years ago i read that a mexican botanist had found a wild species of corn, that was a perennial plant-it did not need to be replanted. Such a plant 9if developed into a commercial food plant) would be immensely valuable. You would not have the expense of yearly seeding. plus, such a variety would probably be more resistant to drought 9deeper root structure). has anyone been able to breed a commercial version of this? ought to be Nobel-prize winning work!
Well, I can’t find a cite at the moment, but Jared Diamond has argued (IMHO persuasively) that the annual nature of grains in the Mediterranean climate zone was for several reasons influential in making them more desirable. (I’m mangling this, but, IIRC, high yield, rapid evolution, ripening seasonally all at once being conducive to human labor, and so on). So I’m not at all [ersuaded that annual corn would be an improvement.
Sailboat
Errr…“So I’m not at all persuaded that perennial corn would be an improvement.”
Sailboat
The last academic citation I could find for perennial corn was 2001. I did find a quote from an agricultural “futurist” who said perennial corn was possible by the year 2020, but not likely.
Band Name!
But doesn’t the method of harvest make this question moot?
No more than mowing your lawn forces you to replant each weekend.
Corn is a grass.
This is the big problem. No major agricultural company would be willing to sell perennial corn, because no one would ever buy seed from them more than once. They’d be destroying their own market.
The “wild species of corn” was no doubt triticum.
The thing that people don’t understand about the two is that there are enormous differences between triticum and maize, differences so vast that only a botanist would be likely to identify them as relatives.
Because it is a perennial, triticum has a decent root system. Maize has such a pitiful root system that if it weren’t cared for by humans, it would die out. Maize stalks - especially those enormous “field corn” plants that grow to 7 or 8 feet tall - are so much bigger and heavier than the roots which support them that it’s not hard for a storm to flatten most of a field of corn. This part I know from first-hand experience in childhood, working in the family garden. There is this big, heavy stalk, and this pitiful set of roots that at most are 6-8 inches long, and which mainly grow out, radiating from the plant, rather than down, where they could do a better job of supporting the above-ground part.
The husk over the triticum grains (which are loosely attached to a stem that doesn’t merit the name “cob” in the least) is, IIRC, only a single sheath, one for each kernel. The individual seeds have to be loosely attached, because if they don’t self-sow (i.e., fall off the stem), the species would die out. And (again, IIRC) there are only between 6 and 8 seeds (think corn kernels) on each stalk the plant produces.
Maize ears have numerous sheaths (adapted from those one-per-seed sheaths) that are now layered to protect the whole ear of corn kernels, rather than the indivicual seeds, from the time that the fertilized floret (forgot the correct name) begins to produce the seed. The maize seeds are much more delicate than the triticum seeds because they have been bred for literally thousands of years in order to produce seeds that are not only far more numerous, but also far better adapted to both the processing by and tastes of their cultivators.
Frankly, I have serious difficulty in seeing how anyone could make domestic maize into a perennial plant in 20 years. If they did, ISTM that there would have to be a lot of triticum characters that would still have to be bred back out again. The most difficult part of the problem, as I see it, would be building in a root system that was both heavy enough and efficient enough to provide the nutrients to repeatedly supply the huge quantity of nutrients necessary to grow both the ear of maize, and its protective sheath. Also, there would be the issue of whether the perennial plant would produce repeatedly on the same stem where an ear had previously been produced. The amount of fertilizer required to grow modern hybrid maize is so large, by comparison with other food crops, it is responsible for a lot (perhaps even most) of the water contamination that people yell about.
Where’d I learn all this? Nearly 40 years ago, before I developed a moral compass on the issue, I ghosted a college paper on the subject of domestication of corn. I was completely fascinated with the story of how it was done, and the importance of the wild gene pool, in addition to the enormous number of different strains of domestic maize (corn).
Sitting here fighting sleep to finish, I didn’t notice more responses posted while I worked on it. Teosinte and triticum are either different names for the same thing, or close relatives. If I try to do anymore tonight, I’ll wind up totally incoherent, so I’m not going to try it.
Triticum is wheat. You are perhaps thinking of teosinte.
You guys replant your grass? I thought they are perennial?
That was the point.
I would think that perennial corn would be more labor intensive. You’d have to be more careful with each plant, instead of the economies of scale that massive harvesting allow. You’d need to pick the corn instead of harvesting it. I would think you’d need to mass-harvest it at least every few years.
Plus, wouldn’t things like weeding be more complicated? or, at least more chemically extreme?
Being able to just scrape it all off and plant new seeds every year allows for a lot of control and simpler processes, I would think.
The bottom line, far as I’ve ever heard, is what tygerbryght said. Teosinte may be perennial, but teosinte is so dissimilar from modern corn that it wasn’t even recognized as corn’s ancestor until recently. The “ears” are tiny; it’s hard to get at the corn inside. Teosinte is simply not a useful crop, so finding perennial versions of it is no help if we want perennial corn, because breeding teosinte into a useful crop (again) is gonna take hundreds of years. Breeding modern corn into a perennial might be more possible, but that’s a pretty nontrivial task as well.
No point in speculating on whether companies might want to do it when it’s a task that’s enormous or even impossible anyway.
All of this takes energy and more energy means lower yields which means lower profits. With the huge amount of mechanisation of corn production, would this increased convenience offset the loss of yield?
A lot would depend upon how high the stalks are. It is necessary to get in among the stalks to cultivate, fertilize, and harvest the crop. That’s why with fruit trees, as an example of perennial plants, the trees are widely separated. If the cornstalks are tall they would have to be widely separated to get machinery in the field so each plant would have to produce many ears or the yield would be miniscule.
Currently the cultivation is ended when the stalks get too high for machines to work without breaking the stalks. Fertilizing is done at the time of planting but with perennial corn it would need to be done each year without damaging the stalks. Harvesting is done by two means. Using combines to cut down the plants and separte the grain from the chaff in the field. Or by chopping it up in the field to make ensilage. Perennial corn plants would need to be a lot sturdier than the existing annual cornstalks.