ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are thankful to KWS Italy for providing the maize seeds. We also acknowledge funding from the PhD course “Scienze Agrarie, Alimentari e Forestali” of the University “Mediterranea” of Reggio Calabria and the Department AGRARIA at Università Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria for supporting Rosa Vescio. The authors thank the “Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi” foundation (Milan, Italy) for its kind support to the metabolomics facility at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. We would like to acknowledge support from the Consejería de Empleo, Universidades, Empresa y Medio Ambiente of the CARM, through the Fundación Séneca-Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia (Spain) (BM-M, Grant Number: 21252/PD/19). We thank the “Stiftung Südtiroler Sparkasse” for funding the PhD fellowship of Raphael Tiziani. This work was furthermore supported by grants from the Free University of Bolzano (NUMICS TN200E).