Maize ‘Choices F1’ (single-cross hybrid flint)

‘Choices F1’ (100 DRM)

A unique dent x flint F1 maize hybrid that marries the flavor and beauty from traditional flint with the resilience and yield from modern yellow dent. The beautiful reddish-yellow ears can be used to make cornmeal and masa, or fermented into beer and spirits.

Origin Story

In graduate school I always wanted to work with very novel, highly-biodiverse crops. I swore I'd never be a Midwestern corn breeder; but a work opportunity brought me to Minnesota, where I was put in charge of a program breeding hybrid, industrial GMO dent corn. While my day job primarily kept me chasing yield and agronomics, I started exploring the USDA germplasm collection for traditional open-pollinated cultivars. I was fascinated by the hard-grained, chill-resistant flint maize from the upper Midwest, Dakotas and the Northeast—maize that had evolved for five millenia in the cold, short seasons of the North.

Observing the multitude of diverse maize in the nursery, I was struck by the sheer beauty of the crop and started to take ears home to display, grind and make into cornbread—the taste was a revelation. Unfortunately, while many of these varieties excelled in beauty and flavor, they often presented distinct growing challenges, and were not suitable for machine harvest. My hope was to honor and explore the diverse genetics of traditional maize while also applying modern breeding practices to improve crop reliability. The ultimate goal? To create delicious new varieties that focus on flavor while also strengthening the bottom line for regional growers. 

In 2016, I began working to evaluate over 70 traditional open-pollinated varieties in the USDA maize collection, using flavor as the primary selection criterion. From this diverse material I patiently 'inbred' flint maize selections over many generations using flavor to select homozygous, stable inbred lines of flint and crossed them to modern dent genetics—a truly novel first—to develop a series of true single-cross F1 hybrids for eaters, not industry.

The first hybrid released from these unique dent x flint F1 maize crosses is 'Choices F1,' a mid-season semi-flint hybrid that marries the flavor and beauty from its red flint parent with the resilience and yield from its yellow dent parent. 'Choices F1' is a flex-type maize, meaning that in a good year it will produce multiple ears—or longer ears—per plant. Because it is a true, single-cross F1 hybrid and has strong stress resistance contributed by its dent parent, it can be planted at nearly the same density as modern corn hybrids, yielding ~4x as much grain as the original open-pollinated flint progenitor. It has a white endosperm and displays beautiful reddish-yellow ears that can be used to make cornmeal and masa, or fermented into beer or spirits.

I hope it will change your mind about what 'hybrid corn' looks (or tastes) like.