Some people show their school spirit by painting their bodies orange and blue. Others, like University Professor Torbert Rocheford, attempt to make an ear of corn with blue and orange kernels.

"We wanted to make orange and blue, but it turned out green," said Rocheford, associate professor of plant genetics. "It was very ugly. It just didn't work."

Rocheford became interested in the idea in the early to mid-1990s when he was working with orange corn. He said he thought the Agronomy club could sell them at football games, and that alumni and visitors would enjoy them.

"I saw the orange and thought, 'Gee, I wonder if I could do orange and blue?'" Rocheford said.

But after the experiment failed, he began working with College of ACES Professor Emeritus Robert Lambert, who bred orange corn with other orange corn to get a deeper orange color.

They found that the orange corn had higher levels of beta carotene, which the body uses to get vitamin A, Rocheford said.

"The nutritional aspect took precedent over the ornamental aspect after a certain point," said Sultana Islam, graduate research assistant in charge of chemical analysis.

Vitamin A is essential to normal development and helps vision among other things, Islam said.

"The research is important because there is a part of the world that has a serious vitamin A deficiency," Islam said. "When there is a vitamin A deficiency, the immune system can be compromised."

Rocheford and Lambert's research will become part of HarvestPlus, a program aiming to improve nutrition worldwide through crop breeding. Their research is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"If you can increase vitamin A in food, there's less dependence on supplementation," Rocheford said.

Vitamin A supplements are higher in cost than purchasing food that has been bred to be higher in Vitamin A, he said.

"A lot of people can't afford pills, but we all have to eat," Islam said.

The antioxidants in the corn have overall health benefits that may have preventative properties in terms of certain types of cancer and cardiovascular disease, she said.

"The purpose now is for Africa," Rocheford said. "But for genetic purposes, (vitamin) levels may be high enough to where there may be an interest in the U.S., particularly as an array of antioxidants. An array of antioxidants may provide new benefits."

The experiment took about a year, and there has been only one attempt to make the orange and blue corn.

"I want to try to merge the corn again so I can develop corn with unique nutritional properties and hopefully not so ugly," Rocheford said.