Maize has been a staple ingredient for a diverse range of products that we have come to depend on in the modern economy. While the number of products derived from maize have been integral to the development of the agricultural economy, we have failed to acknowledge the value of diversity and a spectrum of maize lines to address modern challenges in agriculture including production needs, quality, and health. Landraces of maize grown before the genetic bottleneck of modern breeding offer exciting opportunities to look for traits that can be valuable to markets that use maize as a raw material. My research focuses on one such market: the craft distilling industry that primarily utilizes maize as the main ingredient. Using maize landraces, I hypothesize that there is more metabolomic diversity in the landraces compared to yellow-dent corn that are associated with flavor, and that there are genetic controls to these metabolites that we can select for future breeding efforts. These hypotheses will be addressed through two objectives:1. Using untargeted metabolomics approaches, I will characterize the metabolite composition of two landraces with known, distinct taste profiles in whiskey.2. Using Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) mapping methods, I will generate a population derived from the landrace parents and map the genomic regions associated with these metabolites.Through this work, we will conduct foundational research on the identification of the genetic components of flavor metabolites in maize, all while producing lines better suited to the needs of the craft whiskey industry.
A SURVEY OF METABOLITES ASSOCIATED WITH FLAVOR IN NEW-MAKE WHISKEY USING LANDRACES OF MAIZE
Objective
Investigators
Traylor, Z.
Institution
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
Start date
2024
End date
2027
Funding Source
Project number
MO00085967
Accession number
1032676