Maize

This article is about the plant and cereal grain also known as "corn" in some English-speaking countries. For other uses, see Maize (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Maze.

Maize
Illustration depicting both male and female flowers of maize
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Monocots
(unranked):	Commelinids
Order:	Poales
Family:	Poaceae
Genus:	Zea
Species:	Z. mays
Binomial name
Zea mays L.

Maize (Zea mays L. ssp. mays, Template:Pron-en; also known as Indian corn but generically and usually shortened to corn—particularly in North America and in culinary contexts), is a cereal grain domesticated in Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents. After European contact with the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, maize spread to the rest of the world.

Maize is the most widely grown crop in the Americas (332 million metric tons annually in the United States alone). Hybrid maize, due to its high grain yield as a result of heterosis ("hybrid vigor"), is preferred by farmers over conventional varieties. While some maize varieties grow up to 7 metres (23 ft) tall, most commercially grown maize has been bred for a standardized height of 2.5 metres (8 ft). Sweet corn is usually shorter than field-corn varieties.

Naming conventions

Male flower, called the tassel

The term maize derives from the Spanish form (maíz) of the indigenous Taino term for the plant, and was the form most commonly heard in the United Kingdom. In the United States and Canada (maïs in French speaking Canadian regions), the usual term is "corn", originally the English term for any grain, as for example in mentions in the Bible, but which now refers usually to maize, having been shortened from the form "Indian corn" (which currently, at least in the U.S. & Canada, is often used to refer specifically to multi-colored "field corn" cultivars). In scientific and very formal usage "maize" is normally used globally; equally in bulk trading contexts "corn" is mostly used. In the UK, Australia and other English-speaking countries "corn" may be used in culinary contexts, especially for products like popcorn and corn flakes, but "maize" is used in agriculture as well as science.

Physiology

Female flower, called silk

Maize stems superficially resemble bamboo canes and the internodes can reach 20–30 centimetres (8–12 in). Maize has a very distinct growth form; the lower leaves being like broad flags, 50–100 centimetres long and 5–10 centimetres wide (2–4 ft by 2–4 in); the stems are erect, conventionally 2–3 metres (7–10 ft) in height, with many nodes, casting off flag-leaves at every node. Under these leaves and close to the stem grow the ears. They grow about 3 milimetres a day.

The ears are female inflorescences, tightly covered over by several layers of leaves, and so closed-in by them to the stem that they do not show themselves easily until the emergence of the pale yellow silks from the leaf whorl at the end of the ear. The silks are elongated stigmas that look like tufts of hair, at first green, and later red or yellow. Plantings for silage are even denser, and achieve an even lower percentage of ears and more plant matter. Certain varieties of maize have been bred to produce many additional developed ears, and these are the source of the "baby corn" that is used as a vegetable in Asian cuisine.

Maize is a facultative long-night plant and flowers in a certain number of growing degree days > 50 °F (10 °C) in the environment to which it is adapted. The magnitude of the influence that long nights have on the number of days that must pass before maize flowers is genetically prescribed and regulated by the phytochrome system. Photoperiodicity can be eccentric in tropical cultivars, while 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.

Stalks, ears, and silk

The apex of the stem ends in the tassel, an inflorescence of male flowers. Each silk may become pollinated to produce one kernel of maize. 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 them tender first in boiling water. Modern farming techniques in developed countries usually rely on dense planting, which produces one large ear per stalk.

Seeds

The kernel of maize has a pericarp of the fruit fused with the seed coat, typical of the grasses. It 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 round a white pithy substance, which forms the ear. An ear contains from 200 to 400 kernels, and is from 10–25 centimetres (4–10 inches) in length. They are of various colors: blackish, bluish-gray, red, white and yellow. When ground into flour, maize yields more flour, with much less bran, than wheat does. However, it lacks the protein gluten of wheat and, therefore, makes baked goods with poor rising capability and coherence.

A genetic variation that accumulates more sugar and less starch in the ear is consumed as a vegetable and is called sweet corn.

Immature maize shoots accumulate a powerful antibiotic substance, DIMBOA (2,4-dihydroxy-7-methoxy-1,4-benzoxazin-3-one). DIMBOA is a member of a group of hydroxamic acids (also known as benzoxazinoids) that serve as a natural defense against a wide range of pests including insects, pathogenic fungi and bacteria. DIMBOA is also found in related grasses, particularly wheat. A maize mutant (bx) lacking DIMBOA is highly susceptible to be attacked by aphids and fungi. DIMBOA is also responsible for the relative resistance of immature maize to the European corn borer (family Crambidae). As maize matures, DIMBOA levels and resistance to the corn borer decline.

Due to its shallow roots of only one to two inches deep, maize is susceptible to droughts, intolerant of nutrient-deficient soils, and prone to be uprooted by severe winds.

Allergy

Maize contains lipid transfer protein, an undigestable protein which survives cooking. This protein has been linked to a rare and understudied allergy to maize in humans. The allergic reaction can cause skin rash, swelling or itching of mucus membranes, diarrhea, vomiting, asthma and, in severe cases, anaphylactic shock. It has been noted that those with maize allergy almost always have peach allergy as well. It is unclear how common this allergy is in the general populace.

Genetics

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

Variegated maize ears

Many forms of maize are used for food, sometimes classified as various subspecies:

• Flour corn — Zea mays var. amylacea
• Popcorn — Zea mays var. everta
• Dent corn  — Zea mays var. indentata
• Flint corn — Zea mays var. indurata
• Sweet corn — Zea mays var. saccharata and Zea mays var. rugosa
• Waxy corn — Zea mays var. ceratina
• Amylomaize — Zea mays
• Pod corn — Zea mays var. tunicata Larrañaga ex A. St. Hil.
• Striped maize — Zea mays var. japonica

This system has been replaced (though not entirely displaced) over the last 60 years by multi-variable classifications based on ever more data. Agronomic data were supplemented by botanical traits for a robust initial classification, then genetic, cytological, protein and DNA evidence was added. Now the categories are forms (little used), races, racial complexes, and recently branches.

Maize has 10 chromosomes (n=10). The combined length of the chromosomes is 1500 cM. Some of the maize chromosomes have what are known as "chromosomal knobs": highly repetitive heterochromatic domains that stain darkly. Individual knobs are polymorphic among strains of both maize and teosinte. Barbara McClintock used these knob markers to prove her transposon theory of "jumping genes", for which she won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Maize is still an important model organism for genetics and developmental biology today.

There is a stock center of maize mutants, The Maize Genetics Cooperation Stock Center, funded by the USDA Agricultural Research Service and located in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 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 (e.g., tetraploids). Genetic data describing the maize mutant stocks as well as myriad other data about maize genetics can be accessed at MaizeGDB, the Maize Genetics and Genomics Database.

In 2005, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) formed a consortium to sequence the maize genome. The resulting DNA sequence data will be deposited immediately into GenBank, a public repository for genome-sequence data. Sequencing the maize genome has been considered difficult because of its large size and complex genetic arrangements. The genome has 50,000–60,000 genes scattered among the 2.5 billion bases—molecules that form DNA—that make up its 10 chromosomes. (By comparison, the human genome contains about 2.9 billion bases and 26,000 genes.)

On February 26, 2008, researchers announced that they had sequenced the entire genome of maize.

Origin

A Tripsacum grass (big) and a teosinte (small)

There are several theories about the specific origin of maize in Mesoamerica:

1. It may be a direct domestication of a Mexican annual teosinte, Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, native to the Balsas River valley of southern Mexico, with up to 12% of its genetic material obtained from Zea mays ssp. mexicana through introgression.
2. It may have been derived from hybridization between a small domesticated maize (a slightly changed form of a wild maize) and a teosinte of section Luxuriantes, either Z. luxurians or Z. diploperennis.
3. It may have undergone two or more domestications either of a wild maize or of a teosinte.
4. It may have evolved from a hybridization of Z. diploperennis by Tripsacum dactyloides. (The term "teosinte" describes all species and subspecies in the genus Zea, excluding Zea mays ssp. mays.) 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. However, the proposed role of tripsacum (gama grass) in the origins of maize has been refuted by modern genetic testing, refuting Mangelsdorf’s model and the fourth listed above.

Guila Naquitz Cave, site of the oldest known remains of maize

The first model was proposed by Nobel Prize winner George Beadle in 1939. Though it has experimental support, it has not explained a number of problems, among them:

1. how the immense diversity of the species of sect. Zea originated,
2. how the tiny archaeological specimens of 3500–2700 BC (uncorrected) could have been selected from a teosinte, and
3. how domestication could have proceeded without leaving remains of teosinte or maize with teosintoid traits until 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 (corrected for solar variations). Recent genetic evidence suggests that maize domestication occurred 9,000 years ago in central Mexico, perhaps in the highlands between Oaxaca and Jalisco. More recent evidence now points to the lowlands of the Balsas River valley. The crop wild relative teosinte most similar to modern maize grows in the area of the Balsas River. Archaeological remains of early maize ears, found at Guila Naquitz Cave in the Oaxaca Valley, date back roughly 6,250 years (corrected; 3450 BC, uncorrected); the oldest ears from caves near Tehuacan, Puebla, date ca. 2750 BC. Little change occurred in ear form until ca. 1100 BC when great changes appeared in ears from Mexican caves: maize diversity rapidly increased and archaeological teosinte was first deposited.

Field of maize in Liechtenstein

Perhaps as early as 1500 BC, maize began to spread widely and rapidly. As it was introduced to new cultures, new uses were developed and new varieties selected to better serve in those preparations. Maize was the staple food, or a major staple, of most pre-Columbian North American, Mesoamerican, South American, and Caribbean cultures. The Mesoamerican civilization was strengthened upon the field crop of maize; through harvesting it, its religious and spiritual importance and how it impacted their diet. Maize formed the Mesoamerican people’s identity. During the 1st millennium AD, maize cultivation spread from Mexico into the U.S. Southwest and a millennium later into U.S. Northeast and southeastern Canada, transforming the landscape as Native Americans cleared large forest and grassland areas for the new crop.

It is unknown what precipitated its domestication, because the edible portion of the wild variety is too small and hard to obtain to be eaten directly, as each kernel is enclosed in a very hard bi-valve shell. However, George Beadle demonstrated that the kernels of teosinte are readily "popped" for human consumption, like modern popcorn. Some have argued that it would have taken too many generations of selective breeding in order to produce large compressed ears for efficient cultivation. However, studies of the hybrids readily made by intercrossing teosinte and modern maize suggest that this objection is not well founded.

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

Production quantities and methods

Maize output in 2005

Maize is widely cultivated throughout the world, and a greater weight of maize is produced each year than any other grain. While the United States produces almost half of the world's harvest (~42.5%), other top producing countries include China, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, India and France. Worldwide production was around 800 million tonnes in 2007—just slightly more than rice (~650 million tonnes) or wheat (~600 million tonnes). In 2007, over 150 million hectares of maize were planted worldwide, with a yield of 4970.9 kilogram/hectare.

Top Ten Maize Producers in 2007
Country	Production (Tonnes)	Note
United States	332,092,180
People's Republic of China	151,970,000
Brazil	51,589,721
Mexico	22,500,000	[F]
Argentina	21,755,364
India	16,780,000
France	13,107,000
Indonesia	12,381,561
Canada	10,554,500
Italy	9,891,362
Template:Country data World	784,786,580	[A]
No symbol = official figure, P = official figure, F = FAO estimate, * = Unofficial/Semi-official/mirror data, C = Calculated figure, A = Aggregate (may include official, semi-official or estimates); Source: Food And Agricultural Organization of United Nations: Economic And Social Department: The Statistical Devision

Young stalks

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 C4 plant (a plant that uses C4 carbon fixation), maize is a considerably more water-efficient crop than C3 plants (plants that use C3 carbon fixation) like the small grains, 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 corn 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 very late in the autumn in order 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 famine by causing maize crop failure.

File:Maize ear.jpg

Mature plants showing ears

Maize was planted by the Native Americans in hills, in a complex system known to some as the Three Sisters: beans used the maize plant for support and in turn provided nitrogen from nitrogen-fixing 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. This method was replaced by single species hill planting where each hill 60–120 cm (2–4 ft) apart was planted with 3 or 4 seeds, a method still used by home gardeners. A later technique was checked maize where hills were placed 40 inches apart in each direction, allowing cultivators to run through the field in two directions. In more arid lands this was altered and seeds were planted in the bottom of 10–12 cm (4–5 in) deep furrows to collect water. Modern technique plants maize in rows which allows for cultivation while the plant is young, although the hill technique is still used in the maize fields of some Native American reservations.

A maize heap at the harvest site, India

In North America, fields are often planted in a two-crop rotation with a nitrogen-fixing crop, often alfalfa in cooler climates and soybeans in regions with longer summers. Sometimes a third crop, winter wheat, is added to the rotation. Fields are usually ploughed each year, although no-till farming is increasing in use. Many of the maize varieties grown in the United States and Canada are hybrids. Over half of the maize area planted in the United States has been genetically modified using biotechnology to express agronomic traits such as pest resistance or herbicide resistance.

maize kernels

Before about World War II, most maize in North America was harvested by hand (as it still is in most of the other countries where it is grown). This often involved large numbers of workers and associated social events. Some one- and two-row mechanical pickers were in use but the maize combine was not adopted until after the War. By hand or mechanical picker, the entire ear is harvested which then 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 use. Few modern farms store maize in this manner. Most harvest the grain from the field and store it in bins. The combine with a maize 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 in to a mangled pile on the ground. The ear of maize is too large to pass through a slit in a plate and the snap rolls pull the ear of maize from the stalk so that only the ear and husk enter the machinery. The combine separates out the husk and the cob, keeping only the kernels.

Pellagra

Main article: Pellagra

When maize was first introduced into other farming systems than those used by traditional native-American peoples, it was generally welcomed with enthusiasm for its productivity. However, a widespread problem of malnutrition soon arose wherever maize was introduced as a staple. This was a mystery since these types of malnutrition were not normally seen among the indigenous Americans, to whom maize was the principal staple food.

It was eventually discovered that the indigenous Americans learned long ago to soak maize in alkali-water—made with ashes by North Americans and lime (calcium oxide) by Mesoamericans—which liberates the B-vitamin niacin, the lack of which was the underlying cause of the condition known as pellagra. This alkali process is known by its Nahuatl (Aztec)-derived name: nixtamalization.

Besides the lack of niacin, pellagra was also characterized by protein deficiency, a result of the inherent lack of two key amino acids in pre-modern maize, lysine and tryptophan. Nixtamalisation was also found to increase the availability of lysine and tryptophan to some extent, but more importantly, the indigenous Americans had learned long ago to balance their consumption of maize with beans and other protein sources such as amaranth and chia, as well as meat and fish, in order to acquire the complete range of amino acids for normal protein synthesis.

Since maize had been introduced into the diet of non-indigenous Americans without the necessary cultural knowledge acquired over thousands of years in the Americas, the reliance on maize in other cultures was often tragic. In the late 19th century pellagra reached endemic proportions in parts of the deep southern U.S., as medical researchers debated two theories for its origin: the deficiency theory (eventually shown to be true) posited that pellagra was due to a deficiency of some nutrient, and the germ theory posited that pellagra was caused by a germ transmitted by stable flies. In 1914 the U.S. government officially endorsed the germ theory of pellagra, but rescinded this endorsement several years later as evidence grew against it. By the mid-1920s the deficiency theory of pellagra was becoming scientific consensus, and the theory was proved in 1932 when niacin deficiency was determined to be the cause of the illness.

Once alkali processing and dietary variety was understood and applied, pellagra disappeared. The development of high lysine maize and the promotion of a more balanced diet has also contributed to its demise.

Pests

Insect pests

• Corn earworm (Helicoverpa zea)
• Fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda)
• Common armyworm (Pseudaletia unipuncta)
• Stalk borer (Papaipema nebris)
• Corn leaf aphid (Rhopalosiphum maidis)
• European corn borer (Ostrinia nubilalis) (ECB)
• Corn silkfly (Euxesta stigmatis)
• Lesser cornstalk borer (Elasmopalpus lignosellus)
• Corn delphacid (Peregrinus maidis)
• Western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte)

The susceptibility of maize to the European corn borer, and the resulting large crop losses, led to the development of transgenic expressing the Bacillus thuringiensis toxin. "Bt maize " is widely grown in the United States and has been approved for release in Europe.

Diseases

Main article: List of maize diseases

• Corn smut or common smut (Ustilago maydis): a fungal disease, known in Mexico as huitlacoche, which is prized by some as a gourmet delicacy in itself.
• Maize dwarf mosaic virus
• Stewart's Wilt (Pantoea stewartii)
• Common Rust (Puccinia sorghi)
• Goss's Wilt (Clavibacter michiganese)
• Grey Leaf Spot
• Mal de Río Cuarto Virus (MRCV)
• Stalk and Kernal Rot

Uses

maize shocks, or bundles, are a traditional harvest practice.

Food

Maize and cornmeal (maize flour) constitutes a staple food in many regions of the world. 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 mush in the U.S. or the food called sadza, nshima, ugali, and mealie pap in Africa. Maize meal is also used as a replacement for wheat flour, to make cornbread and other baked products. Masa (cornmeal treated with lime water) is the main ingredient for tortillas, atole and many other dishes of Mexican food.

Popcorn is kernels of certain varieties that explode when heated, forming fluffy pieces that are eaten as a snack.

Chicha and "chicha morada" (purple chicha) are drinks made usually from particular types of maize. The first one is fermented and alcoholic, the second is a soft drink commonly drunk in Peru.

Corn flakes are a common breakfast cereal in North America and the United Kingdom, and found in many other countries all over the world. Maize can also be prepared as hominy, in which the kernels are soaked with lye; or grits, which are coarsely ground hominy. These are commonly eaten in the Southeastern United States, foods handed down from Native Americans. The Brazilian dessert canjica is made by boiling maize kernels in sweetened milk. Roasted dried maize cobs with semi-hardened kernels, coated with a seasoning mixture of fried chopped spring onions with salt added to the oil, is a popular snack food in Vietnam.

Cut Sweet White corn

Maize can also be harvested and consumed in the unripe state, when the kernels are fully grown but still soft. Unripe maize must usually be cooked to become palatable; this may be done by simply boiling or roasting the whole ears and eating the kernels right off the cob. Such corn on the cob is a common dish in the United States, United Kingdom and some parts of South America, but virtually unheard of in some European countries. The cooked unripe kernels may also be shaved off the cob and served as a vegetable in side dishes, salads, garnishes, etc. Alternatively, the raw unripe kernels may also be grated off the cobs and processed into a variety of cooked dishes, such as maize purée, tamales, pamonhas, curau, cakes, ice creams, etc. Sweetcorn, a genetic variety that is high in sugars and low in starch, is usually consumed in the unripe state.

File:243820490 e7d1bfc0f0 o.jpg

A roadside vendor selling roasted maize in India

Sweetcorn (seeds only)

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
Energy	360 kJ (86 kcal)
Carbohydrates	19 g
Sugars	3.2 g
Dietary fiber	2.7 g
Fat	1.2 g
Protein	3.2 g
Vitamins and minerals Vitamins Quantity %DV† Vitamin A equiv. 1% 10 μg Thiamine (B1) 17% 0.2 mg Niacin (B3) 11% 1.7 mg Folate (B9) 12% 46 μg Vitamin C 8% 7 mg Minerals Quantity %DV† Iron 3% 0.5 mg Magnesium 9% 37 mg Potassium 9% 270 mg
†Percentages estimated using US recommendations for adults, except for potassium, which is estimated based on expert recommendation from the National Academies.

Maize is a major source of starch, a major ingredient in home cooking and in many industrialized food products. It is also a major source of cooking oil (corn oil) and of maize gluten. Maize starch can be hydrolyzed and enzymatically treated to produce syrups, particularly high fructose corn syrup, a sweetener; and also fermented and distilled to produce grain alcohol. Grain alcohol from maize is traditionally the source of bourbon whiskey. Maize is used to make chicha, a fermented beverage of Central and South America; and sometimes as the starch source for beer.

In the United States and Canada maize is also widely grown to feed for livestock, as forage, silage (made by fermentation of chopped green cornstalks), or grain. Maize meal is also a significant ingredient of some commercial animal food products, such as dog food.

Maize is also used as a fish bait, called "dough balls". It is particularly popular in Europe for coarse fishing.

Chemicals and medicines

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

Stigmas from female maize flowers, known popularly as corn silk, are sold as herbal supplements.

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.

Biofuel

"Feed maize" is being used increasingly for heating; specialized corn stoves (similar to wood stoves) are available and use either feed maize or wood pellets to generate heat. Maizecobs 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 (or wood pellets or cherry pits) into the fire.

Maize is increasingly used as a biomass fuel, such as ethanol, which as researchers search for innovative ways to reduce fuel costs, has unintentionally caused a rapid rise in food costs. This has led to the 2007 harvest being one of the most profitable maize crops in modern history for farmers.

Farm-based maize silage digester located near Neumünster in Germany, 2007. Green inflatable biogas holder is shown on top of the digester

Maize is widely used in Germany as a feedstock for biogas plants. Here the maize is harvested, shredded then placed in silage clamps from which it is fed into the biogas plants.

A biomass gasification power plant in Strem near Güssing, Burgenland, Austria was begun in 2005. Research is being done to make diesel out of the biogas by the Fischer Tropsch method.

Increasingly 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 (what is nowadays also known as "biofuels" and has been generating an intense debate regarding the human beings' necessity of new sources of energy, on the one hand, and the need to maintain, in regions such as Latin America, the food habits and culture which has been the essence of civilizations such as the one originated in Mesoamerica; the entry, January 2008, of maize among the commercial agreements of NAFTA has increased this debate, considering the bad labor conditions of workers in the fields, and mainly the fact that NAFTA "opened the doors to the import of maize from the United States, where the farmers who grow it receive multi-million 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."). However, introduction in the northern latitudes of the U.S. of tropical maize for biofuels, and not for human or animal consumption, may potentially alleviate this.

As a result of the U.S. federal government announcing its production target of 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017, ethanol production will grow to 7 billion gallons by 2010, up from 4.5 billion in 2006, boosting ethanol's share of maize demand in the U.S. from 22.6 percent to 36.1 percent.

Ornamental and other uses

Some forms of the plant are occasionally grown for ornamental use in the garden. For this purpose, variegated and colored leaf forms as well as those with colorful ears are used. Additionally, size-superlative varieties, having reached 31 ft (9.4m) tall, or with ears 24 inches (60 cm) long, have been popular for at least a century.

Corncobs can be hollowed out and treated to make inexpensive smoking pipes, first manufactured in the United States in 1869.

Children playing in a corn kernel box

An unusual use for maize is to create a corn maze (or maize maze) as a tourist attraction. The idea of a maize maze was introduced by Adrian Fisher, one of the most prolific designers of modern mazes, with The American Maze Company who created a maze in Pennsylvania in 1993. Traditional mazes are most commonly grown using yew hedges, but these take several years to mature. The rapid growth of a field of maize allows a maze to be laid out using GPS at the start of a growing season and for the maize to grow tall enough to obstruct a visitor's line of sight by the start of the summer. In Canada and the U.S., these are popular in many farming communities.

Maize kernels can be used in place of sand in a sandbox-like enclosure for children's play.

Further information: [[:Corn construction]]

Fodder

Maize makes a greater quantity of epigeous mass than other cereal plants, so can be used for fodder. Digestibility and palatability are higher when ensiled and fermented, rather than dried.

Maize as a commodity

Maize as a commodity is bought and sold by investors and price speculators as a tradable commodity. It is referred to as a corn futures contract. Corn futures contracts 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.

In art

Gold Maize. Moche Culture 300 A.D., Larco Museum, Lima, Peru.

Water tower in Rochester, Minnesota being painted as an ear of corn.

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 represented anthropomorphically as well as naturally.

In the United States, maize itself is sometimes used for temporary architectural detailing when the intent is to celebrate local agricultural productivity and culture. A well-known example of this use is the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, which utilizes cobs of colored maize to implement a design that is recycled annually.

A corn stalk with two ripe cobs is depicted on the reverse of the Croatian 1 lipa coin, minted since 1993.

Standardization of its products

• ISO 23392

In popular culture

Popcorn is a snack traditionally eaten in cinemas and now therefore often sold in establishments that rent movies for home viewing.

Corn on the cob, as it is usually called in the United States, was hawked on the streets of early 19th century New York City by poor, barefoot "Hot Corn Girls", who were thus the precursors hot-dog carts, churro wagons, and fruit stands seen on the streets of big cities today.

See also

• Baby corn
• Crop circle
• Detasseling
• List of corn varieties
• MildDisc
• Protein per unit area
• Starch
• Transgenic maize
• Zein

Notes and references

• Aureliano Brandolni, Andrea Brandolini. Il mais in Italia: storia naturale e agricola XII+370 pages and 80 colour pages. CRF press. Bergamo, Italy. [3] 2006
• Ferro, D.N. and Weber, D.C. Managing Sweet Corn Pests in Massachusetts
• ITIS 42268 as of 22 September 2002
• A list of Zea taxonomic names This list is of historical interest to taxonomists. It is largely of no practical use because many or most are based on single-gene mutations and if completed would be thousands of entries long. Modern classifications are available that are of great utility.

External links

• A Zillion Uses for Corn
• NCGA Corn Industry Statistics
• Image of Zea mays from Flora von Deutschland Österreich und der Schweiz
• Zea mays at Plants For A Future
• Usage of Iowa and U.S. Corn Crop
• How a Corn Plant Develops
• Maize Genetics and Genomics Database project
• The Maize Genome Sequence Browser
• International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center
• Maize Association of Australia
• Maize of Guatemala
• Maize research at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
• Tropical maize could become biofuel 'super' crop in the U.S.
• Jala Giant Corn (longest cob)
• European corn borer An ingenious pest
• Processing corn from seed to harvest to table
• Template:Dmoz
• The Great Corn Adventure - University of Illinois Extension
• Corn Facts
• Articles on maize written by Cristina Barros and Marco Buenrostro at their "Itacate" (the Nahuatl word for traveling provisions), in La Jornada, the Mexican journal
• ("Sin maíz no hay país", i.e., "There is no country without maize") This is a Mexican campaign defending the alimentary sovereignty and the reactivation of the Mexican field

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