Amylomaize was a term coined in the late 1940s by
Robert P. Bear of Bear Hybrids Corn Company in
Decatur, Illinois to describe his discovery and commercial breeding of a
cornstarch
Corn starch, maize starch, or cornflour (British English) is the starch derived from corn (maize) grain. The starch is obtained from the endosperm of the kernel. Corn starch is a common food ingredient, often used to thicken sauces or so ...
with high (>50%)
amylose
Amylose is a polysaccharide made of α-D-glucose units, bonded to each other through α(1→4) glycosidic bonds. It is one of the two components of starch, making up approximately 20–30%. Because of its tightly packed helical structure, amylose ...
content, also called high amylose starch. The discovery of amylomaize occurred as a
mutation
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA replication, DNA or viral repl ...
in a normal inbred line; from that one mutation an entire new kind of
maize
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...
(corn) was developed.
Principal uses of amylomaize
starch are in making
biodegradable plastics (or
bioplastic
Bioplastics are plastic materials produced from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, straw, woodchips, sawdust, recycled food waste, etc. Some bioplastics are obtained by processing directly from natural bi ...
s). It is also used in coatings that are edible and digestible. The food that the first American
astronauts used on
Apollo
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label= Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label ...
flights from 1969 to 1972 were coated with amylomaize film,
so that no crumbs would float around in the space capsule.
Several years earlier Robert P. Bear had discovered and reported that
waxy corn
Waxy may refer to:
* a substance related to wax
* colloquially for a waxworm (particularly used by anglers)
* Waxy (band), an American stoner rock band
* Waxy (horse), a thoroughbred racehorse
* WAXY (AM), a radio station (790 AM) licensed to se ...
(100%
amylopectin Amylopectin is a water-insoluble polysaccharide and highly branched polymer of α-glucose units found in plants. It is one of the two components of starch, the other being amylose.
Plants store starch within specialized organelles called amyloplas ...
starch) also occurred as a mutation. Once discovered and reported, waxy mutations were found in the order of once every 30,000 observations.
See also
*
Waxy maize
References
Maize varieties
Starch
Dietary supplements
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