Teosinte and corn breeding

[AndrewB]

Do you have seed for Joseph's / reed's Neandercorn? It is multi eared descended from either a day neutral Zea mexicana or the Zea diploperrenis x corn hybrids. I can't remember. Someday I'll get back to teosinte breeding. I would love a purple kernel teosinte or japonica striped teosinte through backcrossing the opposite way.

[Kadence Luneman]

I don't. I got teosinte from EFN. Trying to find a place to plant it away from the corn. See if it is day length sensitive or not.

[Garrett Schantz]

I believe the "Lupinaster" fellow on Ebay was selling a Zea diploperennis hybrid before.

I don't really like the idea of importing things from Poland and getting in trouble though. Seems like a nice guy.

Anyways, rather than planting out his corn out in the field, he planted a lot of his specimens in large pots - without a huge regard for anything other than wild traits, perennialism, and the ability to cross back to domestic corn.

I think this is a pretty good idea myself.


With how corn cross pollinates, selecting perennial plants in the first season they grow is probably difficult.

Believe he may have started selecting for ones that die back when it's cold rather than get hit by frost and die. And selecting for actual semi edible corn.

Keeping them in pots also means you probably end up with older generations mixed in. So, that can help if a desired trait is lost. Plus, with these crosses, bottlenecking can happen if you try isolating small groups to make sure they have certain traits.

[Garrett Schantz]

I'm going to mention some corn traits or mutations, just personal observations - things not everyone knows about.

1. White Striped Variegated Corn:

"Japonica" seems to be the most common variegated variety around. There's also a white and pink variety, also usually called Japonica. Some people have mentioned most strains have "GMO Pollution".


2. Sticky / Waxy Corn:

Seems to have mostly originated in Asia. Yields I believe are lower than dent corns, I'm assuming yield could be improved with breeding.

Sticky corn is considered to be better for feed than typical corns. It's also eaten by humans. There's a "Japanese Blue Sticky Corn" available, that some people have taken an interest in.


3.Purple Corn:

High Antho Corns like Maize Morado sometimes have purple husks or other purple features on them.


4. Pod Corn:

This isn't edible at all, and it is inedible. Leaves form around each kernel.

Now, why is there so much variety in terms of color, purple husks and whatnot?

Apparently, some tribes grew them as ceremonial offerings or whatever else. Hard to find information on that, but yeah.

It's not a wild maize / teosinte. It's interesting, but it will still cross with other corn. It's also sorta interesting since that means tribes or civilizations had to presumably isolate these from their other corn by quite a bit.



5. Bear Paw (Theater Corn):

I'm labeling these as Theater, as there's other types with the same name apparently. This corn, usually forms two cobs per husk. Sometimes they'll split and make something resembling a "bears paw".

This, is considered a popcorn. J&L Gardens mentions that this variety produces a lot of pollen. I'm assuming it's due to the plant producing two cobs per husk, thus probably also meaning double the tassels and whatnot per (area?).


6. Ga1-s:

Already mentioned this elsewhere, but this is mostly found in Popcorns and Teosinte.

The trait mostly prevents a lot of pollen from corns that don't carry the trait, from crossing into them.

Probably a good barrier against GMOs. I've also read that dent corn and popcorns are regulated differently with GMOs and things because of the trait. So, there's that.

If you're growing non-popcorns with the gene - please do ensure that others nearby aren't growing popcorns. Different corns have different isolation distances due to the trait - so it would be best to check for popcorn and dent growers within a certain range.

"Independence Corn" will cross with Popcorns. (Bear Paw hybrid, anyone?).

Pod Corn may carry this gene.


7. Nitrogen-Fixing Corn:

Root nodules form on these corns (Mostly types from the Andes). I believe research has shown that bacteria attach to the nodules. So, it's not just that having those exposed nodules above the soil cause them to necessarily pull in nitrogen from the air.

"Self-Feeding Corn" is something I'd probably mix into one of Joseph or another person's corns, as they're bred with low maintenance sorta themes in mind. Nitrogen fixation would be nice. Maybe it's most effective in warmer climates, but it's nice.

I probably don't need to mention that it's probably a great mix with perennial corn hybrids.


8. Perennial Corn

Most of these are usually from lab owned / patented lines.

Ones that aren't - I would hope they stabilize some lines and release them prematurely as large companies may decide to patent the perennial trait as it's not widely spread yet.

I'm assuming they've already mixed the Nitrogen fixation trait with it, so they may decide to do a public unveiling eventually.




There's all sorts of traits out there. Hopefully this helps with any sort of "is this teosinte" or whatever else, just in case people are wondering. Or this may make people go "oh I wasn't aware of this or that".


There's a chance that I'll grow Dzit-Bacal Ancient Mayan Popcorn and Bear Paw around some "Independence Corn".


Independence Corn might cross easily with Teosinte. So, if you're breeding with Teosinte or whatever - that's more than just a "anti GMO" line.

[Garrett Schantz]

Plant breeding can also be "we combined these two or more "novel" genes into this one variety / hybrid!".

GMO laws and plant patenting can be quite, annoying.

Annoying is a nice word.


But yeah. Usually those fellows would need to showcase their product or plants / seed to a lot of people and distribute them a bit before their patents stick.

Growing and distributing related things, before these sorts do that - would be good.

[Jeremy Weiss]

Clarification. Bear Paw corns don't produced two ears per husk (short of a freak, no corn does that). The end of the ear is just flattened, and can be split. A corn ear can produce two KERNELS per cupule (where the kernel develops from), though most only make one. If it makes two, that's "shoepeg" corn.

Since I've mentioned it before, there is also "gourdseed" corn, where the kernels are very straight and plank like. That WAS a go to corn for a lot of the Southeast in the late 18th and early 19th century, but is now sort of hard to find in a pure state. However, most Corn Belt dents have a LOT of gourdseed in their ancestry (which is why they have that flat, sort of inverted triangle shape to their kernels rather than the more square, blocky on a lot of Northern Flints have.)

I always think of Pod corn as a sort of half reversion to teosinte morphology. If you ever take a teosinte kernel apart, you'll see that, under the woody shell, there is a membrane enclosing the actual seed. In pod corn, the corn has lost the shell and kept the membrane. All corns still have PARTS of that membrane (it's that flaky papery stuff that gets everywhere when you take the kernels off the cob.) its just thinner in modern corns and doesn't cover the bulk of the kernel.

Waxy corn is nutritionally different than other corns. Other corns store their starch mostly as amylose, waxy as amylopectin (which is what makes it waxy/glutinous). About the only other interesting thing is that a lot of even modern waxy corns still have purple as a kernel color, in part or in all, whereas, as I said, most modern commercial corns are white and yellow only.

The "morado" color is basically the extreme end of the possible pericarp/husk colors, which go from colorless (clear) through many shades of tans, browns, oranges, reds and purples, both solid and chinmarked (stripes). The Andean pattern I refer to as fletcha de pavo (turkey feather*) is probably also a pericarp based pattern (I don't have enough kernels to sacrifice one to peel and find out.) While not as potent in terms of anthocyanin production, I occasionally have bumped into ears whose pericarp is an astonishingly attractive shade of bright fuchsia.

*Note to Spanish speakers: Yes, I know that "pavo" technically means "peacock" not turkey. However, in Latin America, referring to a turkey as a "pavo" is actually quite common, the same as a local might use the word "tigre" (tiger) when talking about a jaguar or puma.
       

[Garrett Schantz]

This is J&L Gardens description of Bear Paw.


Bear Paw is a white popcorn borne on beautiful red stalks. It was developed by Glenn Thompson from Vermont who popularized the variety in New England beginning in the 1930's. Plants are about 4 foot tall and the ears, 4-5 inches long. The silks are long and the tassels put out an enormous amount of pollen. The most unusual trait, which gives the corn it's name, is the tendency to form two cobs in a single husk. Sometimes this means the cobs emerge a bit from the husks so watch carefully that insects do not enter the ear. Anyway, kids, especially, will love growing it and popping out the pearly white kernels.
note: no intenational shipping of corn seed


Seed Savers has a more flattering picture:

https://www.seedsavers.org/bear-paw-organic-corn


It's not two seperate cobs, they're simply fused. It's interesting I suppose.

[Kadence Luneman]

Very neat. I had read about some of these and some were new to me.

[reed]

My corn, which has teosinte in its ancestry has produced some double or split ears similar to that bear paw. I don't know that the teosinte has anything to do with it or if it's just something that happens sometimes when you mix up a whole bunch of corn.

One time an ear with five splits showed up, it was huge. I selected heavily against those multi-ears, as they take a long time to dry down and the shucks are pushed open, making them very susceptible to molds and bugs. Haven't seen one for a couple of years but expect they will show up from time to time, for a long time.

[Garrett Schantz]

Yeah, to my understanding, the husks end up opening due to the double / split ears.

Which invites mold / bugs and other things.

It's pretty interesting that someone selected for the trait intentionally and that it lasted for awhile as a marketable corn.

I'd personally try moving the trait over to a Japonica type or something just to have it as an ornamental trait.

[Jeremy Weiss]

My corn, which has teosinte in its ancestry has produced some double or split ears similar to that bear paw. I don't know that the teosinte has anything to do with it or if it's just something that happens sometimes when you mix up a whole bunch of corn.

One time an ear with five splits showed up, it was huge. I selected heavily against those multi-ears, as they take a long time to dry down and the shucks are pushed open, making them very susceptible to molds and bugs. Haven't seen one for a couple of years but expect they will show up from time to time, for a long time.

You also tend to wind up with more than a few kernels getting stuck IN BETWEEN the splits and basically growing INSIDE the cob, which are a pain to get out (and can provide an inducement for critters to start chomping on your ears if you don't, so the animal that was formerly content to simply bite the tip off is now tearing the whole ear to shreds.)

[Kadence Luneman]

Just found this and thought it was really cool!

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/to-decode-mystery-corn-smithsoniain-scientists-recreate-earth-ten-thousand-years-ago-180949708/

[AndrewB]

Just found this and thought it was really cool!

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/to-decode-mystery-corn-smithsoniain-scientists-recreate-earth-ten-thousand-years-ago-180949708/

Sounds like the one I grew one time.

I got in an argument about it once because a self proclaimed corn expert said I had my teosinte species mixed up. He had the gall to try and get me to buy his corn book on Amazon too.

Turns out the teosinte species just have a lot of variation. I've had both zea mexicana grow like corn with one stalk and zero tillers and I have some now that grows like a short small grass all tillers and no main stalk. Just depends on the accession.

https://keen101.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/growing-prehistoric-corn-teosinte/

[Garrett Schantz]

My corn is growing well enough.

I started it weeks before other people, and it's a few inches taller than other people's!

Ok yeah. Wasn't worth covering the few experimental plants.


Also, I was living at a rental property. Now, we will be moving down the road.

I've found that corn is easy to dig up and whatnot.


I put a bunch of corn into pots weeks ago.

They're starting to get "moody" with root space in those.


Anyways, I'm placing the others into a tote.

We probably aren't moving, as in sleeping over there and situated for another 4 weeks maybe.



This means, that I may not be able to actually have opportunities to go all in, and that with planting everything before that point.

I probably will in at least a week times or so.


I also really hate taking plants out of the ground and plopping them somewhere else in the ground.

Digging things up means damaging their roots. Then they need babied for a bit.


So, I'll move plant we bought and stuff like these into totes.

Then move them over to the new place.




The question I wanna ask, I'm still semi new to corn breeding and grexes.


With the Gigante corn, Independence corn and some other grexes, I went in and selected out kernels.

Blue kernels, to be precise. Well, and purple ones.

I also selected out kernels that had interesting little designs on them.

One type, I selected the red ones out of a group because I only found a few out of many kernels that were red.



I understand that a blue kernel or whatever else doesn't mean that I'll necessarily get a blue kerneled offspring or entirely that color. These are grexes.


But, I've noticed that with Japanese Blue Sticky and especially Dobranoc Corn - their stalks are looking especially blue or purple.


Looking through the kernels that I selected out of grexes, most of those plants have deep purple stalks.


Other Independence corns or things that I selected out for other reasons, are either white or green.


The red kernels I selected out of Gigante look pretty red.



I merely looked for blue kernels, because I think I found 4 blue kernels in one grexes packet, 6 in another's. They were the minorities in these packets - I selected blue and purple. Treating them the same because they looked like mixes of blue / purple or a very odd gray mix.


And, I wanna cross Dobranoc and Japanese Blue Sticky in order to get a deeper anthocyanin Sticky sweet corn.


Then I'll also hopefully move over the nitrogen fixing traits from the others.



Also, Independence Corn's entire group so far has the fastest growing stalks. And their stalks are getting thick and sturdy, faster than others.


I'm also growing a few high carotene, Lofthouse astronomy - plus the grexes and others.

Those are outpacing everything.



So yeah. Does the stalk colors correlate at all to the eventual corns kernels or ensure some percentage will be red / blue / purple?

[Jeremy Weiss]

My corn has sort of been an uphill battle. After dad pointed out to me that trying to plant the space I had traditionally thought of as "the corn patch" (a roughly 12'x12' square) was now pretty pointless (due to the trees not only having sent their roots so thoroughly into the ground as to make it essentially undiggable and putting the whole thing in perpetual shade.) I moved the planned corn to the plot I call "The Stump". This is a LOT smaller, and so left me with a lot fewer slots for corn plants (it's also round, so I had to modify my plant for planting in a circle rather than in rows or blocks.)

With that in mind, I swapped my planned yearly corn from the red mini-dent to the multicolored one (of which I had somewhat fewer seeds, and which was a bit older.) This consisted of seed from three ears, a solid magenta one (of which I had only kept the dented kernels, of which there weren't many) and a mix of two multicolored miniature gourdseed kerneled ears, one the standard long "carrot" shape on usually sees in miniature corns, and the other a short stubby one like I had found in the beginning; on that had an impressive 24 rows to it (I could have sworn I actually counted 36 rows, but since all my books say that is impossible, I assume my memory is tricking me.)

The problem is that, after all of these years, my corn seed has FINALLY begun to show its age. The purple one had ZERO germination. This wasn't a total surprise (since there were so few, and they all were odd shapes, I had suspected that maybe those kernels were malformed and non-viable.)

But the other mix was a bit of a disappointment as well. A little less than HALF of the kernels geminated AT ALL, and of those that did, a great many developed only a hypocotyl, without a radicle (i.e. a shoot, but no root). After giving them an extra week to show some root growth, I found that, out of the maybe 60 or so kernels I had set, I had 12 viable sprouts. Those I have potted up (three per pot) and stuck in the cold frame until they are "safe" to put in the ground (i.e. when all of their stored food is used up and I can be reasonably sure the animals aren't going to immediately and chomp them all down to get at what endosperm is left on them).

I also at this time made up two more "greenhouses" sowed with about another 150 kernels). These are on their "trial week" now (between when I take out the ones that didn't germinate to make more room for the ones that did and before the dead ones start to get moldy and threaten the good ones and when I remove the ones that develop no roots and pot up the rest.)

The one sown with purple kernels from the mix (which pretty much has to be from the skinny cob, as it was the only one with purple ones) did marginally better than the first set, maybe a bit more than half have sprouted. The ones with the pink kernels however (maybe a bit of the long ear, but mostly the short fat one) was pathetic; out of 60 kernels, I got only 4 to sprout.

Based on the first one, I imagine that this will leave me with about 24-36 corn plants, which is fine for the space I am growing in, but means there really is no fudge room if some of them conk out (I still have the white kernels from the ears in reserve, but by the time I got those started, they'd probably be too far behind the rest to catch up.)