Breeding of speciality maize for industrial purposes

Abstract

The breeding programme on speciality maize with specific traits was established at the Maize Research Institute, Zemun Polje, several decades ago. The initial material was collected, new methods applying to breeding of speciality maize, i.e. popping maize, sweet maize and white-seeded maize, were introduced. The aim was to enhance and improve variability of the initial material for breeding these three types of maize. Then, inbred lines of good combining abilities were developed and used as components for deriving new superior popping maize hybrids, sweet maize hybrids and white-seeded maize hybrids. Breeding was aimed at the increase of the popping volume of new inbred lines and hybrids of popping maize, then at the improvement of quality of popped kernels - flakes, and at yield increasing. Furthermore, the aim was to improve quality of sweet maize for different purposes, industrial processing and consumption as fresh food and also to improve yield and quality of white-seeded maize. As a result of such breeding, 28, 11 and 9 sweet maize, popping maize and white-seeded maize hybrids were released, respectively.