It’s not a battle over grain supplies in distant lands. Nor a fight over corn oil prices or the fate of family farms. No, it’s a fight over something far more familiar, far more modest: the humble ear of corn itself and its mysterious origins.
Just where did corn come from? Botanists have repeatedly crossed scientific swords over proposed answers to this question, but for the past few years all has been rather quiet and the issue seemingly resolved. Now, however, an upstart anthropologist-turned-geneticist is entering the fray, and the Corn War is heating up again. Mary Eubanks, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University, has bred a hybrid that produces ears resembling the world’s most ancient preserved corn--two-inch cobs, at least 3,600 years old, excavated from the dust of a cave near Tehuacán, Mexico. Moreover, an analysis of the hybrid’s DNA hints that Eubanks has experimentally resurrected one of corn’s long-lost ancestors, which may hold the key to breeding hardier descendants.
Some Corn War veterans are enraged, complaining that Eubanks’s work is nonsense. Other botanists flat out refuse to discuss her or her theory. And some say she just might be on to something.
Why the fuss? Well, for one thing, there are more than just academic egos on the line. In a world whose population is exploding while crop yields are stagnant, the secret to a better corn could be worth a lot. Remember, corn is big business. The plant was first domesticated in the Americas some 5,000 to 7,000 years ago; by the time Columbus arrived, about 300 different types of corn were flourishing here. Today U.S. farmers harvest 9 billion bushels of corn, worth about $30 billion, every year. Surprisingly, less than 2 percent of that harvest is consumed by humans as good old corn on the cob, cornbread, and other edibles. More than 50 percent is fed to farm animals. The rest is used in an astonishing array of products--everything from clothing and glue to aspirin and fireworks.
