Year two of my flourcorn landrace, my percent of population creating mucousal areal roots has gone from less than 10% to almost a quarter so far. And its only waist high so far!
Last year I separated the corn with strong expression of this trait and those in close proximity.
Landrace consisted of mostly USDA accesions
10 Likes
That’s an awesome improvement! 10->25%
Would you care to re-enlighten me? Nitrogenfixing bacteria live in there? Or does it help catch moisture as well somehow? Bacteria suck it up and the plant squeezes it out of them in change for sugardoses..
1 Like
To the best of my knowledge, the mucous excreted from the aerial root feeds and houses nitrogen fixing bacteria on the root and in the soil it drips onto.
1 Like
3 Likes
Love the crazy marbled seeds. haven’t seen that before.
1 Like
It’s from a USDA accession called Shawnee, a landrace from the same tribe
1 Like
That’s amazing how quick the progress is from year to year! I just ordered a variety of flour corn seeds including nitrogen fixing corn from Hawaii and am beyond pumped for next spring to start up my own landrace. I’d love to pick your brain a little bit… did you mix all the seed varieties together and plant them in a block so they mingle together or did you keep each variety separate? As in a variety per block?
I made a new garden bed by dumping about 6inches of wood chips down in 4ft wide rows, then placing 6+inches of fresh horse manure on top of that, mulched it and tarped it to decompose over the winter. I plan on growing the corn as part of a three sister guild and figured that would be good for corn, since it is a heavy feeder. I want to build traits of resilience towards my native clay soil and obviously aim to encourage the mucousal roots and have that cross pollinate throughout my choice varieties, but was going to give the first year of growth just a smooth sailing until I have a good amount of seed saved.