Aleurone color inheritance in corn

[reed]

Does anyone have the details on how aleurone color is inherited in corn? I have some of Carol's CCC that I grew near some other corn and few kernels came out bluish color. That makes me think aleurone color is dominant and I hope so cause then it will be easy to select out. Carol also I think, made her manna series from painted Mountain so she had to have selected out the colored aleurone, so once again that makes me think it is dominant.

If it is dominant I can use some of my diverse seed to mix into my flint/flour project and easily pull the colored aleurone back out, no need to discard a whole ear just because a few kernels are colored. Also could plant white seed from ears that are predominately colored without bringing it back into mine.

So is it dominant? Is it related to a singe gene or a combination? Is it variable in expression or quantitative or something like that? Anyone know?

[Carol Deppe]

Aleurone color in Cascade Creamcap and Cascade Ruby-Gold is clear or cloudy but uncolored.

If you got some black or blue kernels in one or a few ears of
CCC that is indeed likely to be contamination by a mostly dominant or codominant gene for purple pigment that expresses in the aleurone. When heterozygous you can get black or blue or lavender/magenta or spots or stripes of those colors depending on the rest of the genetic background. In my experence lavender/magenta is purple pigment in aleurone plus a recessive gene that converts purple pigment in aleurone to magenta. And there are other genes causing diluted colors or patterns of spots etc. Most of the time one dose of the purple gene  shows up as black, blue, or spoted kernels but not always. there can be just occasional spots of pigment on the kernel including occassionally none. However you can usually get rid of unwanted purple/black/blue in aleurone by just inspecting and culling undesired kernels.

Magic Manna flour corn is uniform for colorless aleurone and white tiny flinty layer and variable for pericarp color, which may be clear, pink/red, or light yellowish brown.

[reed]

I hadn't grown my corn since 2023 but planted two little patches this year. Going just by observations and selection I think I've pretty much hit on what I was wanting. That is a short season, flint-ish corn that I can plant early and have drying down almost before any other corn in the area is even tasseling. I say flint-ish because it isn't 100 % flint yet, maybe never will be but I have enough seed now to plant an acre or more.

I had added in some other corns too. Aunt Mary's sweet because it grows so well here, short season and just eight to ten rows of big kernels. It is wonderfully sweet when harvested properly but the seeds are only very slightly wrinkled, not shrunken at all. I also pitched in some more flints from Sandhill Preservation, and one called Bronze Beauty that I was gifted. And can't forget Zapalote Chico, a flour corn from Mexico that has strong resistance to ear worms for a number of reasons.

Anyway, without writing a book about it here is photo of some of the ears I picked out for seed next year. I have in total over fifty such ears.



All of them are at least a bit flinty looking. The four on the left have just eight rows of big kernels and skinny cobs. I think the skinny cobs make for better dry down. Those with purple in the cobs and husks probably got that from the ZC. ALL of them had nice tight husks and lots of husks that completely contained the ear; that's definitely from the ZC and they all have pretty colors and NO apparent aleurone color.

The ear crossway at the bottom is an example of a cull. It has too many rows with fourteen, the cob is too fat, it looks dull like a flour corn, it's dent which I don't like the look of and worst of all its ear overshot the husks.

I know a lot of folks might start out with what they want as far as utility, cornbread, flour, polenta or whatever which in architectural terms might be like form following function. I have a basic hoped for use in mind, but I went more with function following form. It has to grow and do well, resist the bugs, tolerate the droughts and get the whole job done, all the way to dry in not much more than 100 days and I think I'm almost there. And it's pretty.