Genetic Maize

As you may already know, I’m a co-blogger at Biofortified, the group blog on plant genetics and genetic engineering. Especially since winning the Ashoka Changemakers GMO Risk or Rescue contest, I’ve committed to helping to make Biofortified the best possible resource on the web for these topics. One of the unique aspects of Biofortified is the potential for discussion among diverse people. As we ramp up the number of visitors with different points of view, the discussion will get better and better. In the interests of getting those discussions going at Biofortified, I’m turning off comments at Genetic Maize. I hope you will visit Biofortified and get involved in the conversation. Any posts I write at Biofortified will also be posed here as a sort of online portfolio. If you have a specific question or comment for me, feel free to use the contact from.

This summer will be my 4th year growing corn for my research. Every year, I’ve seen some crazy things in the transgenic and non-transgenic fields alike. For example:

On the right is “tassel ear”, where silks and kernels (female, seed producing plant parts) appear on the tassel (male, pollen producing plant parts), where they are most certainly NOT supposed to be – it’s ok for sorghum and other grasses, but not for corn! On the left, there are at least 2 ears where there should be one, and those leaves poking out between the two might be more ears. Neither of these plants are transgenic or carry heritable mutations that cause these strange phenotypes. Both transgenic and non-transgenic fields are treated with a herbicide before we plant but after that the plants are grown with no additives, chemical or otherwise.

So, what the heck is going on?

I’ve always meant to look it up, but pollination season is so busy, and then it’s harvest season which is so busy, and then we’re analyzing the seeds… you get the idea.

While looking for pictures of corn borer damage, I found an awesome site by Peter Thomison and Allen Geyer of the Horticulture and Crop Science Department of Ohio State University: Troubleshooting Abnormal Corn Ears and Related Disorders.

They say that tassel ear is due to a variety of causes, including mechanical injury due to hail, which we did have pretty badly last year. No one really knows what causes “bouquet ear” with multiple ears appearing where there should be one, but it might be due to temperature stress due to cold.

There are many other common but strange corn phenotypes explained on their site. Check it out!

James, over at James and the Giant Corn, has written a post about the long lasting tomatoes from India: Scientists at India’s NIPGR Create a Longer-Lasting Tomato (Studying The Regulation of Fruit Ripening). He does a great job of explaining cell wall chemistry, which I neglected to cover in I say tomato… I appreciate that he pointed out something that I forgot to mention (emphasis added):

I shouldn’t have to say this, but there are currently no genetically engineered tomatoes on the market. For a short time in the 1990s Calgene sold the Flavr Savr tomato in California grocery stores, but they weren’t able make a profit doing so, so they stopped. The poor taste of most tomatoes for sale in the grocery store today is purely the result of conventional breeding (my post on the subject and Mat_kinase’s).

I just submitted a poster abstract featuring Biofortified for the Maize Genetics Conference 2010. The title is: Biofortified: An educational resource for plant genetics and genetic engineering. What do you think? I’m looking forward to presenting the idea of science blogging to all of the maize geneticists and to hopefully recruiting more regular and guest bloggers. We probably should get some non-maize people on Biofortified, though. Know anyone?

We just got back to Karl’s parent’s house from Berkley, we’re trying to unwind, but I think it’s going to take a while! Dinner with Michael Pollan and Karl (and Frank, of course) was a really wonderful experience. The conversation was fast paced and fabulous, covering the map from science journalism to specific details on certain genetically engineered traits to the deliciousness of local produce. All my nervousness was for naught, as Michael is extremely nice. He listened to Karl and I blab about science very politely, even with interest. Hopefully we weren’t too enthusiastic. I really hope that we opened long lasting lines of communication. Time will tell. It is obvious that there are a lot of people hoping for Micheal’s attention, including the fan boy that came up to him as we were leaving, so I can only hope that we left at least a small positive impression. Ok, now for the important part… the food!

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Chez Panisse because I found reviews that went to both extremes. I was trying to not have expectations that wouldn’t be met – but it was fabulous. I know, it seems weird that a genetic engineer would be a pro-local foodie, but there it is. I’d of course heard of Alice Waters before and all the hype around her restaurant, and I was very excited to experience it for myself, particularly with such a knowledgeable dinner partner.

I so very much wanted to run around snapping pictures to share on Biofortified, but kept myself under control, which unfortunately means I have no photos to share. The ones you see here are courtesy of nice people on Flickr who did not control their urges to take photos and who post their photos with a share and attribute license.

We ate in the Café, which is supposed to be a bit more casual than the restaurant. I felt comfortable in a nice sweater and jeans with heeled boots. The decor was a little cramped, but felt homey, with wood and bricks and warm colors all around. My favorite part was the open kitchen. It had huge bowls of fresh, local kumquats (which I gushed over, so Michael had the waiter bring me some) and other beautiful fruits on the counter which looked stunningly fresh among all the warm colors.

The food was fabulous – you may stop here if you don’t want to hear about the deliciousness! I hope I can do it justice.

I was actually happy when I found out we’d be in the Café, because I wasn’t quite sure if they’d accommodate a vegetarian in the restaurant – it has an ever changing set menu that’s heavy on local meats and seafood.

Michael ordered the olives to start, which were so delicately flavored with rosemary, unlike every over-salted olive I’ve had before. The crusty sourdough bread was just perfect. We shared a delicious bottle of organic mixed white with from Oregon with our appetizers, recommended by our gracious and knowledgeable server.

For an appetizer, I chose the Garden lettuce salad, which was just lettuce. It’s funny, normally I’d be very disappointed with a lettuce only salad, but the baby greens really shined with a light vinaigrette that was barely detectable. For my main, I had one of the starters: Pizzetta with wild mushrooms and gremolata. I’ve had better crust on pizza, but the mushrooms were very good and gremolata is apparently the perfect pizza topping! It’s a sort of pesto made of garlic, parsley, and lemon zest – a perfect balance to the earthy mushrooms. I don’t know what kind of cheese was on the pizzetta, it was very mild. Don’t let the diminutive name pizzetta fool you, it was large enough that I only ate half.

Michael had the Cannard Farm rocket with pecorino and pine nuts followed by the Fried petrale sole saor with sweet onions, pine nuts, currants, polenta, and spinach. Karl was adventurous with the Blood orange, red onion, and black olive salad with olio nuovo followed by the Cattail Creek Ranch lamb leg with artichokes, turnips, and anchovy salsa verde. Who would have guessed that oranges and olives would be a great combination? Karl said the lamb was very mild, the mildest he’d ever had. The turnips were surprisingly delicious, while the artichokes weren’t stellar, he said, but he still ate them all.

The best part of the meal, unsurprisingly, was dessert. After the meal, we were brought A bowl of Churchill-Brenneis Orchard Kishu tangerines and Flying Disc Ranch Barhi dates with a pot of fresh mint tea. Karl and I didn’t order these, and I didn’t see Michael order these, perhaps it’s his typical end to a meal and they just bring it? The tiny tangerines were so cute, and the fresh dates were like chocolate. Karl and I still decided to have dessert, because when would we get another chance to have dessert at Chez Panisse with Michael Pollan? I ordered the Passion fruit-tangerine sherbet with citrus compote and a coconut tuile while Karl had the Meyer lemon cream puffs with huckleberry coulis. He liked the cream puffs, but I think my tangerine sorbet far surpassed it (it tasted like a fancy version of Moose Juice from Universal Studios Orlando).

All together, the meal lasted almost three hours. I feel honored to have shared the time with someone who has such an important voice for agriculture and food, as well as my good friend Karl.

Stay tuned for a post from Frank, with a group photo of the four of us!

There are a lot of myths out there about high fructose corn syrup. While there are plenty of reasons to avoid corn syrup (and all sugars) on anything more than an occasional basis, that’s no reason to make things up about it.

Have any commonly held beliefs about corn that you’d like to know more about? Let us know in the comments.

Myth: Huge amounts of the sizable US corn crop go to HFCS production. Here’s a condescending example that sums up this idea from Grist: “The Big Corn People began to grow so much royally-subsidized GMO corn that they turned it into millions of gallons of high fructose corn syrup.”

It’s true, a portion of the US corn crop is used for HFCS production. It’s also true that corn syrup is cheap because the corn industry receives subsidies. But there’s a lot more to this story.

How is corn used?

Most of the US corn crop is used for animal feed. In 2006-2007, 5.6 billion bushels of corn were used for animal feed, 2.1 billion for exports, 2.1 billion for ethanol, 753 million for corn sweeteners, 272 million for corn starch, 190 million for corn foods (tortillas, cereal, etc), and 137 for alcoholic beverages, according to Iowa State University’s High Fructose Corn Syrup – How sweet it is (pdf).

It’s more than a little dishonest to blame the monocultures on HFCS, when so much of the crop is used for feed. Again, that’s 5.6 billion bushels of corn for animal feed versus 753 million bushels for sweeteners in 2007. We might also take a second look at ethanol.

Corn is used for so many things because it can be separated into fractions fairly easily. According to that same ISU Factsheet, a single bushel of corn (about 60 lbs) produces three primary products after wet milling:

• 1.6 lbs corn oil
• 13.5 lbs corn protein gluten animal feed
• 2.6 lbs corn gluten meal used for poultry feed, pre-emergent herbicide, and fur cleaner.

The remaining starch can then be used to produce one of three alternatives:

• 33 pounds of corn sweetener
• 32 pounds of cornstarch
• 2.5 to 2.7 gallons of ethanol or beverage alcohol

In other words, a bushel of corn can be used to make animal feed and either corn syrup or ethanol – not both. Over the years, the percentage of the crop that’s gone for sweetener or ethanol has changed a great deal. According to Table 27  – US use of field corn, by crop year (.xls), in 1991 7% of the corn crop was used to make sweetener, and 6.10% was used to make alcohol. In 2009, 5.78% of the corn crop was used for sweetener, while 35.82% was used for ethanol. Over the same years, the amount of corn harvested increased, so total corn syrup production did increase, but not much compared to ethanol.

If you’re looking to blame something for corn monocultures, it makes sense to turn first to animal products and then to ethanol… not to corn syrup.

How much does it cost?

Corn syrup is cheaper than sugar because of the climate in the US, tariffs on imported sugar, and because of corn subsidies. Sugar can be refined from two crops: sugar cane and sugar beets. Sugar cane is a tropical crop, and there aren’t many places in the US where it can be grown (see this map of US sugar cane acres in 2007 from the USDA to see just how few places). Sugar beets aren’t grown in many places in the US either (see this map of US sugar beet acres in 2007). Sugar cane and sugar beets both produce about 50% of US sugar, according to University of Florida Extension’s Overview of Florida Sugarcane.

Since there isn’t much sugar produced in the US, and due to the climate in the US we couldn’t produce much more even if we wanted to, we would need to import it from Brazil, India, or Europe. That could be a problem for locavores looking for sugar, but it’s definitely a problem for US sugar producers who want to stay competitive with producers overseas. Sugar producers have been successful in lobbying for high tariffs, so we don’t import much sugar. I don’t understand all the tariffs and other programs, but you can learn more at the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s US Sugar Import Program.

Since we can’t and don’t produce much sugar in the US, and there are trade barriers to importing sugars, it makes sense for food producers to look for an alternative sweetener. We have excellent climate and soils for corn (see this map of US corn acres in 2007), and it’s not that difficult to make sugar from corn starch.

More questions

I have to wonder if, in the absence of trade barriers, we would still have more corn syrup than corn sugar. Similarly, how much would the balance of sweeteners actually change if corn subsidies were removed? Since such a small amount of the crop is used to produce all the sweetener we need, I wonder if things would change much at all. Finally, even if we had enough sugar to meet consumer demand for sweet processed foods, would Americans actually consume any less total sugar than we do now? I’m thinking it wouldn’t change at all. As for what might change consumption of total sugars, we might consider subsidies on healthy (or at least healthier) foods and/or a tax on unhealthy foods and sodas. Here’s hoping.