Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** project purpose:nutramaize seeks to…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** project purpose:nutramaize seeks to develop commercial orange sweet corn hybrids with high levels of health-benefitting antioxidant carotenoids that will help address USDA strategic goal 7: provide all americans access to a safe, nutritious, and secure food supply. This technology will leverage a popular, accessible, and affordable food format to deliver more health protecting antioxidant carotenoids to americans. In turn, this approach has the potential to help protect public health, since low carotenoid intake puts the majority of older americans at an increased risk of developing age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss and irreversible blindness for americans over the age of 60 that affects nearly 20 million individuals.project approach:the proposed breeding approach will use an innovative carotenoid biosynthetic pathway guided selection strategy that aims to pyramid multiple favorable alleles introgressed from high carotenoid field corn donor lines to achieve unprecedented carotenoid levels in sweet corn. The goal of this phase I project is to demonstrate the technical feasibility of this approach by developing early generation proof of concept germplasm and molecular markers for a set of key carotenoid biosynthetic genes. Subsequently, these resources would be used during a potential phase II project to develop finished orange sweet corn inbred lines and commercial hybrids. Once developed and adopted, nutramaize orange sweet corn has the potential to make a meaningful impact on the amount of health protecting antioxidant carotenoids consumed by americans.