CORN

CORN. Although the exact origins of Indian corn, or maize, are unknown, American Indians probably first grew it in prehistoric times in Peru, Bolivia, or the highlands of Mexico. By the time Europeans arrived in the New World, Indians on both American continents grew a variety of corn types, including sweet corn and popcorn. Indians helped secure the survival of the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements by supplying them with corn, and later taught English settlers to grow their own in hills fertilized with fish. Corn proved itself an ideal frontier crop. The grain could be eaten green, or parched and ground into meal to make cornbread or johnny cakes. It also made an excellent feed for hogs, cattle, and poultry. Finally, any surplus corn could be distilled into whiskey, either for home consumption or for sale.

In areas north of Virginia, settlers found a variety of corn known as flint, an early maturing type that continued to be grown well into the nineteenth century. This corn, usually yellow in color, kept well because of the hardness of its kernels. Farther south, white gourdseed corn dominated. The soft-kerneled gourdseed matured later and produced a heavier yield than the northern flint variety. Prior to the Civil War, corn was the South's most widely grown agricultural product, exceeding even cotton as the region's most valuable crop.

Although haphazard mixing of these two varieties undoubtedly occurred from time to time, the first record of their conscious mixing came in 1812. John Lorain of Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, demonstrated that particular mixtures of gourdseed and flint varieties yielded much greater harvests while retaining many of flint's desirable qualities. The varieties resulting from the work of Lorain and others were known as "dents." One famous variety, Robert Reid's yellow dent, came into being in 1847, largely by accident. The previous year, Reid had planted in Illinois a light reddish-colored variety that he had brought with him from Ohio; when a poor stand resulted, Reid used a small early, yellow variety, probably a flint, to replant the missing hills. The Reid family then developed the resulting successful mixture into a yellow dent that later came to dominate the corn belt.

Even as the yellow dents were making the American corn belt one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world, research workers were developing hybrids to replace them. Drawing first upon the theories of Charles Darwin and then upon those of Gregor Mendel, a number of American researchers published studies showing how corn could be bred for certain characteristics, including high yield. They included William James Beal of Michigan State College (1876), George Shull of Princeton University, and Edward M. East (1908), H. K. Hayes (1912), and Donald F. Jones (1919, working with East) of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1926 the Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company offered hybrid-corn seed for sale on a continuing commercial basis, and thereafter more and more companies competed to provide the new hybrid seeds. As farmers adopted the new hybrids, corn yields increased at a spectacular rate, and by the end of World War II, the hybrids dominated American corn growing. From 1910 to 1919 the average acre yielded 26 bushels of corn; by 1971 it was 87 bushels. Yield increased to 118 bushels per acre in 1990 and to about 140 bushels per acre in 2000.

Corn spred throughout the world from the Americas. Just prior to World War I, the United States produced two-thirds of the world supply—about one-half of the national total originating in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Mexico, Hungary, Argentina, Rumania, and Italy were the next leading nations in corn production. The production of corn as a food crop on a worldwide basis expanded greatly after 1950. The Rockefeller Foundation made a particular effort in an experimental center in Mexico to develop improved hybrids and methods for worldwide production, with emphasis on the tropics and subtropics. By 1973 the United States produced only one-half of the world total (143,344,000 metric tons), followed by the People's Republic of China (25,000,000), Brazil (15,200,000), and the Soviet Union (13,440,000).

Of the nearly 80 million acres of corn harvested annually in the United States, 86 percent is used for grain and the remainder for forage and silage. About 40 percent of the grain is fed to hogs, 25 percent to other livestock, and 15 percent to poultry. About 10 percent of the grain is exported, and the remaining 10 percent is industrially processed. Processed corn contributes to the manufacture of many products, including breakfast foods, corn meal, flour, and grits, as well as cornstarch, corn syrup, corn sugar, corn oil, and alcohol. Alcohol, lactic acid, and acetone are in turn used in the manufacture of hundreds of different products.

Since 1933, federal agricultural legislation has attempted to adjust production to demand and to ensure fair prices to farmers, affecting both the size and the value of the country's annual harvest.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mangelsdorf, Paul C. Corn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Improvement. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.

Wallace Henry A., and William L. Brown. Corn and Its Early Fathers. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988.

Weatherwax, Paul. Indian Corn in Old America. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Wayne D.Rasmussen/c. w.

See alsoAgriculture ; Cereal Grains .

corn in botany. The name corn is given to the leading cereal crop of any major region. In England corn means wheat; in Scotland and Ireland, oats. The grain called corn in the United States is Indian corn or maize ( Zea mays mays ). The part of the United States where most of the corn is grown, including Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, is known as the Corn Belt.

The Corn Plant

The corn plant has a pithy noded stalk supported by prop roots. The staminate (male) flowers form the tassel at the top of the plant. The pistillate (female) flowers are the kernels on the cob, which is enclosed by a leafy husk beyond which extend threadlike styles and stigmas (the silk), which catch the pollen. The corn plant with its ornamental tassel and ears has been a motif of American art since prehistoric times.

The plant is a grass that was domesticated and cultivated in the Americas long before Europeans reached the New World; genetic and archaeological evidence indicates it was first domesticated c.7000 BC Corn has dramatically changed from the ancestral wild grass that was its original form, teosinte ( Zea species), a tropical American fodder plant in which the seeds are not united in a cob. It has been so adapted to cultivation that it cannot sustain itself without human cultivation. The Native Americans had many varieties of corn, e.g., sweet corn, popcorn, and corn for corn meal. White, yellow, red, and blue corn were grown as distinct strains.

Development of Hybrids

The easily produced and readily identifiable strains of corn made it a favorite subject for experimental genetics. The development of hybrid corn seed was an early (beginning of the 20th cent.) and revolutionary introduction of the principles of theoretical science into practical agriculture. At first ridiculed, the scientifically developed hybrids came to represent most commercially grown corn types. They resulted in higher yields, increased sugar and lowered starch content, and uniform plants bred to specification for mechanical harvesting. Most recently, genetic engineering has produced corn with added sweetness, disease resistance, and other desired traits.

Uses

As human food, corn is eaten fresh or ground for meal. It is the basic starch plant of Central and Andean South America, where it is still hand ground on metates to be made into tamales, tortillas, and other staple dishes. In the S United States it is familiar as hominy, mush, and grits. Starch, sugar, and oil are also extracted for many products, but the chief use of corn is as animal fodder. It is the primary feed grain of the United States, and in Europe this is almost the only use of corn. Corn is also as a raw material in the manufacture of ethanol for fuel.

Bibliography

See P. C. Mangelsdorf, Corn (1974); J. C. Hudson, Making the Corn Belt (1994).

corn the chief cereal crop of a district, especially (in England) wheat or (in Scotland) oats.
corn dolly a symbolic or decorative model of a human figure, made of plaited straw.
corn in Egypt a plentiful supply; from Genesis 42:2.
Corn Laws in the UK, a series of 19th-century laws introduced to protect British farmers from foreign competition by allowing grain to be imported only after the price of home-grown wheat had risen above a certain level. They had the unintended effect of forcing up bread prices and were eventually repealed in 1846.

See also earn one's corn, a king's chaff is worth more than other men's corn.

corn 1 grain, seed, fruit of a cereal. OE. corn = OFris., OS., OHG., ON. korn, Goth. kaurn :- Gmc. *kurnam :- IE. *gṛnóm ‘worn down particle’, n. pp. of base *gr- *ger- wear away, grow old, whence also L. grānum GRAIN, OIr. grān, OSl. zrūno seed, Gr. graûs old woman, gérōn old man, Skr. jī́ryati wastes away, jīrṇá- wasted, old.
Hence corn vb. †make or become granular; sprinkle with salt in grains, preserve with salt (as corned beef). XVI. corncrake XV; see CRAKE.

corn¹ / kôrn/ • n. 1. a North American cereal plant (Zea mays) that yields large grains, or kernels, set in rows on a cob. ∎  the grains of this. ∎ Brit. the chief cereal crop of a district, esp. (in England) wheat or (in Scotland) oats. 2. inf. something banal or sentimental: the movie is pure corn. corn² • n. a small, painful area of thickened skin on the foot, esp. on the toes, caused by pressure.

corn Main cereal plant of a country or region. In Britain, corn normally refers to wheat, in North America to maize, and in Scandinavia to barley.

corn Term used in the UK for wheat, in the USA for maize, and sometimes for oats in Scotland and Ireland, originally any grain. See also maize.