Home Gardeners are Breeding More Diverse Corn than You Can Buy

Southern California is home to a tremendous number of immigrants, and many come from places where gardening is a given: you grow as much as you can, because why wouldn’t you? For those from Mexico, Central America, and South America, corn is a major home crop. We may think our breadbasket here in the US knows from corn, but according to a new study, we’ve got more to learn.

The study, from the University of California, Riverside, examines the genetic diversity of corn samples taken from home and community gardens run by immigrants throughout Riverside and nearby Los Angeles. It then compares them with the genetic diversity of mass-market corn: agricultural varieties as well as a supermarket variety that research indicated was often used by home gardeners.

The findings are pretty fascinating: The corn from home and community gardens was found to be an intriguing combination of foreign corn brought by immigrants, inter-bred with the commercial varieties. The new types of corn far outstrip the commercial corn in variance; you can’t buy these Guatemalan/Riverside-supermarket corn blends anywhere.

What especially intrigues the authors of the study is that this genetic diversity can be used to avoid the many pitfalls of monoculture. If commercial corn interbreeds, it becomes stronger, more capable of adjusting to the environment and less likely to succumb to any one particular pest or blight. And these community gardens are untapped sources of diversity.

The researchers’ next steps will be to look more closely at the attributes of this hybrid corn. Is it more drought-resistant? Does it hold up in urban soil better? Does it resist smog or produce extra-tasty or extra-nutritious ears? With that information we can make use of the diversity – and not be subject to the tyranny of monoculture.