Abstract
Origins of maize: a further paradox resolved
Highlights
Perhaps of all that has proved obscure in the riddle of maize domestication, nothing is as paradoxical as the plant itself: the geneticist Paul Mangelsdorf contended that if maize had been derived from any known species it would represent “the wildest departure of a cultivated plant from its wild ancestor which still comes within man’s purview”
Current consensus is that maize was domesticated from an extant grass, and one that is still abundant in Mexico today: Balsas teosinte (Matsuoka et al, 2002). This plant is known as Z. mays ssp. parviglumis to reflect its close affinity with cultivated maize
The reasonable interpretation of such data is that the highland landraces are ancestors to all other maize groups, and that the highlands themselves are the center of domestication
Summary
Perhaps of all that has proved obscure in the riddle of maize domestication, nothing is as paradoxical as the plant itself: the geneticist Paul Mangelsdorf contended that if maize had been derived from any known species it would represent “the wildest departure of a cultivated plant from its wild ancestor which still comes within man’s purview” (see Galinat, 1971). Of all the maize varieties surveyed, it is consistently the highland landraces that show the greatest genetic similarity to parviglumis. The reasonable interpretation of such data is that the highland landraces are ancestors to all other maize groups, and that the highlands themselves are the center of domestication.
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