Peer-review: Yes - Open Access: Yes|http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&ISSN=0036-8075

Our purpose in reconstructing the ancestor of corn is to retrace, so far as possible, some of the principal steps which
have been involved in its evolution under
domestication. We do this in the hope of
gaining a better understanding of the
corn plant as one of those unique biological systems which man employs on
a grand scale to convert the energy of
the sun, the carbon dioxide of the air,
and the minerals of the soil into food.
Corn is one of perhaps not more than a
dozen species of cultivated plants of
world-wide importance-each one the
principal source of food of millions of
people-which quite literally stand between mankind and starvation.
But corn is something more than an
important food plant; it is also a mystery,
a fascinating botanical mystery, as challenging to a scientist as is a mountain to
an explorer.

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