Abstract
The domestication of maize gave rise to a group of ancestral landraces that eventually diversified and adapted to a wide range of climatic and geographic conditions. Although biologists do not always agree in the total number of landraces currently existing in Mexico, there are at least 59 that can be clearly and consistently distinguished on the basis of biochemical and morphological characteristics. Following a historical perspective, this chapter reviews our current knowledge of the phenotypic and geographical distinctions among Mexican landraces, and illustrates their most recent classification. It also discusses some of the opportunities that the genomic characterization of landrace germplasm could offer for the study of maize functional diversity and molecular evolution.
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CITATION STYLE
Vielle-Calzada, J.-P., & Padilla, J. (2009). The Mexican Landraces: Description, Classification and Diversity. In Handbook of Maize: Its Biology (pp. 543–561). Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79418-1_27
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