PEST & DISEASE + UNIQUE CHARACTERISTIC OF Zea mays
It’s a normal if some plant got attack by pest and disease
and its seems goes to sweet corn. Here are a few pest and disease attack by
sweet corn.
Firstly is chlorosis. symptom of plant disease in which normally green tissue is pale, yellow or bleached. it results from failure of chlorophyll to develop because of infection by a virus, lack of an essential mineral or oxygen, injury from alkali, fertilizer, air pollution or cold, insect, mite or nematode feeding gas main leaks, compaction or change in soil level and stem or root. Severely chlorotic plants are stunted and shoots may die back to the roots. Control is aimed specifically at the causal agent of the disease.
Our lecture, Madam Azlina said the chlorosis is caused when the nitrogen in mobilize to the fruit of the corn and all the nitrogen is being centralized for the fruit, that will cause the under part of the corn is lack of the nitrogen and causes the chlorosis, It's actually a common things happened to sweet corn, so anyone who going to try to plant sweet corn don't worry if this disease attack your sweet corn.
We are also one of
the lucky team among the team whose experienced in planting sweet corn. Because
of what? Because our sweet corn has been attack by on of rare disease.
The disease is called
corn smut that are caused by the pathogenic fungus Ustilago maydis that cause smut on maize and teosinte. The fungus
form galls on all above ground parts of corn species and is know in Mexico as
the delicacy huitlacoche which is eaten usually as a filling in quesadillas and
other tortilla based foods and soups.
For your information In Mexico, corn smut is known as huitlacoche . This word entered Spanish in Mexico from classical Nahuatl, though the Nahuatl words from which huitlacoche is derived are debated. In modern Nahuatl, the word for huitlacoche is cuitlacochin , and some sources deem cuitlacochi to be the classical form.
In Mexico also, the corn smut has been in culinary uses. Smut feeds on the corn plant and decreases the yield. Smut-infected crops are often destroyed, although some farmers use them to prepare silage. However, the infected galls are still edible, and in Mexico they are highly esteemed as a delicacy, where it is known as huitlacoche, being preserved and sold for a significantly higher price than uninfected corn. The consumption of corn smut originated directly from Aztec cuisine. For culinary use, the galls are harvested while still immature fully mature galls are dry and almost entirely spore-filled. The immature galls, gathered two to three weeks after an ear of corn is infected, still retain moisture and, when cooked, have a flavor described as mushroom-like, sweet, savory, woody, and earthy. Flavor compounds include sotolon and vanillin, as well as the sugar glucose
The fungus has had difficulty entering into the American and European diets as most farmers see it as blight, despite attempts by government and high-profile chefs to introduce it. In the mid-1990s, due to demand created by high-end restaurants, Pennsylvania and Florida farms were allowed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to intentionally infect corn with huitlacoche. Most observers consider the program to have had little impact, although the initiative is still in progress. The cursory show of interest is significant because the USDA has spent a considerable amount of time and money trying to eradicate corn smut in the United States. Moreover, in 1989, the James Beard Foundation founda high profile huitlacoche dinner, prepared by Josefina Howard, chef at Rosa Mexicano restaurant. This dinner tried to get Americans to eat more of it by renaming it the Mexican truffle and it is often compared to truffles in food articles describing its taste and texture.
Native Americans of the American Southwest, including the Zuni people , have used corn smut in an attempt to induce labor. It has similar medicinal effects to ergot, but weaker, due to the presence of the chemical ustilagine.
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| Quesadilla de huitlacoche, as it's often served in central Mexico |
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| Huitlacoche for sale in the produce department of a Soriana store in Mexico |
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| Huitlacoche corn taco |
we are also noticed that Zea mays has something unique at the bottom part.
A team of researchers led by Alan Bennett from UC Davis has shown that he secret of thetcorn's successlies in its aerial roots—necklaces of finger-sized, rhubarb-red tubes that encircle the stem. These roots drip with a thick, clear, glistening mucus that’s loaded with bacteria. Thanks to these microbes, the corn can fertilize itself by pulling nitrogen directly from the surrounding air.
The Sierra Mixe corn takes eight months to mature too long to make it commercially useful. But if its remarkable ability could be bred into conventional corn, which matures in just three months, it would be an agricultural game changer.
All plants depend on nitrogen to grow, and while there’s plenty of the element in the air around us, it’s too inert to be of use. But bacteria can convert this atmospheric nitrogen into more usable forms such as ammonia a process known as fixation. Legumes, like beans and peas, house these nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots. But cereals, like corn and rice, largely don’t. That’s why American farmers need to apply more than 6.6 million tons of nitrogen to their corn crops every year, in the form of chemical sprays and manure.
“All that fertilizer takes a lot of energy to produce, and the excess ends up in places where it distorts the nutrient balance, creating algae blooms and dead zones in waterways,” says Jeremy Yoder,an evolutionary biologist at California State University, Northridge who was not involved in the study. “So self-fertilizing [corn] could substantially cut the cost and environmental impact of a staple crop.” It could also make it easier to grow the crop in developing countries where fertilizer is unaffordable or in areas where soils are poorer.
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