“Where Did My Friends Go?”: How Corn’s Microbe Partners Have Changed Over Time

Many of the foods we eat today look very different than they did in the past. Corn, or maize, did not exist 10,000 years ago: it descended from a weedy grass with tiny hard-shelled seeds that we would not recognize as corn kernels. That wild ancestor of corn, called teosinte, grew in mixtures of many other plants, instead of grows in cornfields like today. Big changes between teosinte and corn that we can see aboveground lead us to think that there have been changes belowground too. Plants form partnerships with microbes, such as bacteria and fungi, to get the nutrients that they need to grow. Scientists are finding that microbes near the roots of teosinte are different than microbes that live around corn roots. Understanding how corn’s microbe partners have changed can help us make corn varieties that are better for the environment.