This reminds me: I'm currently reading "At Home" (Bill Bryson), and he says that the mystery of how ancient peoples managed to turn teosinte into something worth growing and eating. The scholarly research, e.g. [1] seems to be about maize spread, which is interesting, but it begs the question of how and why they made it into maize in the first place.
Even more amusing, he says there was a conference at the Univ. of Illinois in 1969 on this, and it was so contentious (even getting personal at times) that no papers resulted.
If, ten thousand years ago, you had been asked to guess which would be the seat of the greatest future civilizations, you would probably have settled on some part of Central or South America on the basis of the amazing things they were doing with food there. Academics call this portion of the New World Mesoamerica, an accommodatingly vague term which could fairly be defined as Central America plus as much or as little of North and South America as are needed to support a hypothesis.
Mesoamericans were the greatest cultivators in history, but of all their many horticultural innovations none was more lastingly important or unexpected than the creation of maize, or corn as it is known where I come from.* We still don’t have any idea how they did it. If you look at primitive forms of barley, rice or wheat set beside their modern counterparts you can see the affinities at once. But nothing in the wild remotely resembles modern corn. Genetically its nearest relative is a wispy grass called teosinte, but beyond the level of chromosomes there is no discernible kinship. Corn grows into a hefty cob on a single stalk and its grains are encased in a stiff, protective husk. An ear of teosinte, in comparison, is less than an inch long, huskless and grows on a multiplicity of stems. It is almost valueless as a food; one kernel of corn is more nutritious than a whole ear of teosinte.
It is beyond us to divine how any people could have bred cobs of corn from such a thin and unpropitious plant – or even thought to try. Hoping to settle the matter once and for all, in 1969 food scientists from all over the world convened at ‘An Origin of Corn Conference’ at the University of Illinois, but the debates grew so vituperative and bitter, and at times personal, that the conference broke up in confusion, and no papers from it were ever published. Nothing like it has been attempted since. Scientists are now pretty sure, however, that corn was first domesticated on the plains of western Mexico and are in no doubt, thanks to the persuasive wonders of genetics, that somehow it was coaxed into being from teosinte, but how it was done remains as much a mystery as it ever did.
That's the passage. I think I've disentangled this. They didn't have all the DNA tools we have now. Some people refused to accept what ChatGPT says below, which is the only possible way it could have happened. They insisted there had to be a third plant involved.
I think I ignored his last sentence. But then he doesn't tell us what the controversy WAS.
A friend of mine was one hit in the crossfire of a maize conference and was never the same. Oddly he was there for a separate echidnae con but the maize folks just… jumped to conclusions and did what maize people do.
For years after that, he talked only of Chapalote alleles. Eventually, he made it back to the duck billed platypus, a much diminished man.
I guess there are at least two competing narratives? What are they?
Somehow, it had to be selective breeding, since what other explanation is there? But WHY people did it, and what motivated them -- I don't know what evidence there could be.
ChatGPT tell us:
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The transformation of teosinte into maize (corn) is considered one of the most significant achievements in agricultural history. Mesoamericans, the indigenous peoples of present-day Mexico and Central America, were responsible for this domestication process, which occurred over thousands of years. This transformation involved careful selection and cultivation of teosinte plants with desirable traits, leading to the development of the maize we know today.
Here are the key steps involved in how Mesoamericans turned teosinte into maize:
Observation and Gathering: Mesoamerican communities initially observed wild teosinte plants growing in their natural habitats. Teosinte is a wild grass with small, tough kernels. Over time, they realized that some teosinte plants had slightly larger and more accessible kernels, which could potentially be useful for food.
Selective Harvesting: They started to selectively harvest teosinte plants with the most desirable traits, such as larger seeds or fewer hard outer coverings. By saving and replanting the seeds from these chosen plants, they promoted the propagation of desired characteristics in the next generation.
Controlled Planting: Mesoamericans began to cultivate teosinte near their settlements, providing a controlled environment for its growth. This controlled planting allowed them to have more influence over the breeding and development of teosinte plants with preferred traits.
Repeated Selection and Domestication: Over generations, Mesoamericans continued to save seeds from the teosinte plants that exhibited the most favorable traits. Gradually, the teosinte plants underwent a process of domestication, with their characteristics evolving to become more like those of modern maize.
Artificial Selection: The process of domestication also involved artificial selection, where humans intentionally chose plants with specific features and bred them together to enhance those traits in the next generation.
Increasing Yield: As the domestication process progressed, the size and yield of the maize cobs increased, and the seeds became more substantial and easier to process as a food source.
Cultural Significance: Maize became deeply ingrained in the culture and traditions of Mesoamerican societies. It played a crucial role in their diets and rituals and became a staple crop in their agricultural practices.
This process of gradual domestication led to the transformation of teosinte into maize, creating a crop that was much more productive and nutritious for Mesoamerican communities. It's essential to note that this domestication was a result of generations of careful observation, selection, and cultivation by the indigenous people of the region, showcasing their knowledge and understanding of plant genetics and agriculture.
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Honestly, I'd like to hear what's controversial about this.
Update: I think Bryson is behind the times. In 1969, genetic sequencing hadn't advanced very much, and some people couldn't believe teosinte could become corn via selective breeding. However, they've lost the argument now.
There was a corn variety that was semi-recently discovered to have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria which provides nitrogen to the corn plant, thus eliminating the need to use nitrogen fertilizer. It's currently in development to be commercialized, and I'm sure some geneticists are already trying to splice other crops to gain the same ability.
There is a rich diversity of crops around the world that need examination, you never know what you'll find.
BBC did a pretty good video [0] about it. Haven't really heard much about it since. Must be extremely exciting for scientists, as (to my understanding) this kind of self-fertilization is completely unheard of!
> this kind of self-fertilization is completely unheard of!
How is this different from other nitrogen-fixing species that are already known? Some olives, plenty of legumes such as soy beans, clover and alfalfa all have symbiotic relationships with bacteria for this.
> How is this different from other nitrogen-fixing species that are already known?
It does it in a radically different way - pulling bacteria up from the soil into weird drippy goo from roots dangling midair. The video and various articles aren't totally clear on this point, but it suggests it can pull a lot more nitrogen out of the air than other known nitrogen fixing plants (which keep the bacteria underground on their roots).
This really isn't a new idea as this is how most legumes get their nitrogen. It is new to find it naturally in corn (a grass) but the idea of moving this from legumes to grasses has long been a dream.
The video of the natural form of this showed what appeared to be some very wet slime that was fully exposed to the open air. I'm guessing extra water requirements to keep this mass wet for the bacteria would be prohibitive at modern farming scales.
The article indirectly references the company Masienda (https://masienda.com). A lot of the restaurants in the US using heirloom corn (including every restaurant in the article) are getting it in part through Masienda. But Masienda also sell masa direct to consumer and I highly recommend it!
For a parallel effort to save heirloom beans, see Rancho Gordo. They sell online and in stores; their bean club sometimes has an 11,000 place waitlist.
Yes, Masienda rocks, and making one's own masa from homemade nixtamal is extraordinary. Many of us learned the idea of using an Indian wet grinder from "Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico", where Bricia Lopez recommends the Premier Small Wonder Table Top Wet Grinder that I have used for years. It takes 40 minutes of scraping every now and then, adding water to yield a too-wet masa one dries with a bit of masa harina.
A dramatic improvement comes by instead using a chocolate refiner based on the same unit, with custom hardware. My favorite hardware store puzzle: Who else has my problem? Home chocolate makers are famously particular.
Masienda sells a tabletop "Molinito" masa grinder. I've eaten tortillas at a restaurant that uses this grinder, and I was not impressed. It could be that they chose a coarser texture to impress on their customers that this was artisan food! However, the original method of hand grinding masa took time. An Indian wet grinder more closely replicates this process than any "one and done" mill.
Otherwise typical midwestern kid, for some reason I've always hated beans - especially refried beans but also black beans, pinto beans, etc.
Rancho Gordo beans are transformatively good - I absolutely love them as long as they're not criminally overcooked. I still hate other normal beans from the supermarkets.
They're really THAT good. Highly recommend them to anyone.
For people who hate beans, try the midnight black beans. Cook until they're just soft enough to eat comfortably (play around with that threshold a bit, but aim to not overcook).
This gives me hope! I was reading some of Dianna Kennedy's ("The Julia Child of Mexico") books and she goes into some detail of the loss of heirloom varieties of different crops in Mexico due to cheap imports. The peppers were especially affected; the local Mexican industry was inundated by imports from China, which were often not even the pepper which it was advertised to be. This had a severe impact on the local pepper production, many of which depended on local microclimates for cultivation and are not available outside that particular region of Mexico.
The point of ethanol in gasoline is to replace roughly 15% of the oil we consume with not-oil that we make here (because 30% of our entire imports were saudi oil for decades) for energy independence, to have another way to subsidize people in Iowa, and to replace MTBE as an octane booster because it kept leaching out of ground storage tanks and poisoning innocent people. Ethanol pisses a lot of people off for various reasons but it's an extremely safe octane booster compared to our previous substances, keeps american energy less dependent on a war mongering desert country, and is yet another way to funnel tax dollars to a few big corn conglomerates.
Even if the only thing ethanol in gasoline did was increase octane, it's such a big improvement in safety compared to MTBE that it would still be a success. If you think early 2000s america gave a fuck about carbon emissions when the current administration was literally an oil baron, IDK what to tell you.
I wish that the "nixtamal" precooked form of corn would be more widely available in Europe. It really is a superior product compared to plain corn flour - I didn't really like most corn-based dishes before I tried it.
Not sure where you are based, but recently found these german farmers [0] that use local corn with imported machinery for their products. They also sell fresh masa (which, I guess, you are referring to?) as opposed to already pressed tortillas.
It's honestly a shame how hard it is to find true latin american foods and restaurants in parts of europe. I stuff my face with anything mexican/latin american every time I visit the States...Already miss it.
Masa Harina is becoming pretty easy to find though. Most asian (for some reason) grocers carry it.
I literally just bought some nixtamal online the other day, I wish there were more shops that carried it.
More interestingly, I was extremely surprised to discover that nixtamal is completely absent in South America, despite the high consumption of corn products. I lived in Peru for a time, and buying nixtamal was impossible, not one vendor, physical or online, carried it.
The process is not completely absent in South America, it's just named differently. In Colombia for example it is referred to as maíz "pelado" and in Venezuela it is spelled slightly different "pelao" but the process is identical to what Mexicans call nixtamal.
If you're desperate enough, you can nixtamalize corn by getting your hands on some calcium hydroxide (referrred to as cal) and giving some kernels a good overnight bath in a mixture of cal and water. The obvious downside being that it takes forever (and also the mixture is caustic so you can't touch it).
I've done this process maybe 5 times, and I live in Mexico where it's done daily. It really doesn't take that long relative to cooking a good loaf of bread. And I've never had problems touching the mixture as long as I wash my hands etc. Not trying to dismiss you, just want to share that it's really an easy process and everyone should try it!
I think there’s also a variety factor, heirlooms are usually very unique and fun-looking. But yes I think taste is generally good too. I’m growing heirloom Zucchini and Tomatoes this year. The tomato flavor certainly isn’t bad, about on par with other good garden tomatoes. The zucchini on the other hand is out of this world good, and retains the flavor even when the fruits are large, unusual for most other Zuccs. (Variety is Costata Romanesco)
It depends on what you're looking for. You'll struggle to grow something as sweet as store bought sweetcorn but you can easily grow corn with deeper and richer flavor at home. Just make sure to select a variety meant for direct human consumption and not animal feed or ethanol (some are for human consumption but only once processed).
US industrialized food is almost universally bland and tasteless compared to home grown because they're picked too early and bred for aesthetics and transport - it's an issue every immigrant I know struggles with. On top of that, there are dozens if not hundreds of different varieties that haven't been commercialized for every fruit or vegetable in the grocery store so there's a whole world of flavors and textures that most people haven't experienced.
Currently have painted mountain, glass gem and then regular sweet corn. The painted mountain colors are really neat and it is okay to eat, but a firmer and not as sweet (obviously) as the sweet corn. The glass gem corn is not ready yet, but I hear it is good for popcorn so I will try that.
Corn is a hot season grass: it likes growing in large fields with lots of other corn plans near it. Most home gardens are not large enough to grow good corn (you can grow it, but the corn will not do as well - this can still be good enough.) With sweet corn time from field table is critical to good flavor, so people do grow it in their garden anyway, but it would be better to live next door to a large corn farm that you get it from.
Does it like having actual corn around it, or just lots of "stuff" around it to trap in heat that a fenced/walled area could serve as a substitute for? (obvs problem is that the fence doesn't grow with it...)
Corn will not pollinate correctly if it is not in a rather dense clump. If you grow it in your garden you should plant 3 or more rows(or a square/circle). Otherwise you will get mostly empty cobs.
3 rows is not nearly enough. I grow corn, and even with 9 rows, 20' each (roughly a 20'x20' square, with nearly 200 plants), I still hand polinate (takes about 5-10 minutes every 2-3 days once you start seeing silk). I doubt that most home growers will get anywhere close to enough density for good wind pollination, but hand pollination is not that hard.
Corn is wind pollinated and having a lot of plants around decreases the chance of self-pollination and increases the chance of outbreeding enhancement.
I'd guessing lots of other warm season grasses which need not be corn. Most gardens grow many things that are not warm season grass. That is plants that don't grow very tall.
I think they taste better than the grocery store varieties but usually it is more difficult growing them, and they have a lower yield than industrial varieties.
There are also general quirks with growing them. Experience lends me to suggest that heirlooms are more immediately sensitive to the environment that convention varieties. Buying from baker creek who are out in the Midwest, Seeds are going to have a different response in the growing in the SE Atlantic region, that response seems more pronounced although I have no idea of how to quantify it.
Ultimately I think it is worth it, it is fun, and it taps into more of the holistic aspects of gardening. For example, learning how to make quesadillas because your heirloom corn gets infected with corn smut, so instead of an infection you have a product.
That kind of frame-shift i think goes into the nostalgia of Doing It How We Used To.
Commercial varieties don't normally have the IP restrictions. A few do, but most don't. However hybrids don't breed true so only a fool would save seeds. Non-hybrids breed true, but generally don't yield as well so there is a lot less profit in them (though sometimes there is more if that variety is in demand it)
Heirloom corn is not necessarily better or tastier. The natives planted different kinds and they each had different resistance to different issues, i.e. drought, soil, elevation. They were diversifying their crops in case something wiped out one of them they had other options.
native people in that area had a special relationship to corn for centuries before the arrival of the West. Short story is that corn was an early "science" target for genetically modified strains. A rough analogy to the conflict might be "vegetarian civilization considers cows sacred for centuries; new rulers decide cattle branding and breeding control are just commerce" .. something like that.. there is an emotional and cultural relationship to food, and long term residency in a place, that does not show up in commerce.
You can see evidence of this genetic experimentation with crops in Moray, a set of terraces built at different altitude levels created by the Inca culture in the Andes mountains [0]. It is believed that the Incas would acclimatize crops to the high elevations of the Andes mountains in these terraces.
Even more amusing, he says there was a conference at the Univ. of Illinois in 1969 on this, and it was so contentious (even getting personal at times) that no papers resulted.
[1] https://archive.ph/Ub586