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    ZL060

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    Sale

    Gila River A'al Hu:n

    • ZL060

      • Zea mays.  Cream-colored flour-type and clear flinty kernels on smallish cobs. Matures quickly and with minimal irrigation. From the Gila River Indian Community in central Arizona. Ears are relatively resistant to fungal damage.  In terms of balance between flour and flint kernels, this lies in between Smoik Hu:n (99% flour-type kernels) and Ki:kam Hu:n (80% flour-type kernels).  The recent crop was grown with "irrigated dry farming" and thus received less water than other corn varieties we've grown in Tucson.  See page 5 of our recent Seedhead News for more information.  From our Seed Bank Collection.

      • Origin: Low desert, about 1000' elevation
      • Plants are 5-7" tall.
      • 65 days to pollination, 111 days to dried ears from planting based on trials in Patagonia, Arizona (4,000');  78 days to pollination, 111 days to dry ears in Tucson (2500') early spring planting;
      • Some red chinmark ears may be produced, as the farmer from whom we obtained the corn grew it with a red chinmark variety.
      • Approx. 7g/50 seeds per packet.
      • Limit 3 packets.
    • $4.50
    Shipping calculated at checkout.
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    Customer Reviews

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    D
    DAVE CHRISTENSEN, NATIVE CORN BREEDER
    INBREEDING DEFECTS

    Gila River A'al Hu:n

    The kernels germinated well. I only grew 10 plants just to look at them and compare them with other Papago/Pima which I grew more of. They were similar to the others, but were inbred and had some problems:
    20% had yellow speckles on the leaves, which is a fairly common genetic defect, not a disease. It inhibits healthy photosynthesis.
    20% were male sterile. The tassels did not produce pollen. This is also genetic. You don't want genetic pollination problems in the group, especially with high temperatures when fragile pollen is easily killed.
    20% had the orange gene from "chin mark" contamination.

    The major purpose for this corn would be to maintain genetic diversity, which has already largely disappeared. But someone would need to remove the defects from this line before using it in a breeding program with other corns.

    My main reason for me not wanting to grow more of this is that it comes from the northern river reservation. It's ancestors were irrigated for thousands of years, plus the river reservation receives 3" more rainfall a year than the southern desert reservation. It is taller and slower to mature than I want, because it evolved with more water.

    I am developing a line of drought resistant corn. NS/S line Smoik Huun is from the southern desert reservation near the Mexican border. It was raised without irrigation and also with less rainfall. That is a gold mine of genetics! That will be the foundation of my work.

    A big thanks to NS/S for saving valuable genetics. I have combined some NS/S desert lines with North Plains Indian Corns in creating my drought hardy lines of corn in Montana. You might have heard of me for creating Painted Mountain Corn and others, that are feeding people on every continent in the world.

    Climate heating is predicted to turn 75% of the world into desert, and CHAT says that the last grains to survive will be SW desert corns. NS/S will be the ones to feed the human race. I hope that people will support NS/S because it needs to expand it's work. NS/S needs to be able to multiply enough plants that they can afford to eliminate individual plants with genetic defects, and avoid inbreeding "bottlenecks", a common problem with seed saving.