Corn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Improvement

Download or read book Corn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Improvement written by Paul Christoph Mangelsdorf and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern corn plant; Theories on the origin of maize; Teosinte, the closest relative of maize; The genetic nature of teosinte; Thipsacum, a more distant relative of corn; Corn's old word relatives; Pod corn, the ancestral form; The nature of the pod-corn locus; Races of maize; The concept of lineages; The role of hybridization in corn's evolution; Mutations; Genetic drift and selection; Archaeological evidence of corn's evolution; Prehistoric wild corn and fossil pollen; Corn in prehistoric art; Corn's spread to the old world; The prehistoric and moderns improvement of maize; The nature of heterosis; Modern breeding techniques.