Neosinte is my first generations of developing and using teosinte as a grain plant. This started over a decade ago using a cross with a blue heirloom sweet corn and northern highland teosinte. It was a pathless path type of selection process with the goal of creating an outwardly ever expanding diverse population of plants. In other words, it is the opposite of a variety or selection. I didn’t want it to be stable or predictable in any way. The goal which I ‘penciled in’ later was to select corn as a grain plant like wheat with small kernels and foliage that is more grass looking than corn is. This was give it more resislence and drought tolerance. This year I made corn bread from the kernels and found out that in the process the kernels were incredibly hard exceeding even popcorn. My old Vita-mix grinder heated up from the friction very quickly as if I was grinding pea gravel. The flavor was earthy with corn overtones. I screened the flour to remove the pea gravel kernels which never did grind fully. I followed the old standby Betty Crocker corn bread recipe but substituted teosinte flour and some Ashworth sweet corn flour otherwise a large portion of my seed crop would have been destroyed in the making of the bread. For the last two years, I have been making popcorn from the mix. This works too but less than half actually pop as some are sweet corn in their genetics meaning they have the crinkly seeds. Those will expand upon heating but not pop. The whole batch of popcorn, unpopped kernels and all taste very good and are different flavored than popcorn. I am guessing but I think the mineral content is different than corn. I made some calls and am working on having it tested for its nutrition. I currently offer a little of this seed to those who want to further the outward expansion of Neosinte. It is the corn before corn and a means to see the great diversity in the corn genus at its very basis. Relax. Its not competing against the record corn of this year which made it past the 600 bushels per acre mark.
