Corn | History, Cultivation, Uses, & Description | Britannica

Home » Where Does Corn Come From » Corn | History, Cultivation, Uses, & Description | Britannica

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Types of corn

Dent corn
Dent cornUsed for animal feed, dent corn, is ready for harvest after drying in the field. (more)

Commercial classifications, based mainly on kernel texture, include dent corn, flint corn, flour corn, sweet corn, and popcorn. Dent corn, primarily grown as animal feed and for food manufacturing, is characterized by a depression in the crown of the kernel caused by unequal drying of the hard and soft starch making up the kernel. Flint corn, containing little soft starch, has no depression; it is used for decoration and is eaten as hominy in the Americas. Flour corn, composed largely of soft starch, has soft, mealy, easily ground kernels and is an important source of corn flour.

Sweet corn, commonly sold fresh, frozen, or canned as a vegetable, has succulent, translucent seeds. The plant sugar is not converted to starch as in other types, giving the grain its sweet flavor.

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The corn chronicles: Why popcorn is so popular
The corn chronicles: Why popcorn is so popularThere are more than 25 different types of popcorn.(more)See all videos for this article

Popcorn, an extreme type of flint corn characterized by small hard kernels, is devoid of soft starch, and heating causes the moisture in the cells to expand, making the kernels explode. Improvements in corn have resulted from hybridization, based on crossbreeding of superior inbred strains.

Also called: maize (Show more) Key People: Edward Murray East Kim Soon-Kwon Donald Forsha Jones John Lorain Barbara McClintock (Show more) Related Topics: flour corn Reid’s Yellow Dent flint corn sweet corn Balsas teosinte (Show more) See all related content

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