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 worldwide importanceeach one the principal source of food of millions of people-which quite literally stand between mankind and starvation.

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