MAIZE GENETICS C0ÖPERATION
DEPARTMENT OF PLANT BREEDING
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, NEW YORK

September 13, 1934

To Maize Geneticists :-

We have the pleasure to announce that the Rockefeller Foundation has made a grant to support the cooperative maize work for a period of five years. We are indebted to Brink for having suggested to the Rockefeller people that they aid in a financial way the cooperative maize genetics enterprise.

Last fall we issued for the first time a call for news items such as new linkages, linkage data, short accounts of specific problems, new genes, etc. The response and interest manifested was sufficient to warrant the issuing of a similar call this fall. We would like to have the different items by November 15th. This time limit should make it possible to obtain seedling counts this fall before sending in your news items. The listing of new genetic testers is desired so that we can keep the list of available maize stocks up to date.

In addition to serving as a distributing and cooperative bureau this laboratory shall attempt to collect and maintain stocks of all corn characters. With this purpose in mind, this past summer we grew 8000 plants in our gardens and over 2000 pollinations were made. Included in this collection were characters which had not been grown in recent years, and were in danger of being lost, as well as desirable stocks which had become depleted through calls for seed. The great majority of the pollinations were made by Mr. John Shafer, a graduate student here at Cornell. While our primary purpose shall be to preserve the genes which have previously been isolated, we hope to produce, in a limited manner at least, some desirable multiple combinations.

Since January, 1934 this laboratory has distributed on request over 350 stocks to different investigators.

Through the kindness of R. G. Wiggans we have secured a dozen inbreds which are fairly early in season and are very resistant to the strains of corn smut present at Ithaca. Since some of our genetic testers are extremely susceptible it seems advisable to cross them with resistant lines to obtain resistant testers. In order to determine which of the inbreds will prove best we shall send samples of seed of the different inbreds to several stations so that their smut resistance in different parts of the country can be tested. Those inbreds which are most resistant will then be used in crosses with the susceptible genetic testers.

It is becoming increasingly more important to have lists of cytological testers, i.e., strains in which the chromosome morphology is known. Those of you who are engaged in cytogenetic research please go over your material to see if you can furnish such information and, if so, send us the lists.