 McClintock 's cytogenetic research focused on developing ways to visualize and characterize maize chromosomes . This particular part of her work influenced a generation of students , as it was included in most textbooks . She also developed a technique using carmine staining to visualize maize chromosomes , and showed for the first time the morphology of the 10 maize chromosomes . This discovery was made because she observed cells from the <unk> as opposed to the root tip . By studying the morphology of the chromosomes , McClintock was able to link specific chromosome groups of traits that were inherited together . Marcus Rhoades noted that McClintock 's 1929 Genetics paper on the characterization of triploid maize chromosomes triggered scientific interest in maize cytogenetics , and attributed to her 10 of the 17 significant advances in the field that were made by Cornell scientists between 1929 and 1935 . 
