He had a dream – to develop the best corn hybrid.
This dream still inspires the Mais team to this day, we strive for perfection.
The Mais team works to make our hybrids even better, and we are eager to share the fruits of our labor with our clients.
Mais has built modern seed factories to produce seeds according to the highest international quality standards.
A few facts about our activities.
Breeding is the foundation of our activities.
New hybrid generations are always slightly better than the previous ones and this is why the breeding process must continue.
How do we do breeding?
Breeding is based on intelligent selection.
It is necessary to create variants of seed and select the best variant.
It sounds simple, but the implementation of this task requires many resources and significant experience.
Hybrids are the result of crossing parental components.
The more variants of parental components the breeder has, the greater the probability of getting a good hybrid.
Mais started creating parent components in 1992.
Our genetic bank now includes thousands of inbred lines.
We also use components from America and Europe that have been legally sourced.
This allows us to develop corn hybrids for different growing conditions.
In such fields, breeders sow tens of thousands of experimental hybrids.
According to the results of yield and grain moisture indicators, the best ones are selected.
Then these selected hybrids are sown in 20 locations with different climatic conditions. Based on the results of these tests, the best hybrids are submitted for state registration.
Mais brings 8-10 new corn hybrids to the market every year.
That is, out of 20,000 experimental combinations, our breeders choose only the best 8.
After all, in order to be able to compare harvesting moisture, thousands of hybrids must be sown and harvested at the same time.
This cannot be done without the use of special equipment: breeding machines and a small plot combine.
Mais has three sets of breeding equipment – more than any other breeder in Ukraine!
To increase our time efficiency, we also use winter nurseries in India and Chile, this process ensures that we always have access to summer weather for our breeding.
In April, breeders sow hybrids for crossing, cross them and in October get a harvest for further experiments. But instead of waiting for the next spring, these seeds are sent to India, where they are immediately sown and pollinated. In March experimental corn is harvested, which is sent back to Ukraine. In this way, our corn breeders get two harvests a year and can double their speed of developing hybrids.
.
After the hybrid is developed, our next division springs into action – seed production.
Read about how we produce corn seeds in the next section.