Questions about GMO, Corn Genetics and some Corn Pictures

[oxbowfarm]

Pellagra is a red herring. Pellagra is a social problem, not a corn problem. The only people who suffered from pellagra historically through to today are/were the poorest and most exploited segments of the population. Slaves, share-croppers (who were basically serfs), and slum/shantytown dwellers. You don't get pellagra from just eating a lot of corn, even if its the primary calorie source in your diet. You get pellagra if the ONLY thing you eat is corn, for several years. Pellagra is due to chronic niacin deficiency. The issue I have with blaming corn for pellagra is that niacin is everywhere, it's in meat, its in legumes, its in green vegetables including every common edible weed you can name. So someone with pellagra is in a situation where not only do they live on an exclusively (non-nixtamalized) corn-based diet, they also somehow have no access to almost any other food. That's a social problem, either of extreme poverty and food scarcity or total oppression that denies access to even the most basic of additional food.

[Carol Deppe]

Reed-- With respect to the ear on the left--For starters it is carrying the chinmark pattern. (I usually call this blaze or starfire.) Since that expresses in the pericarp, which is made by the mother plant, every kernel in the ear expresses it, more or less. (Chinmark shows both variable penetrance and variable expressivity. That's genetics-speak for saying that it shows up to various extents from kernel to kernel when it is present, and sometimes may not show up at all even though present.) The ear is also segregating for at least two genes that control aleurone color--black and red-aleurone. The basic black color is modified to red by the red-aleurone gene. The ear is also segregating for yellow versus white color of flinty endosperm. (It's possible that the ear was pollinated by something carrying the aleurone and/or yellow endosperm genes rather than actually carrying them itself.) It's hard to tell flint versus flour type from a photo, but my guess is that this is too flinty to use as a flour or parching corn, and too floury to make good polenta. It could be made into a wet-batter cornbread. Or could be nixtamalized and made into tortillas, etc.

Ear number 2 appears to have a clear pericarp. It's segregating for black aleurone and the red-aleurone modifier of black. I think the mother plant had a white endosperm, and this ear got pollinated by one or more plants with some yellow endosperm. So there are occasional yellow-endosperm kernels. (Not very many. Not enough to represent the mother plant being heterozygous for yellow. Yellow under the black may be invisible. But yellow under red-endosperm gives you a brown shades. I'm not seeing enough yellow plus brown to think the mother plant was heterozygous for yellow flint. So I think she was heterozygous for black and for red-aleurone, and was homozygous for white flint, and had mostly white flint neighbors, with at least one yellow flint neighbor. As with the other ear, I suspect the the ear isn't a pure enough type to use as a true flour or true flint corn, and the best use would be as a wet batter cornbread, or nixtamalized. (You can do those with any type of corn.)

[Carol Deppe]

Oxbowfarm--Yes, I think calling pellagra a social problem makes a good sense. We can actually make all the niacin we need from one of the amino acids in meat or fish or other animal products. So for starters, pellagra is a non issue unless you eat no meat and animal products. In addition, niacin is, as you mentioned, abundant in greens and green veggies. So it really is an issue only for those who are eating only corn, and no meat or greens. Gardeners usually have plenty of greens and other things.

Only some American Indians nixtamalized corn. The practice seems mostly associated with the Southwest and Mexico. Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden describes in detail all the crops and varieties grown by the Hidatsa and Mandan Indians and how they were prepared. They clearly didn't nixtamalize. Pellagra does not seem to have been an issue for Indians whether they nixtamalized or not. Most Indians hunted as well as grew corn. In fact, among many the gardening was women's work, and the men focused entirely on hunting (and defense/warfare).

Nixtamalizing can also make the calcium in corn more bioavailable, however, or even add lots more calcium when the alkali used has calcium in it. That may have actually mattered more for most Indians who nixtamalized corn than the niacin issue.

Joseph--Some field corns stay sweet and tender longer than others. So some are better for eating at the green stage than others. Many dents and flour corns are very sweet in the sweet stage and stay in that stage (with no more grittiness than prime sweet corn) for long enough to use that way. But not all. Also, if the flour corn is short on water it may go through the green stage so fast it's unusable that way, even if it's a good green-ear corn with more water.

Any good parching corn is also a good general purpose flour corn. It can be used for the basic wet-batter cornbread or nixtamalized, like all corns. But flour corns can also be used to make pancakes, cakes, cookies, crackers, or gravy. I especially like flour corns for pancakes, angle food cake, and brown gravy. I'm gluten intolerant, and the flour corns grind up so fine they are like wheat flour. And white flour corns, fixed like pancakes, actually have a nice pancakey flavor. (I use the white ears from Magic Manna, but Tuscarora and other white flour corns have virtually the same pancakey flavor when fixed like pancakes.)

That ear that gave kernels that blew up like puffed rice sounds fantastic. I hope you relent and plant it out.

[blueadzuki]

That's actually good news to hear. Up till now I had though that ALL corn had to be niximtized before you should try to eat it and was trying to figure out how to buy a "sane" amount of cal/pickling lime/food grade lye to do it (with the tiny amounts of corn I can expect even if my patch DOES work, one standard size package of pickling lime would probably last me decades and most of it would either cake up or get spilled long before I got to it. And I don't have the patience to try the wood ash method.)But it sounds like I can simply use the corn as-is for most things (though ironically I also just figured out where I actually CAN get small packages of "cal"). My diet's diverse enough I don't need to worry.

Now that your are here, Caroldeppe maybe you could give a gander at these Peruvian kernels. I've posted this picture before trying to work out if this odd "feather" pattern on them is genetic or the result of some sort of damage, but have not as yet gotten a consistent answer. Maybe you've seen something like this before on some corn you have experience with, and know. (hope it's clear enough to see, it's a little blurry on my screen) Basically each kernel has a series of interlocking "scales" on the tip.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Oct 15, 2014 12:28:56 GMT -5 Carol Deppe said:

That ear that gave kernels that blew up like puffed rice sounds fantastic. I hope you relent and plant it out.

The taste was very fine... I went and found the seed just now, then transferred it into the seed freezer. I think I'll have an isolated field I can plant it into next summer.

It was in a bag of seed marked "detassel", containing lots of soil as well. Of course I dumped the bag out on the bed to sort through it... LOL. Wouldn't be a farmer's house without plenty of soil laying around. Anyway, it was probably planted inside the popcorn patch last spring: In the row with the other corns that had some trait I want to incorporate into my popcorn, but didn't measure up in some way or other. It was planted after dark, mere hours before the arrival of a spring deluge, so I didn't keep records... Story of my life.

I wonder... I might say that I don't keep records, but the plants keep records. Sometimes when I'm picking corn or a squash, I'll think something like, "This must be the ggg-grandchild of xyz variety because it looks just like it..."

[Carol Deppe]

Joseph--That's great news. A corn that could puff like rice would be just so fantastic.

Blueadzuki--I can't see the pattern you're asking about in the pic. However, I sometimes see an etched feathery pattern on the kernels of some ears that seems associated with the pericarp layer, which might be what you mean. Whether it is genetic or some environmental result or a result of handling I have not been able to figure out.

[blueadzuki]

Oh well, I suppose there's only one way to find out (I'd love to simply take a clearer picture but I'm limited by my tech); figure out some way to get the seeds to maturity up here and see if the pattern still shows up in the next generation. Yes, it's probably genetic. No it's most likely damage of some sort (theoretically it could hide for a generation or two, but I've got a decent handful by now and the odds of it hiding in ALL of them at the same time seems remote; at least ONE should "show" if it's genetic.

[blackox]

Blue, I've found similar markings on some "Seneca Red Stalker" kernels that I recently bought from the SSE, just nowhere near as bold.

Beautiful corn ears reed! I especially like the one on the left with all of the chinmarking.

[blueadzuki]

I took another closer up photo. It's still not all that clear, but at least you can sort of see the lighter patches between the feathers


And a few more odd things from my collection you might be interested in seeing Carol. (everyone else please bear with me, I know you've seen all these pictures before)

Group #1 These all came from a number of miniature ears from a farmers market stand many years ago. What happened at that stand I'll never know, but it resulted in a lot of ears of corn with combinations of traits one does not normally see together. On top of having floury and dent kernels a lot of these had very short, fat cobs (like one sees on Strawberry corn, or some of the Mesoamerican and Andean corns) Not really much use for food (because of the equations for increase of surface area vs. volume, a smaller seeded corn is going to have a higher percentage of pericarp and germ than a larger seeded ones so any meal made from these will be nearly all bran and oil unless I niximaitze them (and there really too small to make doing that efficient.) but kind of fun and pretty. Below are the only ones I could keep discrete (the cobs had major insect damage and more or less fell apart on the way home, so the only ears I could separate were those whose kernels were distinctive enough to be seperable

1.
Floury kernels (actually it's a floury/flint mix but I only saved the floury ones) There are actually three ears in this mix (the white, red and chinmarked kernels all came from different cobs) But I kept them together since apart from that, they are more or less the same in appearance. Same short cobs, same rather wide kernels (most of the mini corns I have seen have kernels that are a lot more tapered; even the pearl type ones. There were originally some colored ones, but they have all been used up (the purple spotted one in the middle is the last colored one I have for this type. 18-20 rows I think (with them falling apart determining row count was often impossible) Tentative name Jo-Gee-oh (after the mythological race in Iroquois folklore) or Puckwudgie (similar Algonquin mythical race) Please don't slap me, I mean both names with the greatest respect for the respective tribes (it's going to get the former if it is an easily stabilized corn; the latter if it proves troublesome (since as far as I understand the folklore, the Jo-Gee-Oh look kindly on humans; the Puckwudgie are more mischievous)

2.
Of all my corns, this is probably the oddest. Besides being miniature, it's gourdseed, multicolored, short cob and 24 rowed! (Actually my records say I counted 32-36 rows, but since I believe corn does not normally have more than 24 rows, I assume I wrote down the wrong number.)

Group #2 Same stand, next year. Most of these are much the same, except the cobs were more "normal" in shape (i.e. long and vaguely carrot-like) and row counts

3.
Floury Dent. Probably shoepeg too given kernel arrangement. 12-14 rows

Group #3 Everything else.

4.
Popcorn magenta stipple, tan pericarp. Not all that odd but pretty. About the oddest thing about it is the size; it's about midway between what I think of as miniature and a full sized ear (both ear size and kernel size) 12-14 rows

5.
Dent (based on kernel shape, I suspect the dent parent might be Hickory King or a comparable corn) But with a heavy purple stipple. Tentative name "Freckled King" assuming it is part Hickory and proves stable.

[Carol Deppe]

Blueadzuki--I still can't really see the pattern you are talking about on the first pic. If it is like scales, I may not have seen it before. The tiny corns are fun to look at. The kernels aren't showing up well enough for me to be able to tell much of anything about them. And since I don't know how many ears they came from, I can't tell if the red/pink color is pericarp or aleurone.

In the last pic kernels are pretty clear. The purple/lavender stipling is caused by the black aleurone color, which, in some of these kernels, is modified to red by the red-aleurone gene. Red aleurone is supposedly recessive, but I think it is closer to codominant, with heterozygotes often looking redish purple. Heterozygous black can look black, blue, or purple all by itself. When black or red aleurone pigment is present it can express in many ways, depending upon other modifying genes, with just a uniform pale, a mosaic pattern, or this sort of stipling being among of the possibilities. Some of the kernels show yellowish flinty endosperm (probably heterozygous for yellow), and some white endosperm. These kernels are a good illustration of the fact that red-aleurone over yellow flinty endosperm looks brown. (There are other ways to look brown. There is a pericarp brown, for example.)

[blueadzuki]

Yeah the problem is that the last picture is old. It dates from back when I had a scanner or, more accurately when I had a computer my scanner could interface with. That computer conked out and neither of the two I use now can function with the scanner (there is another scanner, but that one can only scan directly to a data stick; so I can't cut the size of the image small enough to get good resolution. At some point next year (when the next windows system comes out. I'll be getting a new computer AND scanner (which will work with each other). 'Til then I'm more or less limited to using my phone's camera (which as you point out has lousy resolution at such a short distance as these.)

The cob thing however I can tell you.

Jo-gee-oh (the first small picture) is from three ears (white, chinmark, red) and the red is most definitely pericarp on all of them. The purple in the speckled one is aleurone however. It's also the only one of the floury from those ears whose pattert was well defined. What few other colored ones there used to be among the other were more along the lines of irregular blobs of lavender blue etc; what I usually call the "Lapis Nevada" pattern (after the gemstone that looks similar)

ALL of the other are from single cobs. The color on the gourdseed is aleurone and a mixture of pink and purple. There are also a small number of yellow kernels and one or two peach/orange ones (which are most likely a pink aleurone over a yellow endosperm base)

I'd say the purple shoepeg is also aleurone since I think I "peeled" a kernel way back when (dropped in in boiling water and then pulled the pericarp off) and the pericarp was unquestionably clear. That one is actually slated to be re-planted this spring, though to be honest, I have some grave worries about how viable it will be. I only kept the dented kernels and while they are a bit larger than the "cap" flint that surround then (they look floury in the picture of the ear but shelled off they all prove to be flints with floury tips. A lot of them are also badly deformed by the pressure caused by the double cupule production so a lot of them have nasty angles and folds right over the germ area (which could mean a lot of them have embryos that may either not be able to get out or if they do, will be badly deformed and not likely to survive long.

The brownish one has a tan pericarp (again I sacrificed a few kernels when I shelled it for peeling) with an under kernel that is white endosperm with magenta stippling (though, as with all stippled corns there are kernels whose endosperms are both all white and all magenta. It's most notable traits (besides being a generally pretty cob) are simply it's size being sort of midway between miniature and full sized. Among the corns around here, there's a pretty sharp delineation, with not a lot of overlap.

There are actually a couple of others Ill probably post later on, but they will require me to actually dig the samples out and take pictures (maybe I'll se what the datastick scanner can do. There's a fairly normal miniature popcorn which is notable most because it had 12 or so kernels on it that got sweetcorn pollen resulting in multicolored sweet kernels that are miniature (At the time I assumed this was unusual since I had be led to understand that many popcorns had the P gene and would not easily take pollen from a non popcorn. I have since been informed that the number of non P (ad hence cross fertile) popcorns is a lot higher than I thought and that in any case the P usually doesn't block sweet pollen. The rest of the kernels are pretty standard pop (though again, they are a little wider than what I would normally think of as popcorn kernels)Stnard "popcorn" color mix (yellow base some purple aleurones chinmarked pericarp)

I also have some I think are probably a direct cross between one of the ornamentals and some strawberry. The kernels (again the mixture of yellows, purple on yellows and a chinmarked pericarp)ARE rice type but a very FAT dull ended rice, less like flames (to me rice type corn kernels resemble those pointy flame shaped light bulbs people put in electric chandeliers) that Brazil nuts

And just for the entertainment I'll probably do one of "Virachocha" Even though I know EXACTLY what is going on there. Some years ago (about a year after when I found the minis I discovered a bodega on the UES of Manhattan which was selling ears of colored Andean corn as ornamental corn. Why or where he got it I will likely never know (my best guess from speaking to the person running the store was that his boss (who like him, was Korean) had bought the bodega from the previous owners with all of their stock, and had found the boxes of corn in the back. The previous owners must have been Peruvian. As with the mini the stuff was rather old and brittle (in fact a lot of cobs had kernels stuck back on the ears with hot glue) but I got a LOT of colored Andean material from that. Most of it is gone, but one of the things I do still have are 8 sweet kernels that were on one of the cobs (white base red chinmark. Hence the "Viracocha name" (Andean corn and, like you I often see chinmarks as sunbursts) I assume the sweet side of them is Maiz Chulpe (i.e. growing them here will be as hard as growing any other Andean corn) but one can hope.

[reed]

Carol Deppe, Joseph Lofthouse, flowerweaver, and other people more wise and experienced than I. I'm figuring on what corn to grow next year and need some advice. I have my corn which passes the crush test even though it is pretty flinty. It also tastes good for sweet corn but just very briefly for a few days each year but that is fine. And it cracks open and tastes good when parched. 

I have about six ears I bought, grown  few miles away that all pass the crush, parch and taste tests with one especially (#36 in the pictures) tasting way better than mine or any of the others. It is very flinty and I really had to work at it passing the crush test but it's worth it I think, for the taste. 

I have a 1/4 lb of Painted Mountain and hope to get Georgia Blue flour corn from Sandhill Preservation for its description of making several ears.

I also have several other that may get mixed in including if I can find them some mentioned in Carol's article.

So to start the process of getting  the hardiness and earliness of Painted Mountain, the flavor of #36 and multiple ears of Georgia Blue should I detassel them and save those seeds or the other way around?

What if I do some of each, detassel the PM, #36 and GB at one end of the patch and the others at the opposite end? 

I guess what I really need to know is what traits are with the mother and what ones with the pollen? Is there a listing or chart somewhere that shows that? 

I also have all those sweet corns and may try to use about 30' of the patch for an early sweet corn project and the other 70' for my primary goal. I'll just detassel any sweet that hasn't finished by time the other end starts. Then I won't have to completely abandon the original sweet idea. 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

reed: I really like detasseling as a way of making sure that incoming genetics are thoroughly mixed into the pre-existing population. It generally doesn't matter which variety is used as the pollen donor, and which is used as the mother: Except that, the DNA in the mitochondria and/or other organelles is inherited only from the mother. My standard operating procedure is to use the wilder parent as the mother in an attempt to retain more mitochondrial diversity. I mostly only fuss with order when I am incorporating highly uniform industrialized seed. When I grew Hopi Blue the leaves were startlingly green. I wondered if it was due to more efficient chloroplasts (which are inherited from the mother).

Painted Mountain tends towards being very short in my garden so is easily within reach of skunks and pheasants. That seems to be a common price to be paid for earliness in corn.

[blueadzuki]

Next round of corn pics for Carol (as promised)

1. First an old picture. Going back into my files it turns out that I DID take a pic of a few of the "mini not pop" cobs (actually I think that, due to the insect issue, these three were the only ones I could find that WERE intact enough to take a picture) The kernels are a little blurry but since the point it to show the ear shape, that probably doesn't matter


2. Next the minicob with the sweet kernels (sweet are the smaller pile) (sorry forgot to include coin in this one, you'll just have to take my word this is miniature)



3.

Two more from the mini cache The lower is the only other one I was able to separate out. It's a very small kernelled rather squished looking corn with blue/purple stippling on a white base. Only really notable other thing is that it seems to have what I refer to as a "frosted" pericarp (a pericarp that, due to it's roughness causes the kernels to have a matte finish, rather than the shiny/waxy one one more normally sees)

The Upper is pretty much everything else I have left from that pile. Not much point in trying to work out the genetics of this since they came from DOZENS of ears (in fact by now, given how much I have taken from this mix over the years I would imagine that every kernel left in the pile probably came from a different ear.) Actually there may be one that was never even part of it. While preparing the picture I noticed a pale yellow kernel with brown speckles, which I think may actually have come from the packet of Trail of Tears popcorns mix I purchased from Underwood Gardens before I even went to college (which would mean the kernel would now be around 20 years old.) But it does show the range of patterns and shapes that showed up at that stand.

4.

 
The "fat rice" popcorn from last year. I originally though I would have a lot more of this since they had a LOT of cobs that looked like this last year. But this year the stand seems to have "opted out" of selling corn.

5.
 
An assortment of other floury looking minicorns I have gotten over the years. The lower left is actually from THIS year, though I think it may be disease not genetics (all of the floury kernels are very narrow (about 1/3 to 1/4 as thick as any of their sibling kernels and have that "flattened" look, so I think they may actually be abortions.)

6.

 
A floury mini ear I found last year (phone pic)

7.

 
Viracocha (that chinmarked sweetcorn I found on the Andean cob)

[reed]

Oct 20, 2014 22:03:12 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

reed: I really like detasseling as a way of making sure that incoming genetics are thoroughly mixed into the pre-existing population. It generally doesn't matter which variety is used as the pollen donor, and which is used as the mother: Except that, the DNA in the mitochondria and/or other organelles is inherited only from the mother. My standard operating procedure is to use the wilder parent as the mother in an attempt to retain more mitochondrial diversity. I mostly only fuss with order when I am incorporating highly uniform industrialized seed. When I grew Hopi Blue the leaves were startlingly green. I wondered if it was due to more efficient chloroplasts (which are inherited from the mother).

Painted Mountain tends towards being very short in my garden so is easily within reach of skunks and pheasants. That seems to be a common price to be paid for earliness in corn.

I think I might try the detasseling some at one end and the opposite at the other end and see what comes out to work with the next year.

I think Painted Mountain gets considerably larger here. I met a young fellow that grew it this year. He was about 10 or 11, his parents have the only CSA in this area and also are the only real market producers. They invited me to come see their gardens, pretty impressive operation. We got to talking about corn and this kid ran in the house and brought out some beautiful looking ears of corn, he said it was Painted Mountain and was pretty proud of it, rightly so. The seeds were a present form their friends "out west". The friends told them it got about four feet but they said it got six to eight. I didn't have the heart to ask for a few kernels but next time I visit I might take some of the Blue Jade or Fire on the Mountain and see if I can do a trade. 

We don't have many skunks and I never saw a wild pheasant. English Starlings pulling up seedlings and the ever present coons are the my problem. I'm keeping my coon traps out all winter baited with store bought sweet corn, maybe I can breed non-corn eating coons.