like northern leaf blight and grey leaf spot and they aren’t susceptible to ear rots.”
She says the hybrid development stage is about putting together two inbreds that complement each other. “If one inbred seems to be a little bit lacking in a particular trait – it’s finding another inbred on the other side of the pedigree that complements that,” she says. “If one is a susceptible to foliar diseases – we can help it out a little with the other side of the pedigree.”
From there the hybrid goes through rigorous testing before entering the commercial pipeline.
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