Corn didn’t start out as the powerhouse crop it is today.
No, for most of the thousands of years it was undergoing domestication and improvement, corn grew humbly within the limits of what the environment and smallholder farmers could provide.
For its fertilizer needs, early corn made friends with nitrogen-fixing soil microbes by leaking an enticing sugary cocktail from its roots. The genetic recipe for this cocktail was handed down from parent to offspring to ensure just the right microbes came out to play.
But then the Green Revolution changed everything. Breeding tools improved dramatically, leading to faster-growing, higher-yielding hybrids than the world had ever seen. And synthetic fertilizer application became de rigueur.
That’s the moment corn left its old microbe friends behind, according to new research from the University of Illinois. And it hasn’t gone back.
Continue reading at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Image via University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
