An ISU professor spoke Monday concerning his research that answers basic biological questions about Iowa’s star crop – corn.

Patrick Schnable, professor of agronomy, spoke about his experience contributing to the corn genome sequence in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union.

Schnable said researching crop genomes is a passion in his life. He recently collaborated with other researchers in drafting the first assembly of the corn genome.

“This was a major, major contribution to genomics,” said Elizabeth Hoffman, executive vice president and provost, as she introduced Schnable.

Schnable said the information gained from assembling the corn genome is and will continue to be helpful in linking specific genes to important traits in corn. He also said the genome will help answer basic biological questions that have economic significance.

For example, Schnable said crop genomes can help provide information about how to make crops more resistant to pests or environmental stress, such as droughts or other extreme events.

Schnable said progress in analyzing a genome can be made by looking for specific genes that show up in correlation with important traits, such as high levels of vitamin A, for example.

One of the “basic biological questions” Schnable said the genome can help address is how heterosis, or hybrid vigor, works. Heterosis is essentially the cross-breeding of plants to maximize a desirable characteristic, such as size, in the resulting hybrid plant.

He said understanding the genome can help scientists understand which plants should be crossed together to create desirable hybrids. The current process for determining which plants should be crossed together is largely trial and error, Schnable said.

Schnable said crop genomes such as the corn genome can help scientists understand how crops were originally domesticated long ago, which can help current scientists understand how to domesticate plants such as switchgrass.

“Domestication has a distinctive molecular signature,” Schnable said, explaining how the genome can help scientists understand domestication.

Switchgrass has been discussed as a viable option for creating biofuels, and it has wild characteristics. Schnable said understanding how domestication works could be important for advancing the use of plants like switchgrass for biofuels.

Schnable spent a considerable amount of time at the end of his speech talking about how the genome could help environmental and economic concerns. He said if scientists can find new ways to help crop biomass decay more slowly, the crops could be used as “carbon-capturing crops,” which can be good for the environment and for farmers.

Schnable is the director for the new Center for Carbon-Capturing Crops, which exists to find answers to the question of how to genetically engineer crops to decay more slowly. Those crops’ biomass can then be used to put organic matter back into the soil, which is good for soil quality and even water quality.

Schnable said if or when new cap-and-trade regulations are set in place so that businesses who create excess amounts of carbon emissions can “trade” those emissions with people who put carbon back into the soil, having carbon-capturing crops could create important economic opportunities for farmers.

“There’s already a market for sequestering carbon,” Schnable said, explaining why he thought carbon-capturing crops could be economically important.

He said determining how to make crops that will decay more slowly is a huge undertaking at the Center for Carbon-Capturing Crops. He and the others involved in the center have already begun important research.