Insights Into Native Starch Quality Improvement in Maize and Its Applications: A Review

ABSTRACT Starch is one of the most abundant and multifaceted biomaterials. It has become an ideal substrate due to its outstanding properties like non‐toxicity, biodegradability, and eco‐friendliness. Maize is the primary contributor to the global starch market among starchy crops. It is well‐evolved and has plenty of variability for starch composition enabling easier modulation of amylose: amylopectin ratio. Starch composition does not affect the nutritional components but determines the functionality of the starch and the structure of the final product. High amylose and waxy maize starches, the two major starch‐based specialty corn, have several food and non‐food applications. High amylose maize is the source of resistant starch, production of bioplastics, and plywood. High amylopectin maize starch is widely used as feedstock for bioethanol production due to its higher conversion efficiency. It has excellent pasting properties and freeze‐thaw stability and is highly preferred in frozen foods and the pharmaceutical and biofuel industries. The starch composition can be modulated without chemical modification using genetic approaches to develop specialty corn genotypes. Genetic methods like molecular breeding and gene silencing displayed a greater advantage over other methods for their sustainable environmental aspects, decreasing industrial waste and the cost of production.