Why do we do maize genetics? Edward Buckler, USDA-ARS. Maize Genetics Cooperation McClintock Award

Each of us has a unique journey into maize genetics. For me, it began with questions: How does DNA programming work? How do we produce food? Why is maize so central to this process? These inquiries have shaped my scientific path within the maize community for over 30 years. Unlike computer programming, which may seem like starting with a blank slate (though it rarely is), biology and agriculture operate within deeply complex systems shaped by billions of interactions and a few billion years of evolution. As a geneticist seeking to design better food systems, I collaborated with this community to understand how grass evolution, maize domestication, and modern breeding shape complex traits using germplasm, genomics, field trials, and statistical and computational tools. Using these tools, we can now clearly see many commonalities in what makes the Andropogoneae grasses successful, yet the maize lineage has distinctly followed a less common genomic path to success. By tracing when and where maize was domesticated and how it adapted globally, we see that thousands of genes played a role in transforming a subtropical grass into a crop that thrives worldwide. It is now clear that maize adapts to environments through rapid regulatory turnover and genetic interplay with genome duplication, yet it remains constrained by the genetic burden of maintaining nearly 200 million bases of functional variation. Genetics has revealed how grasses have shaped our planet, providing insights into how domestication made maize central to global agriculture. But what can be achieved in this century? Maize is a powerhouse of carbon fixation, but how can we deploy genetics to enhance its nitrogen efficiency to match that of its perennial relatives? Through genetics, physiology, agronomy, artificial intelligence, and collaboration, we can leverage this rich history and genetic inheritance to design a corn production system that is not only more productive and resilient but also has lower input costs and a reduced environmental impact. We study maize genetics because it offers insights into fundamental biological questions while playing a crucial role in shaping the future of the global food system.