An Overview Of Corn – An Interesting Crop With A Long History
My favorite crop is corn, and we all know that corn is growing from the soil. I guess that there are around 99. 9% of people have a chance to eat corn products. However, only a few people know about the history of corn. I have been included in the more significant part of people who don’t know corn history before I do some simple researches.
First of all, corn is one of the essential crops all over the world, and corn is not only a food resource, but corn is the original material of plastic, starch, flour, and syrup, etc. One of the reasons why my favorite crop is corn, I think corn changed our world, and it is not limited to a cup of buttered corn as a side. Different countries have different types of recipes to make with corn, for example, in China, we mostly boiled the whole ear of corn to eat like a snake, and we would like to cook fried rice with corn and carrot and beans. People eat corns in the worldwide because I have seen a report that in 145 grams of grain contains 22 mg sodium, 27 g carbohydrates, and 5g protein, etc. And corn provides vitamin B and C, and magnesium, etc. These nutrients can help with the immune system, energy metabolism, nerve conduction, and muscle contraction, and many other benefits for keeping the body healthy.
In many languages, corn has called maize, and it is a kind of local crop in America. Around 7000 and 8000 years ago, people found this plant in the southern part of Mexico in Central America. I have read an interesting story which is talking about the history of how to find a corn plant. At that time, corns are not as big as the corn we eat today, early corn has been called Teosinte, which has more ears of corn, and these ears were thinner and smaller. In one Teosinte plant, it has approximately seven branches, and each branch has several corn ears. And the corn kernels were smaller. Next, due to Americans have different lifestyles from New England, people like hunting, corn spread quite slowly with beans and pumpkins and other plants. Native Americans thought corn plant was one of the “three sisters,” and the other two plants were beans and squash. Yet southern New England people thought corn is a gift from Cautantowwit, which is a chief deity and creator god. After a long period of time, the corn has been changed by the different weather conditions and other changes. Obviously, corn has plenty of types and based on the improvement of technology, and there are trans-gene methods and hybrid methods using in plant breeding mostly.
As I know people eat the sweet corn most and I searched many websites about sweet corn, I found that the first time people have a record of planting sweet corn is in Europe, called Papoon, at that time since 1779. The sweetcorn was found because the spontaneous mutation occurs from the field corn. Because the recessive mutation happens in genetic of the standard field corn, which genetic control the conversion of sugar to starch in the endosperm of the corn, so the sweet corn is coming at that time. And nowadays, the United States of America is the most among produce country and the most export country of sweetcorn. Since the 19th century, the technology of plant sweetcorn is started coming to the US in the 19th century, and then, sweetcorn becomes the most popular food for the people living in the Middle and Southern US. The best way to improve the sweetcorn is hybridization in the 20th century Because the hybridization sweetcorn is improved quality and disease resistance ability. Moreover, because the hybridization happens, the sweet corn has few different colors, such as yellow, white, and bi-color.
As I come from China, the most popular corn type in China is waxy corn. The waxy corn is not standard in North America, but it also has a long history in China. The discovered of waxy corn in China in the early 1900s. The history of waxy corn is because of China transferred from the Americas' corn but after the plant in the South-West parts of China. The genetic mutation happens to change the starch's different and useful properties, and it makes the corn taste waxy. People are also called 'sticky corn. ' After the genetic mutation in China, the United States purchased from China in 1909 and started to do the research. During World War II, the supply of the food and starch is mainly from cassava starch，after the supply was cut by war. Scientists found the waxy corn starch is a suitable replacement for the cassava starch. In the 1940s, the geneticists at Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station develop the waxy corn hybridization. In the research, waxy corn starch type is changed from the other field corn. The reason is the waxy corn has the starch-like wax in the endosperm. The recessive gene influences the genetic on the No. 9 chromosome (WXWX). It causes the endosperm to contain 100% Amylopectin or Branched-chain starch.
Black corn is another interesting type of corn, and it also called Black Aztec Corn in the United States and the United Kingdom. Outside of South America, the Black Aztec corn has to find in the supermarket. The dark color corn colored as black or dark purple. J. H. Gregory introduced the hybrid corn in the 1860s. Black corn is an heirloom variety and is botanically classified, and the black corn has the same species as the sweet corn It is famous for its striking color, which also makes it popular as an ornamental. The corn is colored of black, and the reason for the Black Aztec Corn come out is sweet corn has a genetic mutation to the color of black. The scientist uses black corn as the seed to continue to plant the corn. Scientists find out the rate of black seed is increasing, by the research go though, the Black Aztec Corn is coming to us. And the black corn generally has higher nutrition value compare with the common sweet corn. For example, in 100 grams of the blue corn tortilla, the protein has 7. 8%, if you compare with common yellow corn tortilla is 5. 7%.
I have worked on Iowa State Haploid Seed Research Lab with Dr. Uschi and her husband. It maybe is the future of hybrid corn plants, I think, in order to improve the yield and make more types of corn products. I also considered the connections between the environment changes and the corn. I guess that if the climate changed one day, corn would not disappear first, because it has a widely used all over the world, and in contrast, corn can help with the environment, for instance, one of the corn products is used for the package which is recycled, and after people used it, it can be melted with water, and finally disappeared. Corn is not only a crop for the Earth, but it is also a kind of food, a type of material, and a way to help with the environment.
