Comparative studies of carbohydrate metabolism in normal, sweet corn and quality protein maize
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Date
2019
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Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
Abstract
Maize is one of the world‟s most important cereal and occupies third rank after rice and wheat. Carbohydrates such as sugars (sucrose, glucose, maltose and sorbitol) and starch are the major nutritional component of the major kernel. Sweet corn varieties accumulate high sugars content due to presence of mutants like sh, su etc. Although the biochemical effect of these mutants is well understood but time course evaluation of kernel carbohydrates and enzyme under different genetic background was not known. Present study focused on the temporal profiling of carbohydrate metabolites and key enzymes in normal, sweet corn and QPM lines at three stages (15, 30 and 45 DAP) of kernel development. The result revealed that free sugars decreases, whereas, starch content increases with kernel development. However, sweet corn retained maximum sugars and minimum starch as compared to normal and QPM counterparts at all the stages of kernel development. The rate of sugars catabolism was fast indicating that a narrow window exist for kernel sweetness in sweet corn. The key enzyme of carbohydrate metabolism including invertase, hexokinase and sucrose synthase are retained maximum in sweet corn as compared to their normal and QPM counterparts at 30 and 45 DAP. No significant variation was observed within genotypes of any maize type for the above parameters studied. However, some normal and QPM lines having numerically superior vales of free sugars have been identified which can be further evaluated for developing comparatively sweet normal and QPM varieties.
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