Breeding has been extremely instrumental to increase maize yield over the past years, and the
studies focusing on quantitative traits have identified genomic regions associated with many
agronomical traits. However, breeders do not have the state of the art tools at hand to study the
function of the identified genes or to increase the gene space surrounding these genes. Plant
biotechnologists, on the other hand, resolve in great detail the function of particular genes, but
often fail to integrate this knowledge into breeding schemes towards higher yielding crops. The
current project proposal brings together two labs with their own distinct, but highly complementary
expertise (Jianbing Yan in maize genetic variation studies and Geert De Jaeger in functional analysis
in maize) with the aim to merge the two disciplines towards a knowledge-based advanced maize
breeding.