On Jun. 3, 2012, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their colleagues have published the most comprehensive analysis to date of the corn genome, an achievement expected to speed up development of improved varieties of one of the world’s most important agricultural commodities.

The work was organized by USDA scientists and funded in the United States by USDA and the National Science Foundation. The research was a collaborative effort by an international team of scientists at 17 institutions including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the University of California at Davis, Cornell University, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in El Batan, Mexico, and BGI, a genomic research center based in Shenzhen, China.

The results are expected to boost international efforts to increase yields, expand areas where corn can be cultivated, and produce varieties that are better equipped to resist pests and disease.

The researchers published two separate reports in Nature Genetics that shed light on corn’s remarkable genetic diversity, reveal its evolution, and outline how corn, known as maize among scientists, continues to diversify as it adapts to changing climates and habitats.

They also found that since corn was first domesticated, many of the changes in patterns of gene expression by modern day breeding efforts have been centered on genes selected for hybrid vigor.