Zea mays L.

Jaclyn Nicole R. Uy
Msc. PGR AGR 254

Botanical Description
A monoecious plant.
Herbaceous
Monocot
Diploid (haploid set of 10 chromosomes, 2n=20)
Leaves are broad and single. It has a distichous leaf
arrangement. A single mature plant can have up to 30 leaves
depending on the cultivar.
There are two inflorescence in a corn plant one male
(tassel) and one female (ear). Female inflorescence or ears
are borne on shank which are lateral branches that are
protruding from the leaf axil. The ear is tightly covered by
several layers of leaves. It also produces silk which are its
elongated stigmas. While ,the male inflorescence produces
pairs of spikelets that encloses a fertile and sterile floret
Roots a.) Seminal roots , b.) Adventitious root (effective and
active roots), c.) Brace or prop roots
Stem is generally 3-4 cm thick. Internodes are fairly short
and thick .
The seed of corn is called a caryopsis. The caryopsis
contains two sister structures the germ (embryo) and the
endosperm.
The maize grains are of varying color - usually yellow, but

Taxonomy
A member of the grass family Poaceae (Gramineae)
The genus Zea includes the wild taxa, known collectively as teosinte ( Zea ssp.), and
domesticated corn, or maize ( Zea mays L. ssp. mays )
Five species under Zea

1. Zea perennis- a perennial tetraploid teosinte, also with a very narrow distribution in the
highlands of western Mexico
2. Zea luxurians - an annual teosinte found in the more equatorial regions of southeastern
Guatemala and Honduras
3. Zea nicaraguensis - closely related to Zea luxurians and found in mesic environments in
Nicaragua

4. Zea diploperennis- a perennial, diploid teosinte found in very limited regions of the
highlands of western Mexico
5. Zea mays L., a highly polymorphic, diploid annual species, including both wild teosinte
and cultivated maize

Taxonomy
Subspecies of Zea mays L.
1. Z. mays L. ssp. huehuetenangensis Doebley- an annual
teosinte found in a few highlands of northwestern Guatemala
2. Z. mays L. ssp. mexicana - an annual teosinte from the
highlands of central and northern Mexico
3. Z. mays L. ssp. parviglumis - an annual teosinte, common
in the middle and low elevations of southwestern Mexico
4. Z. mays L. ssp. mays - maize or Indian corn, probably
domesticated in the Balsas River Valley of southern Mexico

TYPES OF CORN
Dent
Corn

Flint Corn

Sweet Corn

Flour
Corn

TYPES OF CORN
Popcorn

Pod corn

Waxy corn

Stripped corn

Origin
Progenitor : Zea mayz ssp. parviglumis (a.k.a.
Balsa teosinte)
Originated from the Mesoamericas; Rio Balsas
valley of Guerrero
Microfossil evidence suggesting dispersal by
8700-9000 BP
Estimation of maize domestication : 12,0006,000 BP (10,000-9000 BP; Doebley)
SSR phylogeny indicates a single
domestication event (Matsuoka 2002).

Dispersal
Phylogenetic and PCA studies suggest two lineages or
paths of dispersal.
One path traces through western and northern Mexico
into the southwestern U.S. and then into the eastern
U.S. and Canada.
A second path leads out of the highlands to the western
and southern lowlands of Mexico into Guatemala, the
Caribbean Islands, the lowlands of South America, and
finally the Andes Mountains.

Gene pool

Domestication
Native Americans selected teosinte plants with promising
mutations, deliberately choosing the plants that provided more of
and easier access to the sustenance they needed.
For example, teosinte kernels are surrounded by a hard
protective covering, or glume. Because this glume makes them
very difficult to eat, plants with a softer glume or partially
exposed kernels were conceivably targeted during domestication.
However, loss of shattering (a natural mechanism for seed
dispersal) was more likely to be an unintentional consequence of
the harvesting process because early farmers could only plant
the seeds that arrived home with them.

Archaeological finds
earliest maize cob, found at Guila Naquitz in the Oaxaca
Valley of Mexico (6250 years ago).

Microfossils
starch grain and phytolith data from the
Xihuatoxtla shelter, located in the Central
Balsas Valley, that indicate that maize was
present by 8,700 calendrical
years ago (cal. B.P.).

Fig. 1. Starch grains from maize recovered from early preceramic grinding
stones 318d (Aand B) and 318e (C andD). The grains have irregular shapes and
surface contours, along with defined compression facets and transverse fissures
(A) or y-shaped and other fissures (BD).

Changes in Maize
Parallel changes as in other domesticated cereals:

increase in grain size

loss of dormancy
retention of the ripe grain on the ear rather than shattering
of the inflorescence

Changes unique to maize:

loss of the hard case surrounding the grain

doubling and redoubling of the rows of grain on the
ancestral ear
enclosing the ear in husks with enormously elongated
styles emerging at the tip of the ear for pollination

 Unlike most crops, maize does not have a morphological

equivalent wild form. Particularly, maize has no wild
relative having a cob-like pistillate inflorescence (ear).
Interpreting the relation between maize and its wild
relative generated a big debate over the 20th century.

Evolution
Tripartite hypothesis (Paul Mangelsdorf and
Robert Reeves)
- maize was domesticated from some unknown wild maize,
presumably a plant with structures that resembled the modern
maize ear.
- A wild maize prototype from South America, which is now
either extinct or undiscovered, was the progenitor of maize;
teosinte is the offspring of a cross between maize and
Tripsacum (another genus of grasses); and sections of
Tripsacum chromosomes had contaminated maize germplasm

Evolution

Evolution
Teosinte Hypothesis (George Beadle)
- states that teosinte provided a useful food source and ancient peoples
cultivated it for this purpose
- During the cultivation of teosinte, mutations that improved teosintes
usefulness to humans arose and were selected by ancient peoples
- As few as five major mutations would be sufficient to convert teosinte into a
primitive form of maize
- Different mutations controlled different traits, e.g., one mutation would have
converted the disarticulating ear-type of teosinte into the solid ear type of maize
- Over the course of time, humans selected additional major mutations plus
many minor ones.

What is a teosinte
the common name for a group of four annual and
perennial species of the genus Zea native to Mexico and
Central America
Nahuatl Indian origin grain of the gods
teosinte ear possesses only about 5 to 12 kernels, each
sealed tightly in a stony casing
Collectively, the kernel and its stony casing are known
as a fruitcase. At maturity, the teosinte ear
disarticulates such that the individual fruitcases become
the dispersal units. Protected within its casing, the
teosinte kernel can survive the digestive tracts of birds
and grazing mammals, enabling the seed to be easily

Spot the difference?

Maize vs Teosinte
Maize
1.non-branching 1-2
main ears
2.Single main stem
3.1-2 ears per plant
4.Maize has 8-12 rows
of seeds (30 seeds)
5.the fruitcase is part of
the corn cob, leaving
the corn kernels
accessible
6.Fused protective husk

Teosinte
1.Branching
2.Bushy apperance
3.Several small ears in a
single plant
4.Teosinte has 1-2 rows of
seeds (5-7 seeds)
5.Seeds (kernels) are
covered by a fruitcase
6.No husk

Key traits
Change in Fruit case.

-From a cupulated fruit case to a cob.

Disarticulation at maturity.
-teosinte ears disarticulate at maturity, maize ear remain on the cob
Depression of the second spikelet primordium.
- Early in teosinte ear development, there are two spikelet primordia on each rachis
segment; however, one is aborted early. In maize, there are two mature spikelets
(kernels) on each cupule because the one aborted in teosinte develops to maturity in
maize.
Increase in Cupule rank
- In teosinte, the cupulate fruitcases are borne in two ranks on opposite sides of the
longitudinal axis of the ear. In maize, the cupules are borne in four (or more) ranks.
Thus, maize evolution involved a switch from two to four ranks of cupules.

Beadles breeding experiment

Beadle grew an F2 population of 50,000 plants and classified
the plants as having ears identical to teosinte, identical to
maize, or intermediate to some degree
He observed that about 1 in 500 of the F2 plants was
identical to the teosinte parent and about 1 in 500 to the
maize parent.
These numbers suggest that only a few (4-5 genes) were
involved
he had demonstrated that the genetic differences between
maize and teosinte were simple enough to have arisen under
the influence of human selection during domestication.

Evidences : Cytological
Zea mays ssp. mexicana, has chromosomes that are cytologically similar to
those of maize, and its hybrids with maize exhibit complete chromosomal
pairing and full fertility
Emerson & Beadle also showed that crossing-over between maize-teosinte
chromosomes occurs at frequencies similar to those observed in hybrids of
two varieties of maize
Longley showed that chromosome arm lengths, centromere positions, and
the sizes and positions of knobs in Mexican annual teosintes are identical to
those of maize
Kato considered frequencies of knobs of different size and at different
chromosomal locations in large population samples. His data show that
maize and the Mexican annual teosintes possess knobs at the same positions
and at similar frequencies. Kato concluded that teosinte was ancestral to
maize.

Evidences : Molecular
Isozyme allele frequencies of
teosintes Z. mays ssp.
parviglumis or Balsas teosinte,
are essentially indistinguishable
from those of maize.
Microsatellite data identify ssp.
parviglumis of the Balsas River
drainage below 1,800 m in
elevation as the ancestor of
maize. (Matsuoka, 2002)

From teosinte to maize: the role

of genes
Tga1 (Teosinte glume architecture 1)
- responsible for the development of the glume. It
makes the glume bracts almost impenetrable from pest.
When mature the glumes form a cupule or stone-like fruit
case that protects the kernel. It allows it to be eaten by
animals and pass through the digestive tract.
Tb1 (Teosinte branching 1)
- responsible for the multi-branched architecture of
teosinte. Its main function is to produce proteins that
repress the growth of the primordia

Tga1 mutation
responsible for the naked grains in maize
A mutation in tga1 causes the glume to be reduced and the
nutritious kernel to be exposed.
So humans protected this plants with the rare mutation, collected
the seeds and reseeded the following year. Because of this the
mutated teosinte doesnt have to be as a robust in the wild. They
have humans to care for them. A mutation that should have cause
extinction in the wild becomes possible and prevalent under human
care.
According to Hugh Iltis early teosinte harvesters must have come
across a rare Tga1-maize mutation in in a parviglumis plant, which
they collected and replanted.
Huai Wang tga1-maize the cupules and glumes form the internal
axis of the ear rather than the casing of the kernel
Wangs team have pinpointed the exact location of the maize tga1
gene on the chromosome 4 and narrowed it down to a 1042 bp
segment
The tga1-in parviglumis causes the cupule to be enlarged and the
glumes to completely cover its kernel. Its cells contain phytoliths
and lignin
Tga1-maize allele causes both glume and cupule to shrink and
soften
There was7 bp difference between maize and teosinte
An amino acid substitution from lysine to asparagine caused this
change

Tb1 mutation
People had to harvest teosinte with the
tb1 turned on in the primary and lateral
branches so that their elongation could
be suppressed allowing ears to form
near the plants main stem
A maize ear is essentially a combination
of all the individual ears , tassels and
spikes of the original teosinte
architecture.
The protective leaves condensed into
tightly packed shank nodes which
spiraled around the base of the cob
creating the husk.
The evolution of maize required an
increase in tb1 expression in the
primary axillary branch primordium and
its terminal inflorescence so that they
form short ear shoots rather than
elongated, tassel-tipped branches.

Figure 2.Phenotype of tb1 mutants. (A) tb1-r/tb1-r, tb1-r/Tb1-N, and

Tb1-N/Tb1-N plants from left to right. The heterozygous
plant is mildly tillered but will develop a normal female inflorescence at
the ear node. (B) A tb1-r/tb1-r plant was chopped near
the ground to reveal primary (p) and secondary (s) axillary branching.
m, main culm. (C) tb1-r/tb1-r mutant plants exhibit early
basal branching. A normal seedling (left) and a tb1-r homozygous
mutant seedling (right) at 2 weeks. At this stage of development,
a tiller is apparent in the axil of the first true leaf in the tb1-r

Other genes
Zea Floricaula/Leafy2 (zfl2)
- patterns inflorescence meristems so that more than two ranks
of reproductive organs are formed
Terminal ear 1 (Te1)
- plant architecture and inflorescence sex
zen centroradialis 1 (zen1)
- Apical meristem programming; producing determinate flowers
Zea apetalla homolog 1
- Inflorescence branching

Beadle popped corn (teosinte)

References

Thank you!!!