Maize learned to survive drought before farmers had mechanisms to help the crop

We are always talking about climate change like it is a new thing that we need to get used to. Of course the discussion has been around for ages but thousands of years ago maize was already adapting to the climate change problem.

Researchers found out that throughout the life of maize, long before any formal farming was being practiced by us, the plant had developed a way to withstand drought conditions. The plant actually found an adaptive response to drought before we developed our methods hunting md gathering food. At one point in history, maize plant figured out how to adapt to drought conditions and developed multiple mechanisms to survive dry seasons

The wild form of maize which is formally known as teosinte existed under conditions associated with erratic seasonal rainfall, so for it to survive, it was forced to adapt.

How did it manage to do that?

It developed roots that would go deeper into the ground, created a method for shutting its leaf pores during the hottest time of the day and changed the overall way the plant stored water. Teosinte was able to adapt through this method of selection over a period about 1000 to 2,000 years, or possibly longer, to create an adaptive response. It evolved with that period.

I am surprised how much credit we take for domesticating maize, when maize has already successfully survived on its own due to its own mechanisms. We selected the maize that produced the largest kernels in order to grow in large fields without any knowledge at the time of what the others did to survive.

We are developing crops that can withstand drought, and we are creating this technology now and projecting it as if it was something innovative we brought to the world. Maize was already capable of doing this well before we understood drought in an agricultural aspect.

I'll start doing more research into all of the other responses and adaptive changes that plants have created throughout history.

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