Amylomaize was a term coined by Robert P. Bear of Bear Hybrids Corn Company in
Decatur, IllinoisDecatur is the largest city and the county seat of Macon County in the U.S. state of Illinois. The city, sometimes called "the Soybean Capital of the World," was founded in 1823 and is located along the Sangamon River and Lake Decatur in Central Illinois. In 2000 the city population was 81,500...
to describe his discovery and commercial breeding of a unique
cornstarchCornstarch, or cornflour in the United Kingdom and Australia, is the starch of the corn grain. It is also grown from the endosperm of the corn kernel. It has a distinctive appearance and feel when mixed raw with water or milk, giving easily to gentle pressure but resisting sudden pressure...
with high (>50%)
amyloseAmylose is a linear polymer of glucose linked mainly by α bonds. It can be made of several thousand glucose units. It is one of the two components of starch, the other being amylopectin. Amylose is soluble in water....
content, also called high amylose starch. The discovery of amylomaize occurred as a
mutationIn biology, a mutation is a randomly derived change to the nucleotide sequence of the genetic material of an organism.Mutations can be caused by copying errors in the genetic material during cell division, or by exposure to mutagens , or can be induced by the organism itself, by cellular processes...
in a normal inbred line and from that one mutation, an entire new kind of
maizeMaize , is a herbaceous plant domesticated in Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents...
(corn) was developed.
Principal uses of amylomaize
starchStarch or amylum is a polysaccharide carbohydrate consisting of a large number of glucose units joined together by glycosidic bonds.Starch is produced by all green plants as an energy store and is a major food source for humans....
are in making
biodegradable plasticBiodegradable plastics are plastics that will decompose in natural aerobic and anaerobic environments. Biodegradation of plastics can be achieved by enabling microorganisms in the environment to metabolize the molecular structure of plastic films to produce an inert humus-like material that is...
s (or
BioplasticBioplastics are a form of plastics derived from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable oil, corn starch, pea starch or microbiota , rather than fossil-fuel plastics which are derived from petroleum...
s).
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Amylomaize was a term coined by Robert P. Bear of Bear Hybrids Corn Company in
Decatur, IllinoisDecatur is the largest city and the county seat of Macon County in the U.S. state of Illinois. The city, sometimes called "the Soybean Capital of the World," was founded in 1823 and is located along the Sangamon River and Lake Decatur in Central Illinois. In 2000 the city population was 81,500...
to describe his discovery and commercial breeding of a unique
cornstarchCornstarch, or cornflour in the United Kingdom and Australia, is the starch of the corn grain. It is also grown from the endosperm of the corn kernel. It has a distinctive appearance and feel when mixed raw with water or milk, giving easily to gentle pressure but resisting sudden pressure...
with high (>50%)
amyloseAmylose is a linear polymer of glucose linked mainly by α bonds. It can be made of several thousand glucose units. It is one of the two components of starch, the other being amylopectin. Amylose is soluble in water....
content, also called high amylose starch. The discovery of amylomaize occurred as a
mutationIn biology, a mutation is a randomly derived change to the nucleotide sequence of the genetic material of an organism.Mutations can be caused by copying errors in the genetic material during cell division, or by exposure to mutagens , or can be induced by the organism itself, by cellular processes...
in a normal inbred line and from that one mutation, an entire new kind of
maizeMaize , is a herbaceous plant domesticated in Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents...
(corn) was developed.
Principal uses of amylomaize
starchStarch or amylum is a polysaccharide carbohydrate consisting of a large number of glucose units joined together by glycosidic bonds.Starch is produced by all green plants as an energy store and is a major food source for humans....
are in making
biodegradable plasticBiodegradable plastics are plastics that will decompose in natural aerobic and anaerobic environments. Biodegradation of plastics can be achieved by enabling microorganisms in the environment to metabolize the molecular structure of plastic films to produce an inert humus-like material that is...
s (or
BioplasticBioplastics are a form of plastics derived from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable oil, corn starch, pea starch or microbiota , rather than fossil-fuel plastics which are derived from petroleum...
s). It is also used in coatings that are edible and digestible. The food that the first American
astronautAn astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
s used on
ApolloNASA's Apollo Program landed the first humans on Earth's moon. US President John F. Kennedy announced his support for a manned moon landing on May 25, 1961, as part of a special address to a joint session of Congress:...
flights were coated with amylomaize film, so that no crumbs would float around in the space capsule.
Several years earlier Robert P. Bear also discovered and reported that
waxy cornWaxy corn was found in China in 1909. As this plant showed many peculiar traits, the American breeders long used it as a genetic marker to tag the existence of hidden genes in other maize breeding programs...
(100% amylopectine starch) also occurred as a mutation. Once discovered and reported, the occurrence of waxy mutations was fairly frequent in the order of once every 30,000 observations.