GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SWEET CORN CAN HELP REDUCE INSECTICIDE COSTS Author(s): Lynch Robert E Wiseman Billy R Sumner Harold R Plaisted D. Warnick D. From TEKTRAN at http://www.nalusda.gov/ttic/tektran/data/000009/29/0000092935.html INTERPRETIVE SUMMARY: Sweet corn produced for the fresh sweet corn market or for processing may be sprayed up to 40 times with an insecticide to insure that ears are free of insect damage. Recently, Novartis Seeds, Inc. genetically engineered some of their SWEET CORN inbreds by inserting a gene from a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), that is toxic to certain kinds of insects. Eight of these genetically engineered Bt sweet corn lines were evaluated against the corn earworm and fall armyworm. Laboratory and field tests of these Bt sweet corn lines showed that they were highly resistant to leaf feeding, silk feeding, and ear damage by the corn and moderately resistant to leaf feeding and silk damage by the fall armyworm. In field tests, the Bt sweet corn lines were much more resistant to ear damage by the corn earworm and fall armyworm than the non-Bt hybrids Bonus or Silver Queen. Even with up to 5 applications of an insecticide, the Bt-sweet corn ears were less damaged by insects than ears of Bonus or Silver Queen. These new, genetically engineered Bt sweet corn hybrids offer great potential for production of sweet corn in the southeast with greatly reduced usage of insecticides for control of insect pests.