How did the interspecies courtship that created corn occur? – 12/28/2023 – Darwin and God

Not long ago, I had the privilege of writing for this Sheet a report showing how a courtship between primitive forms of domestic corn and one of its wild relativesteosinte, ended up giving rise to corn that would become one of the pillars of indigenous civilizations throughout the American continent and would conquer the world.

But a question remained in my head when reading the original study on the topic. Was the crossing an accidental event that later ended up being taken advantage of by indigenous farmers in Mexico? Or would it have been something intentional, planned by people who already knew the reproductive biology of corn well?

I asked one of the study’s authors, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra of the University of California, Davis, this question. Here’s what he responded to me. Worth reading.

“Excellent question. The initial hybridizations almost certainly happened accidentally. We have no direct evidence about the role of indigenous farmers in promoting introgression, but I suspect it was a combination of natural selection — corn plants with more alleles [variantes de genes] of the type mexican they survived better in plateau regions — and intentional selection on the part of former farmers. They like to experiment, and when we talk to traditional farmers these days, they say they intentionally promote introgression with teosinte because it makes the corn ‘stronger’.”

Between you and me, it never ceases to fascinate me that these fortuitous events involving plant species have had such a disproportionate impact on human history.

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