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Wikipedia

Maize

January 09, 2024

Not to be confused with Maze.
This article is about the commonly grown cereal grain. For other uses, see Maize (disambiguation).
"Corn" redirects here. For other uses, see Corn (disambiguation).

Maize (/meɪz/ MAYZ); Zea mays subsp. mays, also known as corn in North American and Australian English, is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant gives rise to inflorescences (or "tassels") which produce pollen and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that when fertilized yield kernels or seeds, which are botanical fruits. The term maize is preferred in formal, scientific, and international usage as the common name because it refers specifically to this one grain whereas corn refers to any principal cereal crop cultivated in a country. For example, in North America and Australia corn is often used for maize, but in England and Wales it can refer to wheat or barley, and in Scotland and Ireland to oats.

Maize
Includes male and female flowers
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Monocots
Clade: Commelinids
Order: Poales
Family: Poaceae
Subfamily: Panicoideae
Genus: Zea
Species:
Z. mays
Binomial name
Zea mays

First cultivated by humans in what is today Mexico to adapt to a wide variety of conditions and still produce comparatively large amounts of grain, maize relies on humans for its propagation. It has become a staple food in many parts of the world, with the total production of maize surpassing that of wheat or rice. Much maize is used for animal feed and products such as corn starch and corn syrup. Sugar-rich varieties called sweet corn are usually grown for human consumption as kernels, while field corn varieties are used for animal feed, human food uses such as cornmeal or masa, pressing into corn oil, fermentation and distillation into alcoholic beverages like bourbon whiskey, and as feedstocks for the chemical industry, including ethanol and other biofuels.

Maize is widely cultivated throughout the world; a greater weight of maize is produced each year than any other grain. In 2020, total world production was 1.1 billion tonnes.

History

Pre-Columbian development

 
Plant fragments dated to 4200 BC found in the Guilá Naquitz Cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, showed maize had already been domesticated from teosinte.[2]

Maize is a cultigen; human intervention is required for it to propagate. Whether or not the kernels fall off the cob on their own is a key piece of evidence used in archaeology to distinguish domesticated maize from its naturally-propagating teosinte ancestor.[2]

All maize arose from a single domestication in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. The oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands. Later, maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths. This is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands.[3] The centre of domestication was most likely the Balsas River valley of south-central Mexico.[4] The archaeologist Dolores Piperno stated in 2011 that "A large corpus of data indicates that [maize] was dispersed into lower Central America by 7600 BP [5600 BC] and had moved into the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP [5000–4000 BC]."[4] Since then, a date of over 8000 BP for maize in highland Ecuador has been published.[5]

According to a genetic study by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), maize cultivation was introduced to South America from Mexico, in two great waves: the first, more than 6000 years ago, spread through the Andes. Evidence has been found of cultivation about 6700 years ago in Peru.[6]

 
Ancient Mesoamerican relief, National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico

The earliest maize plants grew only small, 25-millimetre-long (1 in) corn ears, and only one per plant. In Jackson Spielvogel's view, many centuries of artificial selection (rather than the current view that maize was exploited by interplanting with teosinte) by the indigenous people of the Americas resulted in the development of maize plants capable of growing several ears per plant, which were usually several centimetres/inches long each.[7] The Olmec and Maya cultivated maize in numerous varieties throughout Mesoamerica; they cooked, ground and processed it through nixtamalization.[8]

Mapuche people of south-central Chile cultivated maize along with quinoa and potatoes in pre-Hispanic times; however, potato was the staple food of most Mapuches, "specially in the southern and coastal [Mapuche] territories where maize did not reach maturity".[9][10] Before the expansion of the Inca Empire maize was traded and transported as far south as 40°19' S in Melinquina, Lácar Department.[11] In that location maize remains were found inside pottery dated to 730 ± 80 BP and 920 ± 60 BP. Probably this maize was brought across the Andes from Chile.[11] The presence of maize in Guaitecas Archipelago (43°55' S), the southernmost outpost of pre-Hispanic agriculture,[12] is reported by early Spanish explorers.[13] However the Spanish may have misidentified the plant.[13]

By at least 1000 BCE, the Olmec had based their calendar, language, myths and worldview with maize at the center of their symbolism.[14]

Columbian exchange

 
Cultivation of maize, in an illustration from the 16th c. Florentine Codex

After the arrival of Europeans in 1492, Spanish settlers consumed maize, and explorers and traders carried it back to Europe and introduced it to other countries. Spanish settlers much preferred wheat bread to maize, cassava, or potatoes. Maize flour could not be substituted for wheat for communion bread, since in Christian belief only wheat could undergo transubstantiation and be transformed into the body of Christ.[15] Some Spaniards worried that by eating indigenous foods, which they did not consider nutritious, they would weaken and risk turning into Indians. "In the view of Europeans, it was the food they ate, even more than the environment in which they lived, that gave Amerindians and Spaniards both their distinctive physical characteristics and their characteristic personalities."[16] Despite these worries, Spaniards did consume maize. Archeological evidence from Florida sites indicate they cultivated it as well.[17]

Maize spread to the rest of the world because of its ability to grow in diverse climates. It was cultivated in Spain just a few decades after Columbus's voyages and then spread to Italy, West Africa and elsewhere.[17] Widespread cultivation most likely began in southern Spain in 1525, after which it quickly spread to the rest of the Spanish Empire including its territories in Italy (and, from there, to other Italian states). Maize had many advantages over wheat and barley; it yielded two and a half times the food energy per unit cultivated area,[18] could be harvested in successive years from the same plot of land, and grew in wildly varying altitudes and climates, from relatively dry regions with only 250 mm (10 in) of annual rainfall to damp regions with over 5,000 mm (200 in). By the 17th century it was a common peasant food in Southwestern Europe, including Portugal, Spain, southern France, and Italy. By the 18th century, it was the chief food of the southern French and Italian peasantry, especially in the form of polenta in Italy.[19]

When maize was introduced into Western farming systems, it was welcomed for its productivity. However, a widespread problem of malnutrition soon arose wherever it had become a staple food.[20] Indigenous Americans had learned to soak maize in alkali-water — made with ashes and lime (calcium oxide) since at least 1200–1500 BC, the process of nixtamalization. They did this to liberate the corn hulls, but coincidentally it also liberated the B-vitamin niacin, the lack of which was the underlying cause of pellagra.[21] Once alkali processing and dietary variety were understood and applied, pellagra disappeared in the developed world. The development of high lysine maize and the promotion of a more balanced diet have also contributed to its demise. Pellagra still exists today in food-poor areas and refugee camps where people survive on donated maize.[22]

Names

The name maize derives from the Spanish form maíz of the Taíno mahis.[23] The botanist Carl Linnaeus used the common name maize as the species epithet in Zea mays.[24] The name Maize is preferred in formal, scientific, and international usage as a common name because it refers specifically to this one grain, unlike corn, which has a complex variety of meanings that vary by context and geographic region.[25] Most countries primarily use the term maize, and the name corn is used mainly in the United States and a handful of other English-speaking countries.[26][27][28] In countries that primarily use the term maize, the word "corn" may denote any cereal crop, varying geographically with the local staple,[29] such as wheat in England and oats in Scotland or Ireland.[25] The usage of corn for maize started as a shortening of "Indian corn" in 18th century North America.[29][30][31]

The historian of food Betty Fussell writes in an article on the history of the word "corn" in North America that "[t]o say the word "corn" is to plunge into the tragi-farcical mistranslations of language and history".[14] Similar to the British usage, the Spanish referred to maize as panizo, a generic term for cereal grains, as did Italians with the term polenta. The British later referred to maize as Turkey wheat, Turkey corn, or Indian corn; Fussell comments that "they meant not a place but a condition, a savage rather than a civilized grain".[14]

International groups such as the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International consider maize the preferred common name.[32] The word maize is used by the UN's FAO,[33] and in the names of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center of Mexico, the Indian Institute of Maize Research,[34] the Maize Association of Australia,[35] and the National Maize Association of Nigeria.[36]

Structure and physiology

The maize plant is commonly 3 m (10 ft) in height,[37] though some natural strains can grow 13 m (43 ft),[38] and the tallest recorded plant reached almost 14 metres (46 ft).[39] The stem is commonly composed of 20 internodes[40] of 18 cm (7 in) length.[37] The leaves arise from the nodes, alternately on opposite sides on the stalk,[41] and have entire margins.[42]

The apex of the stem ends in the tassel, an inflorescence of male flowers; these are separate from the female flowers but borne on the same plant (monoecy). When the tassel is mature and conditions are suitably warm and dry, anthers on the tassel dehisce and release pollen. Maize pollen is anemophilous (dispersed by wind), and because it settles quickly, most pollen falls within a few meters of the tassel.[43]

Ears develop above a few of the leaves in the midsection of the plant, between the stem and leaf sheath, elongating by around 3 mm (1⁄8 in) per day, to a length of 18 cm (7 in)[37] with 60 cm (24 in) being the maximum alleged in the subspecies.[44] They are female inflorescences, tightly enveloped by several layers of ear leaves commonly called husks.

Elongated stigmas, called silks, emerge from the whorl of husk leaves at the end of the ear. They are often pale yellow and 18 cm (7 in) in length, like tufts of hair in appearance. At the end of each is a carpel, which may develop into a "kernel" if fertilized by a pollen grain. The pericarp of the fruit is fused with the seed coat to form a caryopsis, typical of the grasses, and the entire kernel is often called a seed. The cob is close to a multiple fruit in structure, except that the individual fruits (the kernels) never fuse into a single mass. The grains are about the size of peas, and adhere in regular rows around a white, pithy substance, which forms the cob.[45][page needed] An ear commonly holds 600 kernels. They can be blackish, bluish-gray, purple, green, red, white and yellow. When ground into flour, maize yields more flour with much less bran than wheat does. It lacks the protein gluten of wheat and, therefore, makes baked goods with poor rising capability. Cultivars that accumulate more sugar and less starch in the ear are consumed as a vegetable and are called sweet corn. Young ears can be consumed raw, with the cob and silk, but as the plant matures (usually during the summer months), the cob becomes tougher and the silk dries to inedibility. By the end of the growing season, the kernels dry out and become difficult to chew without cooking.[46]

  •  
    Many small male flowers make up the male inflorescence, called the tassel.
  •  
    Female inflorescence, with young silk
  •  
    Stalks, ears and silk
  •  
    Full-grown maize plants
  •  
    Mature maize ear on a stalk
  •  
    Male flowers
  •  
    Mature silk
 

Planting density affects multiple aspects of maize. Modern farming techniques in developed countries usually rely on dense planting, which produces one ear per stalk.[47] Stands of silage maize are yet denser,[citation needed] and achieve a lower percentage of ears and more plant matter.[citation needed]

Maize is a facultative short-day plant[48] and flowers in a certain number of growing degree days > 10 °C (50 °F) in the environment to which it is adapted.[49] The magnitude of the influence that long nights have on the number of days that must pass before maize flowers is genetically prescribed[50] and regulated by the phytochrome system.[51] Photoperiodicity can be eccentric in tropical cultivars such that the long days characteristic of higher latitudes allow the plants to grow so tall that they do not have enough time to produce seed before being killed by frost. These attributes, however, may prove useful in using tropical maize for biofuels.[52]

Immature maize shoots accumulate a powerful antibiotic substance, 2,4-dihydroxy-7-methoxy-1,4-benzoxazin-3-one (DIMBOA), which provides a measure of protection against a wide range of pests.[53] Because of its shallow roots, maize is susceptible to droughts, intolerant of nutrient-deficient soils, and prone to be uprooted by severe winds.[54]

  •  
    Maize kernels
  •  
    Ear of maize with irregular rows of kernels

While yellow maizes derive their color from lutein and zeaxanthin, in red-colored maizes, the kernel coloration is due to anthocyanins and phlobaphenes. These latter substances are synthesized in the flavonoids synthetic pathway[55] from polymerization of flavan-4-ols[56] by the expression of maize pericarp color1 (p1) gene[57] which encodes an R2R3 myb-like transcriptional activator[58] of the A1 gene encoding for the dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (reducing dihydroflavonols into flavan-4-ols)[59] while another gene (Suppressor of Pericarp Pigmentation 1 or SPP1) acts as a suppressor.[60] The p1 gene encodes an Myb-homologous transcriptional activator of genes required for biosynthesis of red phlobaphene pigments, while the P1-wr allele specifies colorless kernel pericarp and red cobs, and unstable factor for orange1 (Ufo1) modifies P1-wr expression to confer pigmentation in kernel pericarp, as well as vegetative tissues, which normally do not accumulate significant amounts of phlobaphene pigments.[57] The maize P gene encodes a Myb homolog that recognizes the sequence CCT/AACC, in sharp contrast with the C/TAACGG bound by vertebrate Myb proteins.[61]

The ear leaf is the leaf most closely associated with a particular developing ear. This leaf and above contribute 70%[62] to 75% to 90%[63] of grain fill. Therefore fungicide application is most important in that region in most disease environments.[62][63]

  •  
    cv. 'Ottofile giallo Tortonese'' – MHNT
  •  
    cv. "strawberry"—MHNT
  •  
    cv. "Oaxacan Green" MHNT
  •  
    Variegated maize ears
  •  
    Multicolored corn kernels (CSIRO)

Genomics and genetics

 
Exotic varieties are collected to add genetic diversity when selectively breeding new domestic strains.

Maize is a diploid with 20 chromosomes (n=10). 83% of allelic variation within the genome derives from its teosinte ancestors, primarily due to the freedom of Zeas to outcross.[64] Barbara McClintock used maize to validate her transposon theory of "jumping genes", for which she won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Maize remains an important model organism for genetics and developmental biology.[65] The MADS-box motif is involved in the development of maize flowers.[66]

The Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and funded by the USDA Agricultural Research Service, is a stock center of maize mutants. The total collection has nearly 80,000 samples. The bulk of the collection consists of several hundred named genes, plus additional gene combinations and other heritable variants. There are about 1000 chromosomal aberrations (e.g., translocations and inversions) and stocks with abnormal chromosome numbers, such as tetraploids.[67] Varieties differ in their resistance to insect pests, including borers.[68] The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center maintains a large collection of maize accessions tested and cataloged for insect resistance.[68]

In 2005, the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) formed a consortium to sequence the B73 maize genome. The resulting DNA sequence data was deposited immediately into GenBank, a public repository for genome-sequence data.[69] Primary sequencing of the maize genome was completed in 2008.[70] In 2009, the consortium published results of its sequencing effort.[71] The genome, 85% of which is composed of transposons, contains 32,540 genes. Much of it has been duplicated and reshuffled by helitrons—a group of rolling circle transposons.[72]

Evolution

Z. mays has a positive correlation between effective population size and the magnitude of selection pressure. Z. m. having an EPS of ~650,000, it clusters with others of about the same EPS, and has 79% of its amino acid sites under selection.[73]

Recombination is a significant source of diversity in Z. mays. (Note that this finding supersedes previous studies which showed no such correlation.)[73]

This recombination/diversity effect is seen throughout plants but is also found to not occur – or not as strongly – in regions of high gene density. This is likely the reason that domesticated Z. mays has not seen as much of an increase in diversity within areas of higher density as in regions of lower density, although there is more evidence in other plants.[73]

Some lines of maize have undergone ancient polyploidy events, starting 11 million years ago. Over that time ~72% of polyploid duplicated genes have been retained, which is higher than other plants with older polyploidy events. Thus maize may be due to lose more duplicate genes as time goes along, similar to the course followed by the genomes of other plants. If so - if gene loss has merely not occurred yet - that could explain the lack of observed positive selection and lower negative selection which are observed in otherwise similar plants, i.e. also naturally outcrossing and with similar effective population sizes.[73]

Ploidy does not appear to influence EPS or magnitude of selection effect in maize.[73]

Breeding

Maize breeding in prehistory resulted in large plants producing large ears. Modern breeding began with individuals who selected highly productive varieties in their fields and then sold seed to other farmers. James L. Reid was one of the earliest and most successful developing Reid's Yellow Dent in the 1860s. These early efforts were based on mass selection. Later breeding efforts included ear to row selection (C. G. Hopkins c. 1896), hybrids made from selected inbred lines (G. H. Shull, 1909), and the highly successful double cross hybrids using four inbred lines (D. F. Jones c. 1918, 1922). University supported breeding programs were especially important in developing and introducing modern hybrids.[74]

Since the 1940s, the best strains of maize have been first-generation hybrids made from inbred strains that have been optimized for specific traits, such as yield, nutrition, drought, pest and disease tolerance. Both conventional cross-breeding and genetic engineering have succeeded in increasing output and reducing the need for cropland, pesticides, water and fertilizer.[75] There is conflicting evidence to support the hypothesis that maize yield potential has increased over the past few decades. This suggests that changes in yield potential are associated with leaf angle, lodging resistance, tolerance of high plant density, disease/pest tolerance, and other agronomic traits rather than increase of yield potential per individual plant.[76]

Certain varieties of maize have been bred to produce many ears which are the source of the "baby corn" used as a vegetable in Asian cuisine.[77]

A fast-flowering variety named mini-maize was developed to aid scientific research, as multiple generations can be obtained in a single year.[78]

One strain called olotón has evolved a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing microbes, which provides the plant with 29%–82% of its nitrogen.[79]

CIMMYT operates a conventional breeding program to provide optimized strains. The program began in the 1980s. Hybrid seeds are distributed in Africa by the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project.[75]

Genetic engineering

Main article: Transgenic maize

Genetically engineered (GE) maize was one of the 26 GE crops grown commercially in 2016.[80][81] The vast majority of this is Bt maize. Grown since 1997 in the United States and Canada,[82] 92% of the US maize crop was genetically modified in 2016[80][83] and 33% of the worldwide maize crop was GM in 2016.[80][84] As of 2011, Herbicide-tolerant maize varieties were grown in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, El Salvador, the European Union, Honduras, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, the Russian Federation, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States. Insect-resistant maize was grown in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, the European Union, Honduras, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United States, and Uruguay.[85]

In September 2000, up to $50 million worth of food products were recalled due to the presence of Starlink genetically modified corn, which had been approved only for animal consumption and had not been approved for human consumption, and was subsequently withdrawn from the market.[86]

Genetically modified maize made up 85% of the maize planted in the United States by 2009.[87]

For pest and disease resistance

Tropical landraces remain an important and underused source of resistance alleles – both those for disease and for herbivores.[88] Notable discoveries of rare alleles for this purpose were made by Dao et al., 2014 and Sood et al., 2014.[88] Rashid et al., 2018 use an association mapping panel from CIMMYT originally developed for tropical drought tolerance traits to find new genomic regions providing sorghum downy mildew resistance, and to further characterize SDMR regions already located by others.[89]

Origin

External phylogeny

The maize genus Zea is rather closely related to sorghum, both being in the PACMAD clade, and much more distantly to rice and wheat, which are in the other major group of grasses, the BOP clade. It is closely related to Tripsacum, gamagrass.[90]

(Part of Poaceae)
BOP clade

various grasses e.g. fescue, ryegrass

Hordeum (barley)

Triticum (wheat)

Oryza (rice)

PACMAD clade

Pennisetum (fountaingrasses)

Sorghum (sorghum)

Tripsacum (gamagrass)

Zea

Zea mays (maize)

other Zea species (teosintes)

Maize and teosinte

See also: Origin of maize and interaction with teosintes
 
Teosinte (top), maize-teosinte hybrid (middle), maize (bottom)

Maize is the domesticated variant of the four species of teosintes, which are its crop wild relatives.[91] The two plants have dissimilar appearance, maize having a single tall stalk with multiple leaves and teosinte being a short, bushy plant. The difference between the two is largely controlled by differences in just two genes, called grassy tillers-1 (gt1, A0A317YEZ1) and teosinte branched-1 (tb1, Q93WI2).[91]

Several theories have been proposed about the specific origin of maize in Mesoamerica:[92][93]

  1. It is a direct domestication of a Mexican annual teosinte, Z. m. ssp. parviglumis, native to the Balsas River valley in south-eastern Mexico,[94] with up to 12% of its genetic material obtained from Zea mays ssp. mexicana through introgression.[3]
  2. It has been derived from hybridization between a small domesticated maize (a slightly changed form of a wild maize) and a teosinte of section Luxuriantes (Zea), either Z. luxurians or Z. diploperennis.
  3. It has undergone two or more domestications either of a wild maize or of a teosinte. (The term "teosinte" describes all species and subspecies in the genus Zea, excluding Zea mays ssp. mays)
  4. It has evolved from a hybridization of Z. diploperennis by Tripsacum dactyloides.

In the late 1930s, Paul Mangelsdorf suggested that domesticated maize was the result of a hybridization event between an unknown wild maize and a species of Tripsacum, a related genus. This theory about the origin of maize has been refuted by modern genetic testing, which refutes Mangelsdorf's model and the fourth listed above.[92]: 40 

The teosinte origin theory was proposed by the Russian botanist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov in 1931, and the later American Nobel Prize-winner George Beadle in 1932.[92]: 10  It is supported experimentally and by recent studies of the plants' genomes. Teosinte and maize can cross-breed and produce fertile offspring. A number of questions remain concerning the species, among them:

  1. how the immense diversity of the species of sect. Zea originated,
  2. how the tiny archaeological specimens of 3500–2700 BC could have been selected from a teosinte, and
  3. how domestication could have proceeded without leaving remains of teosinte or maize with teosintoid traits earlier than the earliest known until recently, dating from ca. 1100 BC.

The domestication of maize is of particular interest to researchers—archaeologists, geneticists, ethnobotanists, geographers, etc. The process is thought by some to have started 7,500 to 12,000 years ago. Research from the 1950s to 1970s originally focused on the hypothesis that maize domestication occurred in the highlands between the states of Oaxaca and Jalisco, because the oldest archaeological remains of maize known at the time were found there.

Connection with 'parviglumis' subspecies

Genetic studies, published in 2004 by John Doebley, identified Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, native to the Balsas River valley in Mexico's southwestern highlands, and also known as Balsas teosinte, as being the crop wild relative that is genetically most similar to modern maize.[95][94] This was confirmed by further studies, which refined this hypothesis somewhat. Archaeobotanical studies, published in 2009, point to the middle part of the Balsas River valley as the likely location of early domestication; this river is not very long, so these locations are not very distant. Stone milling tools with maize residue have been found in an 8,700 year old layer of deposits in a cave not far from Iguala, Guerrero.[96][97][98]

 
Stucco head of the Maya Maize God, 550–850 AD

Doebley was part of the team that first published, in 2002, that maize had been domesticated only once, about 9,000 years ago, and then spread throughout the Americas.[3][99]

A primitive corn was being grown in southern Mexico, Central America, and northern South America 7,000 years ago. Archaeological remains of early maize ears, found at Guila Naquitz Cave in the Oaxaca Valley, date back roughly 6,250 years; the oldest ears from caves near Tehuacan, Puebla, 5,450 B.P.[8]

Maize pollen dated to 7,300 B.P. from San Andres, Tabasco, on the Caribbean coast has been recovered.[97]

 
Jaina Island ceramic statuette of the young Maya Maize God emerging from an ear of corn, 600–900 A.D.

Spreading to the north

Around 4,500 years ago, maize began to spread to the north. Maize was first cultivated in what is now the United States at several sites in New Mexico and Arizona about 4,100 years ago.[8]

During the first millennium AD, maize cultivation spread more widely in the areas north. In particular, the large-scale adoption of maize agriculture and consumption in eastern North America took place about A.D. 900. Native Americans cleared large forest and grassland areas for the new crop.[100]

In 2005, research by the USDA Forest Service suggested that the rise in maize cultivation 500 to 1,000 years ago in what is now the southeastern United States corresponded with a decline of freshwater mussels, which are very sensitive to environmental changes.[101]

Agronomy

Planting

Because it is cold-intolerant, in the temperate zones maize must be planted in the spring. Its root system is generally shallow, so the plant is dependent on soil moisture. As a plant that uses C4 carbon fixation, maize is a considerably more water-efficient crop than plants that use C3 carbon fixation such as alfalfa and soybeans. Maize is most sensitive to drought at the time of silk emergence, when the flowers are ready for pollination. In the United States, a good harvest was traditionally predicted if the maize was "knee-high by the Fourth of July", although modern hybrids generally exceed this growth rate. Maize used for silage is harvested while the plant is green and the fruit immature. Sweet corn is harvested in the "milk stage", after pollination but before starch has formed, between late summer and early to mid-autumn. Field maize is left in the field until very late in the autumn to thoroughly dry the grain, and may, in fact, sometimes not be harvested until winter or even early spring. The importance of sufficient soil moisture is shown in many parts of Africa, where periodic drought regularly causes maize crop failure and consequent famine. Although it is grown mainly in wet, hot climates, it has been said to thrive in cold, hot, dry or wet conditions, meaning that it is an extremely versatile crop.[102]

Maize was planted by the Native Americans in hills, in the polyculture system called the Three Sisters.[103] Maize provided support for beans, and the beans provided nitrogen derived from nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria which live on the roots of beans and other legumes; and squashes provided ground cover to stop weeds and inhibit evaporation by providing shade over the soil.[104]

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    Seedlings three weeks after sowing
  •  
    Young stalks
  •  
    Mature plants showing ears

Harvesting

Maize harvested as a grain crop can be kept in the field a relatively long time, even months, after the crop is ready to harvest; it can be harvested and stored in the husk leaves if kept dry.[105]

Before World War II, most maize in North America was harvested by hand. This involved a large number of workers and associated social events (husking or shucking bees). From the 1890s onward, some machinery became available to partially mechanize the processes, such as one- and two-row mechanical pickers (picking the ear, leaving the stover) and corn binders, which are reaper-binders designed specifically for maize. The latter produce sheaves that can be shocked. By hand or mechanical picker, the entire ear is harvested, which requires a separate operation of a maize sheller to remove the kernels from the ear. Whole ears of maize were often stored in corn cribs, and these whole ears are a sufficient form for some livestock feeding uses. Today corn cribs with whole ears, and corn binders, are less common because most modern farms harvest the grain from the field with a combine harvester and store it in bins. The combine with a corn head (with points and snap rolls instead of a reel) does not cut the stalk; it simply pulls the stalk down. The stalk continues downward and is crumpled into a mangled pile on the ground, where it usually is left to become organic matter for the soil. The ear of maize is too large to pass between slots in a plate as the snap rolls pull the stalk away, leaving only the ear and husk to enter the machinery. The combine separates the husk and the cob, keeping only the kernels.[106]

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    Mature maize ears
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    Harvesting maize, Iowa
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    Harvesting maize, Finland
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    Hand-picking harvest of maize in Myanmar

Grain storage

Drying is vital to prevent or at least reduce damage by mould fungi, which contaminate the grain with mycotoxins. Aspergillus and Fusarium spp. are the most common mycotoxin sources, and accordingly important in agriculture.[82] If the moisture content of the harvested grain is too high, grain dryers are used to reduce the moisture content by blowing heated air through the grain. This can require large amounts of energy in the form of combustible gases (propane or natural gas) and electricity to power the blowers.[107]

As animal feed

See also: Bale wrapper
 
Baled cornstalks

Baled cornstalks offer an alternative to hay for animal feed, alongside direct grazing of maize grown for this purpose, which can be the best and cheapest option.[108]

Production

Further information: Corn production in the United States

Maize is widely cultivated throughout the world, and a greater weight of maize is produced each year than any other grain.[109] In 2020, total world production was 1.16 billion tonnes, led by the United States with 31.0% of the total (table). China produced 22.4% of the global total.[110]

Top Maize producers
in 2020
Numbers in million tonnes
1.   United States360.3 (31%)
2.   China260.7 (22.43%)
3.   Brazil104 (8.95%)
4.   Argentina58.4 (5.02%)
5.   Ukraine30.3 (2.61%)
6.   India30.2 (2.6%)
7.   Mexico27.4 (2.36%)
8.   Indonesia22.5 (1.94%)
9.   South Africa15.3 (1.32%)
10.   Russia13.9 (1.2%)
World total1162.4
Source: FAOSTAT[111][110]
  •  
    Production of maize (2019)[112]
  •  
    Maize (red strip) is the second most widely produced primary crop, after sugarcane, and the first among grain crops.

Trade

Corn futures are traded on several exchanges, including the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and JSE Derivatives (JDERIV). The Chicago Board Of Trade sells corn futures with a contract size of 5000 bushels which is quoted in cents/bushel and the JDERIV has a contract size of 100 Tonnes, quoted in Rand/Ton.[113][114]

Contract Specifications[113][114]
Corn (CORN) Corn (CNA)
Exchange: JDERIV CBOT
Sector: Grain Grain
Tick Size: 0.2 0.25
Tick Value: 5 ZAR 12.50 USD
BPV: 25 50
Denomination: ZAR USD
Decimal Place: 1 2

Pests

Insects

 
Caterpillar of European corn borer in maize
 
Corncob damage by European corn borer

Maize sustains a billion dollars' worth of losses annually to the European corn borer or ECB (Ostrinia nubilalis) and a similar amount to corn rootworms (Diabrotica spp).[115][116][117] Another major pest is the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) .[118][119] The Maize weevil (Sitophilus zeamais) is a serious pest of stored grain.[120] The Northern armyworm, Oriental armyworm or Rice ear-cutting caterpillar (Mythimna separata) is a major pest of maize in Asia.[121]

Diseases

 
Disease cycle of Northern corn leaf blight
Main article: List of maize diseases

Maize is susceptible to a large number of fungal, bacterial, and viral plant diseases. Those of economic importance include diseases of the leaf, smuts such as corn smut, ear rots and stalk rots. Northern corn leaf blight damages maize throughout its range, whereas banded leaf and sheath blight is a problem in Asia.[122] Some fungal diseases of maize produce potentially dangerous mycotoxins such as aflatoxin.[82]

Uses

Culinary

Further information: List of maize dishes

Maize and cornmeal (ground dried maize) constitute a staple food in many regions of the world. Maize is used to produce cornstarch, a common ingredient in home cooking and industrialized food products. Maize starch can be hydrolyzed and enzymatically treated to produce syrups, particularly high fructose corn syrup, a sweetener. It may be fermented and distilled to produce grain alcohol, traditionally the source of Bourbon whiskey. Cornmeal and maize flour are used to bake cornbread and other products. Many countries require corn flour to be enriched with certain nutrients.[citation needed]

In prehistoric times, Mesoamerican women used a metate quern to grind maize into cornmeal. After ceramic vessels were invented the Olmec people began to cook maize together with beans, improving the nutritional value of the staple meal. Although maize naturally contains niacin, an important nutrient, it was not bioavailable without the process of nixtamalization. The Maya used nixtamal meal to make porridges and tamales.[123]

Maize is a staple of Mexican cuisine. Masa (cornmeal treated with limewater) is the main ingredient for tortillas, atole and many other dishes of Central American food. It is the main ingredient of corn tortilla, tamales, pozole, atole and all the dishes based on them, like tacos, quesadillas, chilaquiles, enchiladas, and tostadas.[citation needed] In Mexico the corn smut fungus, known as huitlacoche, is considered a delicacy.[124]

Coarse maize meal is made into a thick porridge in many cultures: from the polenta of Italy, the angu of Brazil, the mămăligă of Romania, to cornmeal mush in the US (or hominy grits in the South) or the food called mieliepap in South Africa and sadza, nshima, ugali and other names in other parts of Africa. Introduced into Africa by the Portuguese in the 16th century, maize has become Africa's most important staple food crop.[125]

Much maize is used for products such as corn starch and corn syrup.[126]

Maize can be harvested and consumed in the unripe state, when the kernels are fully grown but still soft. Unripe maize must be cooked to become palatable. Sweet corn, a genetic variety that is high in sugars and low in starch, is eaten in the unripe state as corn on the cob.[127]

  •  
    Poster of a woman serving multiple maize-based foods, US Food Administration, 1918
  •  
    Semi-peeled corn on the cob
  •  
    Mexican tamales made with corn meal
  •  
    Boiled maize

Nutritional value

Sweetcorn, yellow, raw
(seeds only)
Note: assuming freed niacin
Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
Energy360 kJ (86 kcal)
18.7 g
Starch5.7 g
Sugars6.26 g
Dietary fiber2 g
1.35 g
3.27 g
Tryptophan0.023 g
Threonine0.129 g
Isoleucine0.129 g
Leucine0.348 g
Lysine0.137 g
Methionine0.067 g
Cystine0.026 g
Phenylalanine0.150 g
Tyrosine0.123 g
Valine0.185 g
Arginine0.131 g
Histidine0.089 g
Alanine0.295 g
Aspartic acid0.244 g
Glutamic acid0.636 g
Glycine0.127 g
Proline0.292 g
Serine0.153 g
VitaminsQuantity
%DV†
Vitamin A equiv.
1%
9 μg
644 μg
Thiamine (B1)
13%
0.155 mg
Riboflavin (B2)
5%
0.055 mg
Niacin (B3)
12%
1.77 mg
Pantothenic acid (B5)
14%
0.717 mg
Vitamin B6
7%
0.093 mg
Folate (B9)
11%
42 μg
Vitamin C
8%
6.8 mg
MineralsQuantity
%DV†
Iron
4%
0.52 mg
Magnesium
10%
37 mg
Manganese
8%
0.163 mg
Phosphorus
13%
89 mg
Potassium
6%
270 mg
Zinc
5%
0.46 mg
Other constituentsQuantity
Water75.96 g
Link to USDA Database entry
One ear of medium size (6-3/4" to 7-1/2" long)
maize has 90 grams of seeds
†Percentages are roughly approximated using US recommendations for adults.
Source: USDA FoodData Central

Raw, yellow, sweet maize kernels are composed of 76% water, 19% carbohydrates, 3% protein, and 1% fat (table). In a 100-gram serving, maize kernels provide 86 calories and are a good source (10–19% of the Daily Value) of the B vitamins, thiamin, niacin (but see Pellagra warning below), pantothenic acid (B5) and folate (right table for raw, uncooked kernels, USDA Nutrient Database).

Maize has suboptimal amounts of the essential amino acids tryptophan and lysine, which accounts for its lower status as a protein source.[128] The proteins of beans and legumes complement those of maize.[128]

Feed and fodder for livestock

See also: Corn stover § Uses
 
Cattle wait alongside a fence as a truck distributes a grain feed composed of corn by-products into troughs.

Maize is a major source of both grain feed and fodder for livestock. It is fed to the livestock in various ways. When it is used as a grain crop, the dried kernels are used as feed. They are often kept on the cob for storage in a corn crib, or they may be shelled off for storage in a grain bin. The farm that consumes the feed may produce it, purchase it on the market, or some of both. When the grain is used for feed, the rest of the plant (the corn stover) can be used later as fodder, bedding (litter), or soil amendment. When the whole maize plant (grain plus stalks and leaves) is used for fodder, it is usually chopped all at once and ensilaged, as digestibility and palatability are higher in the ensilaged form than in the dried form. Maize silage is one of the most valuable forages for ruminants.[129] Before the advent of widespread ensilaging, it was traditional to gather the corn into shocks after harvesting, where it dried further. With or without a subsequent move to the cover of a barn, it was then stored for weeks to several months until fed to the livestock. Today ensilaging can occur not only in siloes but also in silage wrappers. However, in the tropics, maize can be harvested year-round and fed as green forage to the animals.[130]

Chemicals

Starch from maize can also be made into plastics, fabrics, adhesives, and many other chemical products.[citation needed]

The corn steep liquor, a plentiful watery byproduct of maize wet milling process, is widely used in the biochemical industry and research as a culture medium to grow many kinds of microorganisms.[131]

Chrysanthemin is found in purple corn and is used as a food coloring.[citation needed]

Bio-fuel

See also: Corn ethanol and Corn stover

"Feed maize" is being used for heating; specialized corn stoves (similar to wood stoves) are available and use either feed maize or wood pellets to generate heat. Maize cobs are also used as a biomass fuel source. Maize is relatively cheap and home-heating furnaces have been developed which use maize kernels as a fuel. They feature a large hopper that feeds the uniformly sized maize kernels into the fire.[132] Maize is used as a feedstock for the production of ethanol fuel.[133] When considering where to construct an ethanol plant, one of the site selection criteria is to ensure there is locally available feedstock.[134]

The price of food is affected by the use of maize for biofuel production. The cost of transportation, production, and marketing are a large portion (80%) of the price of food in the United States. Higher energy costs affect these costs, especially transportation. The increase in food prices the consumer has been seeing is mainly due to the higher energy cost. The effect of biofuel production on other food crop prices is indirect: use of maize for biofuel production increases the demand, and therefore the price of maize.[135][136]

 
Farm-based maize silage digester near Neumünster, Germany, 2007, using whole maize plants, not just the grain. The green tarpaulin top cover is held up by the biogas stored in the digester.

A biomass gasification power plant in Strem near Güssing, Burgenland, Austria, started operating in 2005. It would be possible to create diesel from the biogas by the Fischer Tropsch method.[137]

Ethanol is being used at low concentrations (10% or less) as an additive in gasoline (gasohol) for motor fuels to increase the octane rating, lower pollutants, and reduce petroleum use. This has generated debate on the need for new sources of energy, on the one hand, and the need to maintain the food habits and culture of Mesoamerica. The entry, January 2008, of maize among the commercial agreements of NAFTA has increased this debate, as NAFTA "opened the doors to the import of maize from the United States, where the farmers who grow it receive multimillion-dollar subsidies and other government supports. ... According to OXFAM UK, after NAFTA went into effect, the price of maize in Mexico fell 70% between 1994 and 2001. The number of farm jobs dropped as well: from 8.1 million in 1993 to 6.8 million in 2002. Many of those who found themselves without work were small-scale maize growers.").[138]

Commodity

Maize is bought and sold by investors and price speculators as a tradable commodity using corn futures contracts. These "futures" are traded on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) under ticker symbol C. They are delivered every year in March, May, July, September, and December.[139]

United States usage breakdown

The breakdown of usage of the 12.1-billion-bushel (307-million-tonne) 2008 US maize crop was as follows, according to the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report by the USDA.[140]

Use Amount
million bushels million tonnes percentage
livestock feed 5,250 133.4 43.4
ethanol production 3,650 92.7 30.2
exports 1,850 47.0 15.3
production of starch, corn oil, sweeteners (HFCS, etc.) 943 24.0 7.8
human consumption—grits, corn flour, corn meal, beverage alcohol 327 8.3 2.7

In the US since 2009/2010, maize feedstock use for ethanol production has somewhat exceeded direct use for livestock feed; maize use for fuel ethanol was 5,130 million bushels (130 million tonnes) in the 2013/2014 marketing year.[141] A fraction of the maize feedstock dry matter used for ethanol production is usefully recovered as dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS). In the 2010/2011 marketing year, about 29.1 million tonnes of DDGS were fed to US livestock and poultry.[142] Because starch utilization in fermentation for ethanol production leaves other grain constituents more concentrated in the residue, the feed value per kg of DDGS, with regard to ruminant-metabolizable energy and protein, exceeds that of the grain. Feed value for monogastric animals, such as swine and poultry, is somewhat lower than for ruminants.[142]

Art

 
Gold maize. Moche culture 300 A.D., Larco Museum, Lima, Peru
 
Water tower in Rochester, Minnesota being painted as an ear of maize

Maize has been an essential crop in the Andes since the pre-Columbian era. The Moche culture from Northern Peru made ceramics from earth, water, and fire. This pottery was a sacred substance, formed in significant shapes and used to represent important themes. Maize was represented anthropomorphically as well as naturally.[143]

In the United States, maize ears along with tobacco leaves are carved into the capitals of columns in the United States Capitol building. Maize itself is sometimes used for temporary architectural detailing when the intent is to celebrate the fall season, local agricultural productivity and culture. Bundles of dried maize stalks are often displayed along with pumpkins, gourds and straw in autumnal displays outside homes and businesses. A well-known example of architectural use is the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, which uses cobs and ears of colored maize to implement a mural design that is recycled annually. Another well-known example is the Field of Corn sculpture in Dublin, Ohio, where hundreds of concrete ears of corn stand in a grassy field.[144]

A maize stalk with two ripe ears is depicted on the reverse of the Croatian 1 lipa coin, minted since 1993.[145]

Shucked, a 2022 musical that is currently running on Broadway, was described by Vulture as a "show about corn". Much of the show contains puns relating to corn[146][147] and the plot revolves around a blighted corn crop.[148]

See also

References

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Further reading

  • Byerlee, Derek. "The globalization of hybrid maize, 1921–70." Journal of Global History 15.1 (2020): 101–122.
  • Clampitt, Cynthia. Maize: How Corn Shaped the U.S. Heartland (2015)
  • Bonavia, Duccio (May 13, 2013). Maize: Origin, Domestication, and Its Role in the Development of Culture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-02303-1.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Zea mays.
 
Wikispecies has information related to Zea mays.

January 09, 2024
maize, confused, with, maze, this, article, about, commonly, grown, cereal, grain, other, uses, disambiguation, corn, redirects, here, other, uses, corn, disambiguation, mayz, mays, subsp, mays, also, known, corn, north, american, australian, english, cereal, . Not to be confused with Maze This article is about the commonly grown cereal grain For other uses see Maize disambiguation Corn redirects here For other uses see Corn disambiguation Maize m eɪ z MAYZ Zea mays subsp mays also known as corn in North American and Australian English is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10 000 years ago The leafy stalk of the plant gives rise to inflorescences or tassels which produce pollen and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that when fertilized yield kernels or seeds which are botanical fruits The term maize is preferred in formal scientific and international usage as the common name because it refers specifically to this one grain whereas corn refers to any principal cereal crop cultivated in a country For example in North America and Australia corn is often used for maize but in England and Wales it can refer to wheat or barley and in Scotland and Ireland to oats MaizeIncludes male and female flowersConservation statusLeast Concern IUCN 3 1 1 Scientific classificationKingdom PlantaeClade TracheophytesClade AngiospermsClade MonocotsClade CommelinidsOrder PoalesFamily PoaceaeSubfamily PanicoideaeGenus ZeaSpecies Z maysBinomial nameZea maysL First cultivated by humans in what is today Mexico to adapt to a wide variety of conditions and still produce comparatively large amounts of grain maize relies on humans for its propagation It has become a staple food in many parts of the world with the total production of maize surpassing that of wheat or rice Much maize is used for animal feed and products such as corn starch and corn syrup Sugar rich varieties called sweet corn are usually grown for human consumption as kernels while field corn varieties are used for animal feed human food uses such as cornmeal or masa pressing into corn oil fermentation and distillation into alcoholic beverages like bourbon whiskey and as feedstocks for the chemical industry including ethanol and other biofuels Maize is widely cultivated throughout the world a greater weight of maize is produced each year than any other grain In 2020 total world production was 1 1 billion tonnes Contents 1 History 1 1 Pre Columbian development 1 2 Columbian exchange 2 Names 3 Structure and physiology 4 Genomics and genetics 5 Evolution 6 Breeding 6 1 Genetic engineering 6 2 For pest and disease resistance 7 Origin 7 1 External phylogeny 7 2 Maize and teosinte 7 3 Connection with parviglumis subspecies 7 4 Spreading to the north 8 Agronomy 8 1 Planting 8 2 Harvesting 8 3 Grain storage 8 4 As animal feed 9 Production 9 1 Trade 10 Pests 10 1 Insects 10 2 Diseases 11 Uses 11 1 Culinary 11 2 Nutritional value 11 3 Feed and fodder for livestock 11 4 Chemicals 11 5 Bio fuel 11 6 Commodity 11 7 United States usage breakdown 12 Art 13 See also 14 References 15 Further reading 16 External linksHistoryPre Columbian development nbsp Plant fragments dated to 4200 BC found in the Guila Naquitz Cave in Oaxaca Mexico showed maize had already been domesticated from teosinte 2 Maize is a cultigen human intervention is required for it to propagate Whether or not the kernels fall off the cob on their own is a key piece of evidence used in archaeology to distinguish domesticated maize from its naturally propagating teosinte ancestor 2 All maize arose from a single domestication in southern Mexico about 9 000 years ago The oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands Later maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths This is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands 3 The centre of domestication was most likely the Balsas River valley of south central Mexico 4 The archaeologist Dolores Piperno stated in 2011 that A large corpus of data indicates that maize was dispersed into lower Central America by 7600 BP 5600 BC and had moved into the inter Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP 5000 4000 BC 4 Since then a date of over 8000 BP for maize in highland Ecuador has been published 5 According to a genetic study by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa maize cultivation was introduced to South America from Mexico in two great waves the first more than 6000 years ago spread through the Andes Evidence has been found of cultivation about 6700 years ago in Peru 6 nbsp Ancient Mesoamerican relief National Museum of Anthropology of MexicoThe earliest maize plants grew only small 25 millimetre long 1 in corn ears and only one per plant In Jackson Spielvogel s view many centuries of artificial selection rather than the current view that maize was exploited by interplanting with teosinte by the indigenous people of the Americas resulted in the development of maize plants capable of growing several ears per plant which were usually several centimetres inches long each 7 The Olmec and Maya cultivated maize in numerous varieties throughout Mesoamerica they cooked ground and processed it through nixtamalization 8 Mapuche people of south central Chile cultivated maize along with quinoa and potatoes in pre Hispanic times however potato was the staple food of most Mapuches specially in the southern and coastal Mapuche territories where maize did not reach maturity 9 10 Before the expansion of the Inca Empire maize was traded and transported as far south as 40 19 S in Melinquina Lacar Department 11 In that location maize remains were found inside pottery dated to 730 80 BP and 920 60 BP Probably this maize was brought across the Andes from Chile 11 The presence of maize in Guaitecas Archipelago 43 55 S the southernmost outpost of pre Hispanic agriculture 12 is reported by early Spanish explorers 13 However the Spanish may have misidentified the plant 13 By at least 1000 BCE the Olmec had based their calendar language myths and worldview with maize at the center of their symbolism 14 Columbian exchange nbsp Cultivation of maize in an illustration from the 16th c Florentine CodexAfter the arrival of Europeans in 1492 Spanish settlers consumed maize and explorers and traders carried it back to Europe and introduced it to other countries Spanish settlers much preferred wheat bread to maize cassava or potatoes Maize flour could not be substituted for wheat for communion bread since in Christian belief only wheat could undergo transubstantiation and be transformed into the body of Christ 15 Some Spaniards worried that by eating indigenous foods which they did not consider nutritious they would weaken and risk turning into Indians In the view of Europeans it was the food they ate even more than the environment in which they lived that gave Amerindians and Spaniards both their distinctive physical characteristics and their characteristic personalities 16 Despite these worries Spaniards did consume maize Archeological evidence from Florida sites indicate they cultivated it as well 17 Maize spread to the rest of the world because of its ability to grow in diverse climates It was cultivated in Spain just a few decades after Columbus s voyages and then spread to Italy West Africa and elsewhere 17 Widespread cultivation most likely began in southern Spain in 1525 after which it quickly spread to the rest of the Spanish Empire including its territories in Italy and from there to other Italian states Maize had many advantages over wheat and barley it yielded two and a half times the food energy per unit cultivated area 18 could be harvested in successive years from the same plot of land and grew in wildly varying altitudes and climates from relatively dry regions with only 250 mm 10 in of annual rainfall to damp regions with over 5 000 mm 200 in By the 17th century it was a common peasant food in Southwestern Europe including Portugal Spain southern France and Italy By the 18th century it was the chief food of the southern French and Italian peasantry especially in the form of polenta in Italy 19 When maize was introduced into Western farming systems it was welcomed for its productivity However a widespread problem of malnutrition soon arose wherever it had become a staple food 20 Indigenous Americans had learned to soak maize in alkali water made with ashes and lime calcium oxide since at least 1200 1500 BC the process of nixtamalization They did this to liberate the corn hulls but coincidentally it also liberated the B vitamin niacin the lack of which was the underlying cause of pellagra 21 Once alkali processing and dietary variety were understood and applied pellagra disappeared in the developed world The development of high lysine maize and the promotion of a more balanced diet have also contributed to its demise Pellagra still exists today in food poor areas and refugee camps where people survive on donated maize 22 NamesThe name maize derives from the Spanish form maiz of the Taino mahis 23 The botanist Carl Linnaeus used the common name maize as the species epithet in Zea mays 24 The name Maize is preferred in formal scientific and international usage as a common name because it refers specifically to this one grain unlike corn which has a complex variety of meanings that vary by context and geographic region 25 Most countries primarily use the term maize and the name corn is used mainly in the United States and a handful of other English speaking countries 26 27 28 In countries that primarily use the term maize the word corn may denote any cereal crop varying geographically with the local staple 29 such as wheat in England and oats in Scotland or Ireland 25 The usage of corn for maize started as a shortening of Indian corn in 18th century North America 29 30 31 The historian of food Betty Fussell writes in an article on the history of the word corn in North America that t o say the word corn is to plunge into the tragi farcical mistranslations of language and history 14 Similar to the British usage the Spanish referred to maize as panizo a generic term for cereal grains as did Italians with the term polenta The British later referred to maize as Turkey wheat Turkey corn or Indian corn Fussell comments that they meant not a place but a condition a savage rather than a civilized grain 14 International groups such as the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International consider maize the preferred common name 32 The word maize is used by the UN s FAO 33 and in the names of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center of Mexico the Indian Institute of Maize Research 34 the Maize Association of Australia 35 and the National Maize Association of Nigeria 36 Structure and physiologyThe maize plant is commonly 3 m 10 ft in height 37 though some natural strains can grow 13 m 43 ft 38 and the tallest recorded plant reached almost 14 metres 46 ft 39 The stem is commonly composed of 20 internodes 40 of 18 cm 7 in length 37 The leaves arise from the nodes alternately on opposite sides on the stalk 41 and have entire margins 42 The apex of the stem ends in the tassel an inflorescence of male flowers these are separate from the female flowers but borne on the same plant monoecy When the tassel is mature and conditions are suitably warm and dry anthers on the tassel dehisce and release pollen Maize pollen is anemophilous dispersed by wind and because it settles quickly most pollen falls within a few meters of the tassel 43 Ears develop above a few of the leaves in the midsection of the plant between the stem and leaf sheath elongating by around 3 mm 1 8 in per day to a length of 18 cm 7 in 37 with 60 cm 24 in being the maximum alleged in the subspecies 44 They are female inflorescences tightly enveloped by several layers of ear leaves commonly called husks Elongated stigmas called silks emerge from the whorl of husk leaves at the end of the ear They are often pale yellow and 18 cm 7 in in length like tufts of hair in appearance At the end of each is a carpel which may develop into a kernel if fertilized by a pollen grain The pericarp of the fruit is fused with the seed coat to form a caryopsis typical of the grasses and the entire kernel is often called a seed The cob is close to a multiple fruit in structure except that the individual fruits the kernels never fuse into a single mass The grains are about the size of peas and adhere in regular rows around a white pithy substance which forms the cob 45 page needed An ear commonly holds 600 kernels They can be blackish bluish gray purple green red white and yellow When ground into flour maize yields more flour with much less bran than wheat does It lacks the protein gluten of wheat and therefore makes baked goods with poor rising capability Cultivars that accumulate more sugar and less starch in the ear are consumed as a vegetable and are called sweet corn Young ears can be consumed raw with the cob and silk but as the plant matures usually during the summer months the cob becomes tougher and the silk dries to inedibility By the end of the growing season the kernels dry out and become difficult to chew without cooking 46 nbsp Many small male flowers make up the male inflorescence called the tassel nbsp Female inflorescence with young silk nbsp Stalks ears and silk nbsp Full grown maize plants nbsp Mature maize ear on a stalk nbsp Male flowers nbsp Mature silk nbsp Planting density affects multiple aspects of maize Modern farming techniques in developed countries usually rely on dense planting which produces one ear per stalk 47 Stands of silage maize are yet denser citation needed and achieve a lower percentage of ears and more plant matter citation needed Maize is a facultative short day plant 48 and flowers in a certain number of growing degree days gt 10 C 50 F in the environment to which it is adapted 49 The magnitude of the influence that long nights have on the number of days that must pass before maize flowers is genetically prescribed 50 and regulated by the phytochrome system 51 Photoperiodicity can be eccentric in tropical cultivars such that the long days characteristic of higher latitudes allow the plants to grow so tall that they do not have enough time to produce seed before being killed by frost These attributes however may prove useful in using tropical maize for biofuels 52 Immature maize shoots accumulate a powerful antibiotic substance 2 4 dihydroxy 7 methoxy 1 4 benzoxazin 3 one DIMBOA which provides a measure of protection against a wide range of pests 53 Because of its shallow roots maize is susceptible to droughts intolerant of nutrient deficient soils and prone to be uprooted by severe winds 54 nbsp Maize kernels nbsp Ear of maize with irregular rows of kernelsWhile yellow maizes derive their color from lutein and zeaxanthin in red colored maizes the kernel coloration is due to anthocyanins and phlobaphenes These latter substances are synthesized in the flavonoids synthetic pathway 55 from polymerization of flavan 4 ols 56 by the expression of maize pericarp color1 p1 gene 57 which encodes an R2R3 myb like transcriptional activator 58 of the A1 gene encoding for the dihydroflavonol 4 reductase reducing dihydroflavonols into flavan 4 ols 59 while another gene Suppressor of Pericarp Pigmentation 1 or SPP1 acts as a suppressor 60 The p1 gene encodes an Myb homologous transcriptional activator of genes required for biosynthesis of red phlobaphene pigments while the P1 wr allele specifies colorless kernel pericarp and red cobs and unstable factor for orange1 Ufo1 modifies P1 wr expression to confer pigmentation in kernel pericarp as well as vegetative tissues which normally do not accumulate significant amounts of phlobaphene pigments 57 The maize P gene encodes a Myb homolog that recognizes the sequence CCT AACC in sharp contrast with the C TAACGG bound by vertebrate Myb proteins 61 The ear leaf is the leaf most closely associated with a particular developing ear This leaf and above contribute 70 62 to 75 to 90 63 of grain fill Therefore fungicide application is most important in that region in most disease environments 62 63 nbsp cv Ottofile giallo Tortonese MHNT nbsp cv strawberry MHNT nbsp cv Oaxacan Green MHNT nbsp Variegated maize ears nbsp Multicolored corn kernels CSIRO Genomics and genetics nbsp Exotic varieties are collected to add genetic diversity when selectively breeding new domestic strains Maize is a diploid with 20 chromosomes n 10 83 of allelic variation within the genome derives from its teosinte ancestors primarily due to the freedom of Zeas to outcross 64 Barbara McClintock used maize to validate her transposon theory of jumping genes for which she won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Maize remains an important model organism for genetics and developmental biology 65 The MADS box motif is involved in the development of maize flowers 66 The Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and funded by the USDA Agricultural Research Service is a stock center of maize mutants The total collection has nearly 80 000 samples The bulk of the collection consists of several hundred named genes plus additional gene combinations and other heritable variants There are about 1000 chromosomal aberrations e g translocations and inversions and stocks with abnormal chromosome numbers such as tetraploids 67 Varieties differ in their resistance to insect pests including borers 68 The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center maintains a large collection of maize accessions tested and cataloged for insect resistance 68 In 2005 the US National Science Foundation NSF Department of Agriculture USDA and the Department of Energy DOE formed a consortium to sequence the B73 maize genome The resulting DNA sequence data was deposited immediately into GenBank a public repository for genome sequence data 69 Primary sequencing of the maize genome was completed in 2008 70 In 2009 the consortium published results of its sequencing effort 71 The genome 85 of which is composed of transposons contains 32 540 genes Much of it has been duplicated and reshuffled by helitrons a group of rolling circle transposons 72 EvolutionZ mays has a positive correlation between effective population size and the magnitude of selection pressure Z m having an EPS of 650 000 it clusters with others of about the same EPS and has 79 of its amino acid sites under selection 73 Recombination is a significant source of diversity in Z mays Note that this finding supersedes previous studies which showed no such correlation 73 This recombination diversity effect is seen throughout plants but is also found to not occur or not as strongly in regions of high gene density This is likely the reason that domesticated Z mays has not seen as much of an increase in diversity within areas of higher density as in regions of lower density although there is more evidence in other plants 73 Some lines of maize have undergone ancient polyploidy events starting 11 million years ago Over that time 72 of polyploid duplicated genes have been retained which is higher than other plants with older polyploidy events Thus maize may be due to lose more duplicate genes as time goes along similar to the course followed by the genomes of other plants If so if gene loss has merely not occurred yet that could explain the lack of observed positive selection and lower negative selection which are observed in otherwise similar plants i e also naturally outcrossing and with similar effective population sizes 73 Ploidy does not appear to influence EPS or magnitude of selection effect in maize 73 BreedingMaize breeding in prehistory resulted in large plants producing large ears Modern breeding began with individuals who selected highly productive varieties in their fields and then sold seed to other farmers James L Reid was one of the earliest and most successful developing Reid s Yellow Dent in the 1860s These early efforts were based on mass selection Later breeding efforts included ear to row selection C G Hopkins c 1896 hybrids made from selected inbred lines G H Shull 1909 and the highly successful double cross hybrids using four inbred lines D F Jones c 1918 1922 University supported breeding programs were especially important in developing and introducing modern hybrids 74 Since the 1940s the best strains of maize have been first generation hybrids made from inbred strains that have been optimized for specific traits such as yield nutrition drought pest and disease tolerance Both conventional cross breeding and genetic engineering have succeeded in increasing output and reducing the need for cropland pesticides water and fertilizer 75 There is conflicting evidence to support the hypothesis that maize yield potential has increased over the past few decades This suggests that changes in yield potential are associated with leaf angle lodging resistance tolerance of high plant density disease pest tolerance and other agronomic traits rather than increase of yield potential per individual plant 76 Certain varieties of maize have been bred to produce many ears which are the source of the baby corn used as a vegetable in Asian cuisine 77 A fast flowering variety named mini maize was developed to aid scientific research as multiple generations can be obtained in a single year 78 One strain called oloton has evolved a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing microbes which provides the plant with 29 82 of its nitrogen 79 CIMMYT operates a conventional breeding program to provide optimized strains The program began in the 1980s Hybrid seeds are distributed in Africa by the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project 75 Genetic engineering Main article Transgenic maize Genetically engineered GE maize was one of the 26 GE crops grown commercially in 2016 80 81 The vast majority of this is Bt maize Grown since 1997 in the United States and Canada 82 92 of the US maize crop was genetically modified in 2016 80 83 and 33 of the worldwide maize crop was GM in 2016 80 84 As of 2011 Herbicide tolerant maize varieties were grown in Argentina Australia Brazil Canada China Colombia El Salvador the European Union Honduras Japan Korea Malaysia Mexico New Zealand Philippines the Russian Federation Singapore South Africa Taiwan Thailand and the United States Insect resistant maize was grown in Argentina Australia Brazil Canada Chile China Colombia Egypt the European Union Honduras Japan Korea Malaysia Mexico New Zealand Philippines South Africa Switzerland Taiwan the United States and Uruguay 85 In September 2000 up to 50 million worth of food products were recalled due to the presence of Starlink genetically modified corn which had been approved only for animal consumption and had not been approved for human consumption and was subsequently withdrawn from the market 86 Genetically modified maize made up 85 of the maize planted in the United States by 2009 87 For pest and disease resistance Tropical landraces remain an important and underused source of resistance alleles both those for disease and for herbivores 88 Notable discoveries of rare alleles for this purpose were made by Dao et al 2014 and Sood et al 2014 88 Rashid et al 2018 use an association mapping panel from CIMMYT originally developed for tropical drought tolerance traits to find new genomic regions providing sorghum downy mildew resistance and to further characterize SDMR regions already located by others 89 OriginExternal phylogeny The maize genus Zea is rather closely related to sorghum both being in the PACMAD clade and much more distantly to rice and wheat which are in the other major group of grasses the BOP clade It is closely related to Tripsacum gamagrass 90 Part of Poaceae BOP clade various grasses e g fescue ryegrassHordeum barley Triticum wheat Oryza rice PACMAD clade Pennisetum fountaingrasses Sorghum sorghum Tripsacum gamagrass Zea Zea mays maize other Zea species teosintes Maize and teosinte See also Origin of maize and interaction with teosintes nbsp Teosinte top maize teosinte hybrid middle maize bottom Maize is the domesticated variant of the four species of teosintes which are its crop wild relatives 91 The two plants have dissimilar appearance maize having a single tall stalk with multiple leaves and teosinte being a short bushy plant The difference between the two is largely controlled by differences in just two genes called grassy tillers 1 gt1 A0A317YEZ1 and teosinte branched 1 tb1 Q93WI2 91 Several theories have been proposed about the specific origin of maize in Mesoamerica 92 93 It is a direct domestication of a Mexican annual teosinte Z m ssp parviglumis native to the Balsas River valley in south eastern Mexico 94 with up to 12 of its genetic material obtained from Zea mays ssp mexicana through introgression 3 It has been derived from hybridization between a small domesticated maize a slightly changed form of a wild maize and a teosinte of section Luxuriantes Zea either Z luxurians or Z diploperennis It has undergone two or more domestications either of a wild maize or of a teosinte The term teosinte describes all species and subspecies in the genus Zea excluding Zea mays ssp mays It has evolved from a hybridization of Z diploperennis by Tripsacum dactyloides In the late 1930s Paul Mangelsdorf suggested that domesticated maize was the result of a hybridization event between an unknown wild maize and a species of Tripsacum a related genus This theory about the origin of maize has been refuted by modern genetic testing which refutes Mangelsdorf s model and the fourth listed above 92 40 The teosinte origin theory was proposed by the Russian botanist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov in 1931 and the later American Nobel Prize winner George Beadle in 1932 92 10 It is supported experimentally and by recent studies of the plants genomes Teosinte and maize can cross breed and produce fertile offspring A number of questions remain concerning the species among them how the immense diversity of the species of sect Zea originated how the tiny archaeological specimens of 3500 2700 BC could have been selected from a teosinte and how domestication could have proceeded without leaving remains of teosinte or maize with teosintoid traits earlier than the earliest known until recently dating from ca 1100 BC The domestication of maize is of particular interest to researchers archaeologists geneticists ethnobotanists geographers etc The process is thought by some to have started 7 500 to 12 000 years ago Research from the 1950s to 1970s originally focused on the hypothesis that maize domestication occurred in the highlands between the states of Oaxaca and Jalisco because the oldest archaeological remains of maize known at the time were found there Connection with parviglumis subspecies Genetic studies published in 2004 by John Doebley identified Zea mays ssp parviglumis native to the Balsas River valley in Mexico s southwestern highlands and also known as Balsas teosinte as being the crop wild relative that is genetically most similar to modern maize 95 94 This was confirmed by further studies which refined this hypothesis somewhat Archaeobotanical studies published in 2009 point to the middle part of the Balsas River valley as the likely location of early domestication this river is not very long so these locations are not very distant Stone milling tools with maize residue have been found in an 8 700 year old layer of deposits in a cave not far from Iguala Guerrero 96 97 98 nbsp Stucco head of the Maya Maize God 550 850 ADDoebley was part of the team that first published in 2002 that maize had been domesticated only once about 9 000 years ago and then spread throughout the Americas 3 99 A primitive corn was being grown in southern Mexico Central America and northern South America 7 000 years ago Archaeological remains of early maize ears found at Guila Naquitz Cave in the Oaxaca Valley date back roughly 6 250 years the oldest ears from caves near Tehuacan Puebla 5 450 B P 8 Maize pollen dated to 7 300 B P from San Andres Tabasco on the Caribbean coast has been recovered 97 nbsp Jaina Island ceramic statuette of the young Maya Maize God emerging from an ear of corn 600 900 A D Spreading to the north Around 4 500 years ago maize began to spread to the north Maize was first cultivated in what is now the United States at several sites in New Mexico and Arizona about 4 100 years ago 8 During the first millennium AD maize cultivation spread more widely in the areas north In particular the large scale adoption of maize agriculture and consumption in eastern North America took place about A D 900 Native Americans cleared large forest and grassland areas for the new crop 100 In 2005 research by the USDA Forest Service suggested that the rise in maize cultivation 500 to 1 000 years ago in what is now the southeastern United States corresponded with a decline of freshwater mussels which are very sensitive to environmental changes 101 AgronomyPlanting Because it is cold intolerant in the temperate zones maize must be planted in the spring Its root system is generally shallow so the plant is dependent on soil moisture As a plant that uses C4 carbon fixation maize is a considerably more water efficient crop than plants that use C3 carbon fixation such as alfalfa and soybeans Maize is most sensitive to drought at the time of silk emergence when the flowers are ready for pollination In the United States a good harvest was traditionally predicted if the maize was knee high by the Fourth of July although modern hybrids generally exceed this growth rate Maize used for silage is harvested while the plant is green and the fruit immature Sweet corn is harvested in the milk stage after pollination but before starch has formed between late summer and early to mid autumn Field maize is left in the field until very late in the autumn to thoroughly dry the grain and may in fact sometimes not be harvested until winter or even early spring The importance of sufficient soil moisture is shown in many parts of Africa where periodic drought regularly causes maize crop failure and consequent famine Although it is grown mainly in wet hot climates it has been said to thrive in cold hot dry or wet conditions meaning that it is an extremely versatile crop 102 Maize was planted by the Native Americans in hills in the polyculture system called the Three Sisters 103 Maize provided support for beans and the beans provided nitrogen derived from nitrogen fixing rhizobia bacteria which live on the roots of beans and other legumes and squashes provided ground cover to stop weeds and inhibit evaporation by providing shade over the soil 104 nbsp Seedlings three weeks after sowing nbsp Young stalks nbsp Mature plants showing earsHarvesting Maize harvested as a grain crop can be kept in the field a relatively long time even months after the crop is ready to harvest it can be harvested and stored in the husk leaves if kept dry 105 Before World War II most maize in North America was harvested by hand This involved a large number of workers and associated social events husking or shucking bees From the 1890s onward some machinery became available to partially mechanize the processes such as one and two row mechanical pickers picking the ear leaving the stover and corn binders which are reaper binders designed specifically for maize The latter produce sheaves that can be shocked By hand or mechanical picker the entire ear is harvested which requires a separate operation of a maize sheller to remove the kernels from the ear Whole ears of maize were often stored in corn cribs and these whole ears are a sufficient form for some livestock feeding uses Today corn cribs with whole ears and corn binders are less common because most modern farms harvest the grain from the field with a combine harvester and store it in bins The combine with a corn head with points and snap rolls instead of a reel does not cut the stalk it simply pulls the stalk down The stalk continues downward and is crumpled into a mangled pile on the ground where it usually is left to become organic matter for the soil The ear of maize is too large to pass between slots in a plate as the snap rolls pull the stalk away leaving only the ear and husk to enter the machinery The combine separates the husk and the cob keeping only the kernels 106 nbsp Mature maize ears nbsp Harvesting maize Iowa nbsp Harvesting maize Finland nbsp Hand picking harvest of maize in MyanmarGrain storage Drying is vital to prevent or at least reduce damage by mould fungi which contaminate the grain with mycotoxins Aspergillus and Fusarium spp are the most common mycotoxin sources and accordingly important in agriculture 82 If the moisture content of the harvested grain is too high grain dryers are used to reduce the moisture content by blowing heated air through the grain This can require large amounts of energy in the form of combustible gases propane or natural gas and electricity to power the blowers 107 As animal feed See also Bale wrapper nbsp Baled cornstalksBaled cornstalks offer an alternative to hay for animal feed alongside direct grazing of maize grown for this purpose which can be the best and cheapest option 108 ProductionFurther information Corn production in the United States Maize is widely cultivated throughout the world and a greater weight of maize is produced each year than any other grain 109 In 2020 total world production was 1 16 billion tonnes led by the United States with 31 0 of the total table China produced 22 4 of the global total 110 Top Maize producersin 2020Numbers in million tonnes1 nbsp United States360 3 31 2 nbsp China260 7 22 43 3 nbsp Brazil104 8 95 4 nbsp Argentina58 4 5 02 5 nbsp Ukraine30 3 2 61 6 nbsp India30 2 2 6 7 nbsp Mexico27 4 2 36 8 nbsp Indonesia22 5 1 94 9 nbsp South Africa15 3 1 32 10 nbsp Russia13 9 1 2 World total1162 4Source FAOSTAT 111 110 nbsp Production of maize 2019 112 nbsp Maize red strip is the second most widely produced primary crop after sugarcane and the first among grain crops Trade Corn futures are traded on several exchanges including the Chicago Board of Trade CBOT and JSE Derivatives JDERIV The Chicago Board Of Trade sells corn futures with a contract size of 5000 bushels which is quoted in cents bushel and the JDERIV has a contract size of 100 Tonnes quoted in Rand Ton 113 114 Contract Specifications 113 114 Corn CORN Corn CNA Exchange JDERIV CBOTSector Grain GrainTick Size 0 2 0 25Tick Value 5 ZAR 12 50 USDBPV 25 50Denomination ZAR USDDecimal Place 1 2PestsInsects nbsp Caterpillar of European corn borer in maize nbsp Corncob damage by European corn borer Maize sustains a billion dollars worth of losses annually to the European corn borer or ECB Ostrinia nubilalis and a similar amount to corn rootworms Diabrotica spp 115 116 117 Another major pest is the fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda 118 119 The Maize weevil Sitophilus zeamais is a serious pest of stored grain 120 The Northern armyworm Oriental armyworm or Rice ear cutting caterpillar Mythimna separata is a major pest of maize in Asia 121 Diseases nbsp Disease cycle of Northern corn leaf blightMain article List of maize diseases Maize is susceptible to a large number of fungal bacterial and viral plant diseases Those of economic importance include diseases of the leaf smuts such as corn smut ear rots and stalk rots Northern corn leaf blight damages maize throughout its range whereas banded leaf and sheath blight is a problem in Asia 122 Some fungal diseases of maize produce potentially dangerous mycotoxins such as aflatoxin 82 UsesCulinary Further information List of maize dishes Maize and cornmeal ground dried maize constitute a staple food in many regions of the world Maize is used to produce cornstarch a common ingredient in home cooking and industrialized food products Maize starch can be hydrolyzed and enzymatically treated to produce syrups particularly high fructose corn syrup a sweetener It may be fermented and distilled to produce grain alcohol traditionally the source of Bourbon whiskey Cornmeal and maize flour are used to bake cornbread and other products Many countries require corn flour to be enriched with certain nutrients citation needed In prehistoric times Mesoamerican women used a metate quern to grind maize into cornmeal After ceramic vessels were invented the Olmec people began to cook maize together with beans improving the nutritional value of the staple meal Although maize naturally contains niacin an important nutrient it was not bioavailable without the process of nixtamalization The Maya used nixtamal meal to make porridges and tamales 123 Maize is a staple of Mexican cuisine Masa cornmeal treated with limewater is the main ingredient for tortillas atole and many other dishes of Central American food It is the main ingredient of corn tortilla tamales pozole atole and all the dishes based on them like tacos quesadillas chilaquiles enchiladas and tostadas citation needed In Mexico the corn smut fungus known as huitlacoche is considered a delicacy 124 Coarse maize meal is made into a thick porridge in many cultures from the polenta of Italy the angu of Brazil the mămăligă of Romania to cornmeal mush in the US or hominy grits in the South or the food called mieliepap in South Africa and sadza nshima ugali and other names in other parts of Africa Introduced into Africa by the Portuguese in the 16th century maize has become Africa s most important staple food crop 125 Much maize is used for products such as corn starch and corn syrup 126 Maize can be harvested and consumed in the unripe state when the kernels are fully grown but still soft Unripe maize must be cooked to become palatable Sweet corn a genetic variety that is high in sugars and low in starch is eaten in the unripe state as corn on the cob 127 nbsp Poster of a woman serving multiple maize based foods US Food Administration 1918 nbsp Semi peeled corn on the cob nbsp Mexican tamales made with corn meal nbsp Boiled maizeNutritional value Sweetcorn yellow raw seeds only Note assuming freed niacinNutritional value per 100 g 3 5 oz Energy360 kJ 86 kcal Carbohydrates18 7 gStarch5 7 gSugars6 26 gDietary fiber2 gFat1 35 gProtein3 27 gTryptophan0 023 gThreonine0 129 gIsoleucine0 129 gLeucine0 348 gLysine0 137 gMethionine0 067 gCystine0 026 gPhenylalanine0 150 gTyrosine0 123 gValine0 185 gArginine0 131 gHistidine0 089 gAlanine0 295 gAspartic acid0 244 gGlutamic acid0 636 gGlycine0 127 gProline0 292 gSerine0 153 gVitaminsQuantity DV Vitamin A equiv lutein zeaxanthin1 9 mg644 mgThiamine B1 13 0 155 mgRiboflavin B2 5 0 055 mgNiacin B3 12 1 77 mgPantothenic acid B5 14 0 717 mgVitamin B67 0 093 mgFolate B9 11 42 mgVitamin C8 6 8 mgMineralsQuantity DV Iron4 0 52 mgMagnesium10 37 mgManganese8 0 163 mgPhosphorus13 89 mgPotassium6 270 mgZinc5 0 46 mgOther constituentsQuantityWater75 96 gLink to USDA Database entryOne ear of medium size 6 3 4 to 7 1 2 long maize has 90 grams of seedsUnits mg micrograms mg milligrams IU International units Percentages are roughly approximated using US recommendations for adults Source USDA FoodData CentralRaw yellow sweet maize kernels are composed of 76 water 19 carbohydrates 3 protein and 1 fat table In a 100 gram serving maize kernels provide 86 calories and are a good source 10 19 of the Daily Value of the B vitamins thiamin niacin but see Pellagra warning below pantothenic acid B5 and folate right table for raw uncooked kernels USDA Nutrient Database Maize has suboptimal amounts of the essential amino acids tryptophan and lysine which accounts for its lower status as a protein source 128 The proteins of beans and legumes complement those of maize 128 Feed and fodder for livestock See also Corn stover Uses nbsp Cattle wait alongside a fence as a truck distributes a grain feed composed of corn by products into troughs Maize is a major source of both grain feed and fodder for livestock It is fed to the livestock in various ways When it is used as a grain crop the dried kernels are used as feed They are often kept on the cob for storage in a corn crib or they may be shelled off for storage in a grain bin The farm that consumes the feed may produce it purchase it on the market or some of both When the grain is used for feed the rest of the plant the corn stover can be used later as fodder bedding litter or soil amendment When the whole maize plant grain plus stalks and leaves is used for fodder it is usually chopped all at once and ensilaged as digestibility and palatability are higher in the ensilaged form than in the dried form Maize silage is one of the most valuable forages for ruminants 129 Before the advent of widespread ensilaging it was traditional to gather the corn into shocks after harvesting where it dried further With or without a subsequent move to the cover of a barn it was then stored for weeks to several months until fed to the livestock Today ensilaging can occur not only in siloes but also in silage wrappers However in the tropics maize can be harvested year round and fed as green forage to the animals 130 Chemicals Starch from maize can also be made into plastics fabrics adhesives and many other chemical products citation needed The corn steep liquor a plentiful watery byproduct of maize wet milling process is widely used in the biochemical industry and research as a culture medium to grow many kinds of microorganisms 131 Chrysanthemin is found in purple corn and is used as a food coloring citation needed Bio fuel See also Corn ethanol and Corn stover Feed maize is being used for heating specialized corn stoves similar to wood stoves are available and use either feed maize or wood pellets to generate heat Maize cobs are also used as a biomass fuel source Maize is relatively cheap and home heating furnaces have been developed which use maize kernels as a fuel They feature a large hopper that feeds the uniformly sized maize kernels into the fire 132 Maize is used as a feedstock for the production of ethanol fuel 133 When considering where to construct an ethanol plant one of the site selection criteria is to ensure there is locally available feedstock 134 The price of food is affected by the use of maize for biofuel production The cost of transportation production and marketing are a large portion 80 of the price of food in the United States Higher energy costs affect these costs especially transportation The increase in food prices the consumer has been seeing is mainly due to the higher energy cost The effect of biofuel production on other food crop prices is indirect use of maize for biofuel production increases the demand and therefore the price of maize 135 136 nbsp Farm based maize silage digester near Neumunster Germany 2007 using whole maize plants not just the grain The green tarpaulin top cover is held up by the biogas stored in the digester A biomass gasification power plant in Strem near Gussing Burgenland Austria started operating in 2005 It would be possible to create diesel from the biogas by the Fischer Tropsch method 137 Ethanol is being used at low concentrations 10 or less as an additive in gasoline gasohol for motor fuels to increase the octane rating lower pollutants and reduce petroleum use This has generated debate on the need for new sources of energy on the one hand and the need to maintain the food habits and culture of Mesoamerica The entry January 2008 of maize among the commercial agreements of NAFTA has increased this debate as NAFTA opened the doors to the import of maize from the United States where the farmers who grow it receive multimillion dollar subsidies and other government supports According to OXFAM UK after NAFTA went into effect the price of maize in Mexico fell 70 between 1994 and 2001 The number of farm jobs dropped as well from 8 1 million in 1993 to 6 8 million in 2002 Many of those who found themselves without work were small scale maize growers 138 Commodity Maize is bought and sold by investors and price speculators as a tradable commodity using corn futures contracts These futures are traded on the Chicago Board of Trade CBOT under ticker symbol C They are delivered every year in March May July September and December 139 United States usage breakdown The breakdown of usage of the 12 1 billion bushel 307 million tonne 2008 US maize crop was as follows according to the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report by the USDA 140 Use Amountmillion bushels million tonnes percentagelivestock feed 5 250 133 4 43 4ethanol production 3 650 92 7 30 2exports 1 850 47 0 15 3production of starch corn oil sweeteners HFCS etc 943 24 0 7 8human consumption grits corn flour corn meal beverage alcohol 327 8 3 2 7In the US since 2009 2010 maize feedstock use for ethanol production has somewhat exceeded direct use for livestock feed maize use for fuel ethanol was 5 130 million bushels 130 million tonnes in the 2013 2014 marketing year 141 A fraction of the maize feedstock dry matter used for ethanol production is usefully recovered as dried distillers grains with solubles DDGS In the 2010 2011 marketing year about 29 1 million tonnes of DDGS were fed to US livestock and poultry 142 Because starch utilization in fermentation for ethanol production leaves other grain constituents more concentrated in the residue the feed value per kg of DDGS with regard to ruminant metabolizable energy and protein exceeds that of the grain Feed value for monogastric animals such as swine and poultry is somewhat lower than for ruminants 142 Art nbsp Gold maize Moche culture 300 A D Larco Museum Lima Peru nbsp Water tower in Rochester Minnesota being painted as an ear of maize Maize has been an essential crop in the Andes since the pre Columbian era The Moche culture from Northern Peru made ceramics from earth water and fire This pottery was a sacred substance formed in significant shapes and used to represent important themes Maize was represented anthropomorphically as well as naturally 143 In the United States maize ears along with tobacco leaves are carved into the capitals of columns in the United States Capitol building Maize itself is sometimes used for temporary architectural detailing when the intent is to celebrate the fall season local agricultural productivity and culture Bundles of dried maize stalks are often displayed along with pumpkins gourds and straw in autumnal displays outside homes and businesses A well known example of architectural use is the Corn Palace in Mitchell South Dakota which uses cobs and ears of colored maize to implement a mural design that is recycled annually Another well known example is the Field of Corn sculpture in Dublin Ohio where hundreds of concrete ears of corn stand in a grassy field 144 A maize stalk with two ripe ears is depicted on the reverse of the Croatian 1 lipa coin minted since 1993 145 Shucked a 2022 musical that is currently running on Broadway was described by Vulture as a show about corn Much of the show contains puns relating to corn 146 147 and the plot revolves around a blighted corn crop 148 See also nbsp Food portal nbsp Agriculture and Agronomy portalBlue corn Purple corn Columbian Exchange Corn syrup Crop circle Detasseling List of maize dishes List of sweetcorn varieties Post harvest losses grains Push pull technology pest control strategy for maize and sorghum ZeinReferences Contreras A Ruiz Corral J A Menjivar J Aragon Cuevas F Gonzalez Ledesma M Sanchez J J 2019 Zea mays The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019 e T77726273A77726310 doi 10 2305 IUCN UK 2019 2 RLTS T77726273A77726310 en a b Benz B F 2001 Archaeological evidence of teosinte domestication from Guila Naquitz Oaxaca Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 4 2104 2106 Bibcode 2001PNAS 98 2104B doi 10 1073 pnas 98 4 2104 PMC 29389 PMID 11172083 a b c Matsuoka Y Vigouroux Y Goodman M M et al 2002 A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99 9 6080 4 Bibcode 2002PNAS 99 6080M doi 10 1073 pnas 052125199 PMC 122905 PMID 11983901 a b Piperno Dolores R October 2011 The Origins of Plant Cultivation and Domestication in the New World Tropics Patterns Process and New Developments Current Anthropology 52 S4 S453 S470 doi 10 1086 659998 S2CID 83061925 Recent studies in the Central Balsas River Valley of Mexico maize s postulated cradle of origin document the presence of maize phytoliths and starch grains at 8700 BP the earliest date recorded for the crop Piperno et al 2009 Ranere et al 2009 A large corpus of data indicates that it was dispersed into lower Central America by 7600 BP and had moved into the inter Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP Given the number of Cauca Valley Colombia sites that demonstrate early maize it is likely that the inter Andean valleys were a major dispersal route for the crop after it entered South America Pagan Jimenez Jaime R Guachamin Tello Ana M Romero Bastidas Martha E Constantine Castro Angelo R June 2016 Late ninth millennium B P use of Zea mays L at Cubilan area highland Ecuador revealed by ancient starches Quaternary International 404 137 155 Bibcode 2016QuInt 404 137P doi 10 1016 j quaint 2015 08 025 Los antiguos peruanos comian palomitas de maiz BBC Mundo BBC January 19 2012 Spielvogel Jackson J March 1 2005 Medieval and Early Modern Times Discovering Our Past Glencoe McGraw Hill School Publishing Company ISBN 978 0 07 868876 8 a b c Roney John Winter 2009 The Beginnings of Maize Agriculture Archaeology Southwest 23 1 4 Bengoa Jose 2003 Historia de los antiguos mapuches del sur History of the ancient Mapuche of the South in Spanish Santiago Catalonia pp 199 200 ISBN 956 8303 02 2 Dillehay Tom D Pino Quivira Mario Bonzani Renee Silva Claudia Wallner Johannes Le Quesne Carlos 2007 Cultivated wetlands and emerging complexity in south central Chile and long distance effects of climate change PDF Antiquity 81 314 949 960 doi 10 1017 s0003598x00096034 S2CID 59480757 a b Perez Alberto E Erra Georgina 2011 Identificacion de maiz de vasijas recuperadas de la Patagonia noroccidental argentina Identifying maize residues in pottery vessels in northwestern Patagonia Argentina Magallania in Spanish 39 2 309 316 doi 10 4067 S0718 22442011000200022 Bird Junius 1946 The Alacaluf In Steward Julian H ed Handbook of South American Indians Bulletin 143 Vol I Bureau of American Ethnology pp 55 79 a b Torrejon Fernando Bizama Fernando Araneda Alberto Aguayo Mauricio Bertrand Sebastien Urrutia Roberto 2013 Descifrando la historia ambiental de los archipielagos de Aysen Chile El influjo colonial y la explotacion economica mercantil republicana siglos XVI XIX Deciphering the environmental history of the Aysen archipelagos Chile Colonial influence and commercial exploitation during the Republican Era XVI XIX centuries Magallania in Spanish 41 1 29 52 doi 10 4067 S0718 22442013000100002 a b c Fussell Betty 1999 Translating Maize into Corn The Transformation of America s Native Grain Social Research 66 1 41 65 JSTOR 40971301 Gale A54668866 ProQuest 209670587 To say the word corn is to plunge into the tragi farcical mistranslations of language and history If only the British had followed Columbus in phoneticizing the Taino word mahiz which the Arawaks named their staple grain we wouldn t be in the same linguistic pickle we re in today where I have to explain to someone every year that when Biblical Ruth stood in tears amid the alien corn she was standing in a wheat field But it was a near thing even with the Spaniards when we read in Columbus Journals that the grain which the Indians called maiz the Spanish called panizo The Spanish term was generic for the cereal grains they knew wheat millet barley oats as was the Italian term polenta from Latin pub As was the English term corn which covered grains of all kinds including grains of salt as in corned beef French linguistic imperialism by way of a Parisian botanist in 1536 provided the term Turcicum frumentum which the British quickly translated into Turkey wheat Turkey corn and Indian corn By Turkey or Indian they meant not a place but a condition a savage rather than a civilized grain with which the Turks concurred calling it kukuruz meaning barbaric Rebecca Earle The Body of the Conquistador Food Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America 1492 1700 New York Cambridge University Press 2012 pp 17 151 Earle The Body of the Conquistador p 5 a b Earle The Body of the Conquistador p 144 Marion Eugene Ensminger and Audrey H Ensminger Foods amp Nutrition Encyclopedia Two Volume Set CRC Press 1994 Page 1104 William L Langer American Foods and Europe s Population Growth 1750 1850 Journal of Social History 8 2 1975 pp 51 66 Pages 58 60 The origins of maize the puzzle of pellagra EUFIC gt Nutrition gt Understanding Food The European Food Information Council December 2001 Archived from the original on September 27 2006 Retrieved September 14 2006 Staller John Carrasco Michael November 24 2009 Pre Columbian Foodways Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food Culture and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica Springer Science amp Business Media p 317 ISBN 978 1 4419 0471 3 Thompson Janice J Manore Melinda Vaughan Linda January 15 2016 Nutrients involved in energy metabolism The Science of Nutrition Pearson Education pp 292 321 ISBN 978 0 13 429880 1 maize n and adj Oxford English Dictionary Online ed Oxford University Press Subscription or participating institution membership required Ranum Peter Pena Rosas Juan Pablo Garcia Casal Maria Nieves April 2014 Global maize production utilization and consumption Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1312 1 105 112 Bibcode 2014NYASA1312 105R doi 10 1111 nyas 12396 PMID 24650320 S2CID 4640742 a b Ensminger Audrey H 1994 Foods and Nutrition Encyclopedia 2nd ed CRC Press p 479 ISBN 978 0 8493 8980 1 The word maize is preferred in international usage because in many countries the term corn the name by which the plant is known in the United States is synonymous with the leading cereal grain thus in England corn refers to wheat and in Scotland and Ireland it refers to oats McLellan Plaisted Susan 2013 Corn In Smith Andrew ed The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America 2nd ed New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0199739226 Retrieved February 15 2023 The use of the word corn for what is termed maize by most other countries is peculiar to the United States Europeans who were accustomed to the names wheat corn barley corn and rye corn for other small seeded cereal grains referred to the unique American grain maize as Indian corn The term was shortened to just corn which has become the American word for the plant of American genesis Grain National Geographic Retrieved February 27 2023 In most countries the grain of the Zea mays plant is called maize In the United States it s called corn Espinoza Mauricio All Corn Is the Same and Other Foolishness about America s King of Crops Ohio State University College of Food Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Retrieved September 21 2022 a b corn n 1 Oxford English Dictionary Online ed Oxford University Press Subscription or participating institution membership required Mencken H L 1984 The American language an inquiry into the development of English in the United States 4th ed New York Alfred A Knopf p 122 ISBN 0394400755 Corn in orthodox English means grain for human consumption especially wheat e g the Corn Laws The earliest settlers following this usage gave the name of Indian corn to what the Spaniards following the Indians themselves had called maiz But gradually the adjective fell off and by the middle of the Eighteenth Century maize was simply called corn and grains in general were called breadstuffs Thomas Hutchinson discoursing to George III in 1774 used corn in this restricted sense speaking of rye and corn mixed What corn asked George Indian corn explained Hutchinson or as it is called in authors maize Boberg Charles 2010 The English Language in Canada Status History and Comparative Analysis Cambridge University Press p 109 ISBN 978 1 139 49144 0 Zea mays maize CABI Retrieved September 16 2022 Maize FAO Retrieved September 16 2022 Overview ICAR Indian Institute of Maize Research Retrieved September 16 2022 Maize Association Maize Association Australia Retrieved September 16 2022 The Maize Association of Nigeria honors IITA for supporting the nation s agriculture International Institute of Tropical Agriculture Retrieved September 16 2022 a b c Wellhausen Edwin John 1952 Races of Maize in Mexico Karl J R January 2012 The Maximum Leaf Number of the Maize Subspecies PDF The Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter 86 4 ISSN 1090 4573 Archived from the original PDF on March 3 2016 Retrieved July 5 2013 World s tallest corn towers nearly 14 meters Science News for Students US January 6 2017 Retrieved November 10 2021 Stevenson J C Goodman M M November 1972 Ecology of Exotic Races of Maize I Leaf Number and Tillering of 16 Races Under Four Temperatures and Two Photoperiods 1 Crop Science 12 6 864 868 doi 10 2135 cropsci1972 0011183X001200060045x Willy H Verheye ed 2010 Growth And Production Of Maize Traditional Low Input Cultivation Soils Plant Growth and Crop Production Volume II EOLSS Publishers p 74 ISBN 978 1 84826 368 0 Assefa Yared Roozeboom Kraig Thompson Curtis Schlegel Alan Stone Loyd Lingenfelser Jane December 16 2013 Corn and Grain Sorghum Comparison All Things Considered Academic Press p 8 ISBN 978 0 12 800395 4 Oldenburg Marcus Petersen Arnd Baur Xaver 2011 Maize pollen is an important allergen in occupationally exposed workers Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology 6 1 32 doi 10 1186 1745 6673 6 32 PMC 3269392 PMID 22165847 Karl J R 2007 Jala Maize is Small PDF Maize Genetics MNL 89 e3 Archived from the original PDF on August 8 2017 Retrieved November 19 2015 Grobman Alexander 1961 Races of Maize in Peru Solaimalai A Anantharaju P Irulandi S Theradimani M May 10 2020 Maize Crop Improvement Production Protection and Post Harvest Technology CRC Press p PT60 ISBN 978 1 000 17695 7 Common Corn Questions and Answers Archived May 1 2012 at the Wayback Machine Iowa State University of Science and Technology Agronomy Extension 2011 Karl J R January 2002 Maize is Not Day Neutral Day Length and Flowering PDF The Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter 89 e7 Archived from the original PDF on August 8 2017 Retrieved September 6 2015 Paliwal R L 2000 Tropical maize Improvement and production Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations ISBN 9789251044575 Unique gene combinations control tropical maize response to day lengths Eurekalert org June 14 2011 Retrieved November 14 2013 Elongated mesocotyl1 a phytochrome deficient mutant of maize Brutnell Lab Archived from the original on December 11 2013 Retrieved December 7 2013 News College of Agricultural Consumer amp Environmental Sciences Molecular Bases of Plant Resistance to Arthropods Annual Review of Entomology 57 1 309 328 2012 doi 10 1146 annurev ento 120710 100642 Corn Stalk Lodging PDF Monsanto Imagine October 2 2008 Archived from the original PDF on February 25 2009 Retrieved February 23 2009 Himi E Mares D J Yanagisawa A Noda K 2002 Effect of grain color gene R on grain dormancy and sensitivity of the embryo to abscisic acid ABA in wheat Journal of Experimental Botany 53 374 1569 74 doi 10 1093 jxb erf005 PMID 12096095 Winkel Shirley B 2001 Flavonoid biosynthesis A colorful model for genetics biochemistry cell biology and biotechnology Plant Physiology 126 2 485 493 doi 10 1104 pp 126 2 485 PMC 1540115 PMID 11402179 a b Chopra S Cocciolone S M Bushman S Sangar V McMullen M D Peterson T 2003 The maize unstable factor for orange1 is a dominant epigenetic modifier of a tissue specifically silent allele of pericarp color1 Genetics 163 3 1135 1146 doi 10 1093 genetics 163 3 1135 PMC 1462483 PMID 12663550 Structural And Transcriptional Analysis Of The Complex P1 wr Cluster In Maize Wolfgang Goettel Joachim Messing Plant amp Animal Genomes XVI Conference Archived February 18 2012 at the Wayback Machine Dong X Braun E L Grotewold E 2001 Functional conservation of plant secondary metabolic enzymes revealed by complementation of Arabidopsis flavonoid mutants with maize genes Plant Physiology 127 1 46 57 doi 10 1104 pp 127 1 46 PMC 117961 PMID 11553733 Lee E A Harper V 2002 Suppressor of Pericarp Pigmentation 1 SPP1 a novel gene involved in phlobaphene accumulation in maize Zea mays L pericarps Maydica 47 1 51 58 INIST 13772300 Grotewold Erich Drummond Bruce J Bowen Ben Peterson Thomas 1994 The myb homologous P gene controls phlobaphene pigmentation in maize floral organs by directly activating a flavonoid biosynthetic gene subset Cell 76 3 543 53 doi 10 1016 0092 8674 94 90117 1 PMID 8313474 S2CID 42197232 a b Gray Leaf Spot Severity Increasing Rapidly CropWatch September 17 2015 Retrieved July 24 2021 a b Before applying fungicides to corn Stop Look Consider Integrated Crop Management Iowa State University Extension Retrieved July 24 2021 Wani Shabir Hussain Samantara Kajal Razzaq Ali Kakani Grihalakshmi Kumar Pardeep June 2022 Back to the wild mining maize Zea mays L disease resistance using advanced breeding tools Molecular Biology Reports 49 6 5787 5803 doi 10 1007 s11033 021 06815 x PMID 35064401 S2CID 254834535 Brown David November 20 2009 Scientists have high hopes for corn genome The Washington Post Friedman William E Moore Richard C Purugganan Michael D October 2004 The evolution of plant development American Journal of Botany John Wiley amp Sons Inc 91 10 1726 1741 doi 10 3732 ajb 91 10 1726 PMID 21652320 Botanical Society of America Welcome to MaizeGDB MaizeGDB a b Prasanna Boddupalli M Bruce Anani Beyene Yoseph Makumbi Dan Gowda Manje Asim Muhammad Martinelli Samuel Head Graham P Parimi Srinivas November 2022 Host plant resistance for fall armyworm management in maize relevance status and prospects in Africa and Asia Theoretical and Applied Genetics 135 11 3897 3916 doi 10 1007 s00122 022 04073 4 PMC 9729323 PMID 35320376 Welcome to MaizeSequence org MaizeSequence org Retrieved September 21 2013 Researchers sequence genome of maize a key crop Reuters February 26 2008 Retrieved October 6 2014 Schnable P S Ware D Fulton R S Stein J C Wei F et al 2009 The B73 Maize Genome Complexity Diversity and Dynamics Science 326 5956 1112 1115 Bibcode 2009Sci 326 1112S doi 10 1126 science 1178534 PMID 19965430 S2CID 21433160 Feschotte C Pritham E 2009 A cornucopia of Helitrons shapes the maize genome Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 47 19747 19748 Bibcode 2009PNAS 10619747F doi 10 1073 pnas 0910273106 PMC 2785235 PMID 19926864 a b c d e Hough Josh Williamson Robert J Wright Stephen I November 23 2013 Patterns of Selection in Plant Genomes Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics 44 1 31 49 doi 10 1146 annurev ecolsys 110512 135851 Jugenheimer Robert W 1958 Agr Dev Paper 62 Hybrid Maize Breeding and Seed Production Rome Food and Agriculture Organization United Nations a b Rosenberg Tina April 9 2014 A Green Revolution This Time for Africa Duvick D N Cassman K G 2009 Post green revolution trends in yield potential of temperate maize in the north central United States Crop Science 39 6 1622 1630 doi 10 2135 cropsci1999 3961622x S2CID 39657597 Archived from the original on November 15 2009 Maiti Ratikanta 2012 Crop Plant Anatomy CABI ISBN 978 1 78064 174 4 McCaw Morgan E Wallace Jason G Albert Patrice S Buckler Edward S Birchler James A September 1 2016 Fast Flowering Mini Maize Seed to Seed in 60 Days Genetics 204 1 35 42 doi 10 1534 genetics 116 191726 ISSN 1943 2631 PMC 5012399 PMID 27440866 Van Deynze Allen Zamora Pablo Delaux Pierre Marc Heitmann Cristobal Jayaraman Dhileepkumar et al 2018 Nitrogen fixation in a landrace of maize is supported by a mucilage associated diazotrophic microbiota PLOS Biology 16 8 e2006352 doi 10 1371 journal pbio 2006352 PMC 6080747 PMID 30086128 a b c James Clive 2016 Global Status of Commercialized Biotech GM Crops 2016 ISAAA Brief 52 2016 ISAAA Archived from the original on May 4 2017 Retrieved August 26 2017 ISAAA Brief 43 2011 Executive Summary retrieved September 9 2012 a b c Ostry Vladimir Malir Frantisek Pfohl Leszkowicz Annie 2015 Comparative data concerning aflatoxin contents in Bt maize and non Bt isogenic maize in relation to human and animal health a review Acta Veterinaria Brno 84 1 47 53 doi 10 2754 avb201585010047 National Agricultural Statistics Service NASS Agricultural Statistics Board US Department of Agriculture Acreage report for 2010 PDF ISAAA Biotech Maize Update 2011 PDF Archived from the original PDF on May 24 2013 Retrieved October 6 2014 ISAAA Pocket K No 2 Plant Products of Biotechnology 2011 Retrieved October 6 2014 Andrew Pollack September 23 2000 Kraft Recalls Taco Shells With Bioengineered Corn The New York Times Genetically modified plants Global Cultivation Area Maize Archived August 12 2010 at the Wayback Machine GMO Compass March 29 2010 retrieved August 10 2010 a b Chakradhar Thammineni Hindu Vemuri Reddy Palakolanu Sudhakar December 2017 Genomic based breeding tools for tropical maize improvement PDF Genetica 145 6 525 539 doi 10 1007 s10709 017 9981 y PMID 28875394 S2CID 24074330 Kole Chittaranjan ed 2020 Genomic Designing of Climate Smart Cereal Crops Cham Switzerland Springer ISBN 978 3 319 93380 1 Gaut Brandon S Le Thierry d Ennequin Maud Peek Andrew S Sawkins Mark C June 20 2000 Maize as a model for the evolution of plant nuclear genomes Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 13 7008 7015 doi 10 1073 pnas 97 13 7008 PMC 34377 PMID 10860964 a b Whipple Clinton J Kebrom Tesfamichael H Weber Allison L Yang Fang Hall Darren et al August 16 2011 grassy tillers1 promotes apical dominance in maize and responds to shade signals in the grasses Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 33 E506 12 doi 10 1073 pnas 1102819108 PMC 3158142 PMID 21808030 a b c Wilkes Garrison March 8 2004 Chapter 1 1 Corn strange and marvelous but is a definitive origin known In Smith C Wayne Betran Javier Runge E C A eds Corn Origin History Technology and Production John Wiley amp Sons pp 3 63 ISBN 978 0 471 41184 0 Hyams Edward 1990 The Last of the Incas The Rise and Fall of an American Empire Dorset Press ISBN 978 0 88029 595 6 a b Wu Chi Chih Diggle Pamela K Friedman William E September 2011 Female gametophyte development and double fertilization in Balsas teosinte Zea mays subsp parviglumis Poaceae Sexual Plant Reproduction 24 3 219 229 doi 10 1007 s00497 011 0164 1 PMID 21380710 S2CID 8045294 Doebley John F 2004 The genetics of maize evolution PDF Annual Review of Genetics 38 37 59 doi 10 1146 annurev genet 38 072902 092425 PMID 15568971 Wild grass became maize crop more than 8 700 years ago National Science Foundation News Release at Eurekalert March 24 2009 March 23 2009 Retrieved October 6 2014 a b Ranere Anthony J Piperno Dolores R Holst Irene et al 2009 The cultural and chronological context of early Holocene maize and squash domestication in the Central Balsas River Valley Mexico Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 13 5014 5018 Bibcode 2009PNAS 106 5014R doi 10 1073 pnas 0812590106 PMC 2664064 PMID 19307573 Ranere Anthony J Piperno Dolores R Holst Irene et al 2009 Starch grain and phytolith evidence for early ninth millennium B P maize from the Central Balsas River Valley Mexico Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 13 5019 5024 Bibcode 2009PNAS 106 5019P doi 10 1073 pnas 0812525106 PMC 2664021 PMID 19307570 Michael Balter Corn It s Not for Cocktails March 23 2009 news sciencemag org Emerson Thomas E Hedman Kristin M Simon Mary L 2005 Marginal Horticulturalists or Maize Agriculturalists Archaeobotanical Paleopathological and Isotopic Evidence Relating to Langford Tradition Maize Consumption Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 30 1 67 118 doi 10 1179 mca 2005 003 JSTOR 20708222 S2CID 129150225 Evan Peacock Wendell R Haag Melvin L Warren Jr 2005 Prehistoric decline in freshwater mussels coincident with the advent of maize agriculture PDF Conservation Biology 19 2 547 551 doi 10 1111 j 1523 1739 2005 00036 x S2CID 3679709 Fernandez Armesto Felipe 2011 The World A History p 470 Penguin Academics London ISBN 0 205 75930 0 Hill Christina Gish November 20 2020 Returning the three sisters corn beans and squash to Native American farms nourishes people land and cultures The Conversation Retrieved January 9 2021 Mann Charles C July 2011 Cotton or Anchovies and Maize 1491 New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus 2nd ed New York Vintage Books pp 225 229 ISBN 978 1 4000 3205 1 Smith C Wayne Betran Javier Runge Edward C A March 8 2004 Corn Origin History Technology and Production John Wiley amp Sons p 802 ISBN 978 0 471 41184 0 Brown Robert C Brown Tristan R December 6 2013 Biorenewable Resources Engineering New Products from Agriculture Wiley PT114 ISBN 978 1 118 52492 3 Van Devender Karl July 2011 Grain Drying Concepts and Options PDF University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Retrieved December 15 2013 Baled Cornstalks University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Retrieved December 28 2023 International Grains Council international organization 2013 International Grains Council Market Report 28 November 2013 PDF a b FAOSTAT FAO Maize production in 2017 Crops Regions Production Quantity from pick lists United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Statistics Division FAOSTAT 2018 Retrieved March 15 2020 World Food and Agriculture Statistical Yearbook 2021 Rome FAO 2021 doi 10 4060 cb4477en ISBN 978 92 5 134332 6 S2CID 240163091 a b Download Historical Corn Intraday Futures Data CNA PortaraCQG Retrieved May 17 2022 a b Download Historical Chicago Corn JSE Intraday Futures Data CORN PortaraCQG May 24 2020 Retrieved May 17 2022 Marra M C Piggott N E Goodwin B K 2012 The impact of corn rootworm protected biotechnology traits in the United States AgBioForum pp 217 230 Archived from the original on August 6 2016 Retrieved October 6 2013 Erin W Hodgson Utah State University Extension and Utah Plant Pest Diagnostic Laboratory Western corn rootworm Ostlie KR et al University of Minnesota Extension Office Last Reviewed 2008 Bt Corn amp European Corn Borer Long Term Success Through Resistance Management Archived September 28 2013 at the Wayback Machine fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda J E Smith entnemdept ufl edu Retrieved November 14 2017 Pechan Tibor Ye Lijun Chang Yu min Mitra Anurina Lin Lei Davis Frank M Williams W Paul Luthe Dawn S July 2000 A Unique 33 kD Cysteine Proteinase Accumulates in Response to Larval Feeding in Maize Genotypes Resistant to Fall Armyworm and Other Lepidoptera The Plant Cell 12 7 1031 1040 doi 10 1105 tpc 12 7 1031 PMC 149047 PMID 10899972 PestWeb Greater Rice Weevil Agspsrv34 agric wa gov au Archived from the original on September 28 2011 Retrieved July 29 2010 Thakur J N Rawat U S Pawar A D 1987 First Record of Armyworm Mythimna separata Haworth as a serious pest of maize in Kullu HP India and recommendations for its integrated management Tropical Pest Management 33 2 173 175 doi 10 1080 09670878709371141 Juroszek Peter von Tiedemann Andreas 2013 Climatic changes and the potential future importance of maize diseases a short review PDF Journal of Plant Diseases and Protection 120 2 49 56 Pilcher Jeffrey M Maize and the Making of Mexico p 27 Peterson James 2012 Vegetables Revised The Most Authoritative Guide to Buying Preparing and Cooking with More than 300 Recipes page 184 Random House Nweke Felix I The cassava transformation in Africa Food and Agriculture Organization Retrieved January 8 2024 Foley Jonathon It s Time to Rethink America s Corn System Scientific American Retrieved February 18 2019 Nielsen L Michelle 2007 The Biography 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doi 10 1186 s13068 016 0479 0 PMC 4791978 PMID 26981155 Fuel Ethanol Plants Thermal Kinetics Engineering PLLC Thermal Kinetics Engineering PLLC Retrieved July 7 2017 Mark Clayton January 28 2008 Christian Science Monitor Christian Science Monitor Retrieved October 6 2014 Iowa Renewable Fuels Association Archived from the original on October 11 2014 Retrieved October 6 2014 Hermann Hofbauer Reinhard R Klaus Bosch Reinhard K Christian Aichernig January 2002 Biomass CHP plant Gussing A success story Ministry of Economy and Labour and of the Federal States of Niederosterreich and Burgenland S2CID 56073239 Revista Envio Are Free Trade Agreements Free Are They Development Strategies envio org ni CBOT Corn Futures Contract Overview via Wikinvest 2009 US Corn Stats PDF Iowa Corn Retrieved December 2 2010 United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service Corn supply disappearance and share of total corn used for ethanol www ers usda gov datafiles US Bioenergy Feedstocks table05 xls Excel file accessed June 29 2015 a b Hoffman L Baker A 2011 Estimating the substitution of distillers grains for corn and soybean meal in the U S feed complex United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service FDS 11 l 01 62 pp Berrin Katherine amp Larco Museum The Spirit of Ancient Peru Treasures from the Museo Arqueologico Rafael Larco Herrera New York Thames and Hudson 1997 Gordon Ken September 28 2019 From oddity to cherished Dublin icon Field of Corn celebrates 25 years The Columbus Dispatch Archived from the original on September 30 2019 Retrieved December 21 2021 Croatian National Bank Kuna and Lipa Coins of Croatia Archived June 22 2009 at the Wayback Machine 1 Lipa Coin Archived June 28 2011 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved on March 31 2009 Alter Rebecca April 5 2023 What the Shuck Is Happening to Broadway Vulture us Retrieved August 14 2023 Horton Adrian April 5 2023 Shucked review corny musical brings country to Broadway GB The Guardian ISSN 0261 3077 Retrieved August 14 2023 Cote David April 5 2023 Review Shucked Pops Loudly on Broadway Despite Some Empty Calories Observer US Retrieved August 14 2023 Further readingByerlee Derek The globalization of hybrid maize 1921 70 Journal of Global History 15 1 2020 101 122 Clampitt Cynthia Maize How Corn Shaped the U S Heartland 2015 Bonavia Duccio May 13 2013 Maize Origin Domestication and Its Role in the Development of Culture Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 107 02303 1 External links nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Zea mays nbsp Wikispecies has information related to Zea mays Maize Genetics and Genomics Database Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center Zea mays Germplasm Resources Information Network Agricultural Research Service United States Department of Agriculture Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Maize amp oldid 1194431208, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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