A landrace is a locally endemic strain of plant that has been continuously adapted to its native region through many generations of selective breeding.  In the case of this 'Chapalote' corn I'm growing at two of my school gardens, archaeological evidence shows that this variety has changed little in the 4,200+ years it has been cultivated by the Indigenous communities of the Sonoran Desert.

This lack of "improvement" over time hardly indicates inferiority to modern hybrid and transgenic maize - quite the opposite in fact.  The fact that this corn has remained very much the same rather shows it has been intelligently and meticulously engineered into a highly resilient staple crop - one that has provided sustenance over millennia of social, cultural, and ecological shifts in one of the most difficult climates on Earth for agriculture.  Indeed, 'Chapalote' is still valued by modern-day Uto-Aztecan peoples for its ability to yield consistent harvests even in dry years.

The 'Chapalote' plants shown in the picture attained this massive size without fertilizer inputs.  These plants are deep mulched Ruth Stout-style with biomass from the on-site graywater-fed banana plants and straw sourced from last year's school Halloween event.  Out of all the corn varieties I am growing this year (others include heirloom 'Martian Gem' corn and a couple commercial sweetcorn varieties), 'Chapalote' has performed the best by an extremely wide margin.  As I live in a region of Southern California with brutally hot and dry summers, its adaptation to the extreme heat and erratic rainfall of the Sonoran Desert certainly has something to do with its high performance.  Resilient landraces like 'Chapalote' are promising alternatives to commercial cultivars for gardeners as climate change causes weather patterns to become increasingly extreme and erratic.

We currently have some remaining ears still drying on the plants, and my students and I are really excited make popcorn out of them once they are ready. It has historically been popped and used for flour. 

Seeds obtained from Experimental Farm Network.

This corn landrace is as old as the Egyptian pyramids. I'm a gardening teacher, and I grew some for my students as a lesson in both history and horticulture.