Jean-Michel Ané, professor in the Department of Bacteriology, received USDA-NIFA funding for his project Introgression of efficient aerial root nitrogen-fixation from tropical maize landraces into selected elite materials through AFRI’s Plant Breeding for Agricultural Production program. It was among 16 projects sharing $8.6 million.

Project summary (from CRIS website): The use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers was critical in the Green Revolution and increased food production worldwide. However, this dependency on nitrogen fertilizers has significant economic and environmental repercussions. To reduce our heavy reliance on synthetic fertilizers and improve the sustainability of agriculture, we need to look for alternative nitrogen sources such as biological nitrogen fixation. Crops like maize, which require significant nitrogen inputs, particularly need such alternatives.Our recent studies showed that tropical maize landraces grown by Indigenous communities in Southern Mexico could obtain 29%-82% of their nitrogen from the air by hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria in a mucilage produced by aerial roots after rainfall. Unfortunately, these accessions are unsuitable for growth in the US Midwest or other temperate locations worldwide due to their photoperiod sensitivity, tall stature, and long life cycles.In this USDA AFRI project, we lay the groundwork necessary to introduce the traits responsible for efficient biological nitrogen fixation into elite maize accessions adapter to the US Midwest. Our objectives are to:(1) determine the nitrogen-fixing ability of parent lines and establish a correlation between nitrogen fixation and plant traits easy to evaluate, such as the number of nodes with aerial roots and the diameter of these roots; (2) identify genetic markers related to nitrogen fixation efficiency; (3) evaluate the nitrogen benefits and potential yield trade-offs (penalties) of this new trait under various environments.The maize lines generated in this proposal and the new cultivars that will derive from them could also be helpful for breeding programs worldwide to reduce the economic burden that purchasing fertilizer can add to small-holder farmers and reduce the negative environmentalimpact of excess fertilizer use.