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thundara  ·  4561 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Most Beautiful Corn in the World...
    Livestock feeders prefer vitamin-rich yellow kernels, Southerners like white kernels, and Native Americans favor blue. Years of deliberate selection, careful pollination, and storing of seeds produced these single-color corn ears. [...] Some studies suggest corn pigments promote resistance to insects or fungi that invade an ear of corn.

It's a very unfortunate trend in western agriculture to force homogeneity in our crops. Michael Pollen wrote a chapter in The Botany of Desire on the history of the potato and how it is generally cultivated with many different species growing together in south american countries, where mounds and mounds of pesticides are not readily available. (If you don't like reading, PBS did an excellent program on the book, I recommend either)