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Articles

Sugar Utilization by Developing Wild Type and Shrunken-2 Maize Kernels ¹

Vegetable Crops Department, IFAS, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611

To characterize the movement of sugars during kernel development in maize, a newly devised in vitro kernel development scheme was utilized. Viable seeds of wild type maize (Zea mays L.) as well as the mutant shrunken-2 (sh2) were found to mature when grown in culture with reducing sugars or sucrose as the carbon source. However, wild type and sh2 kernels had greater germination, starch content, and seed weight when sucrose, rather than reducing sugars, was the carbon source. By the use of labeled sucrose it was shown that sucrose can move into endosperm tissue without intervening degradation and resynthesis. These results show that when grown in vitro the maize seed can utilize reducing sugars for development, but it prefers sucrose.

¹ Supported in part by the Herman Frasch Foundation, Florida Agricultural Experiment Station Journal Series No. 4916. Parts of this work were taken from a dissertation submitted by B. G. C. in partial fulfillment of the Ph.D. degree, University of Florida.