This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. Waxy corn starch or glutinous corn is a type of field corn characterized by its sticky texture when cooked as a result of larger amounts of amylopectin.
The corn was first described from a specimen from China in 1909. When feeding trials later on showed that waxy maize could produce more efficient feed gains than normal dent maize, interest in waxy maize suddenly expanded. Geneticists could show that waxy maize has a defect in metabolism precluding the synthesis of amylose in the endosperm. The exact history of waxy maize is unknown. The first mentions of it were found in the archives of the U. Farnham, a Presbyterian missionary in Shanghai, sent a sample of seeds to the U. Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction.
In 1915, the plant was rediscovered in Upper Burma and in 1920 in the Philippines. Kuleshov, when screening the distribution of maize in Asia, found it in many other places. The discovery in China of a distinct type of maize bears the historical question whether maize was known in the Orient before the discovery of America. The question was considered closed at the end of the 19th century by De Candolle who stated: “Maize is of American origin, and has only been introduced into the old world since the discovery of the new. But the finding of this unique variety of maize suggested a re-examination of the question. He also states that Portuguese arrived in China in 1516, simultaneously introducing maize.
Collins supposed that waxy maize has arisen by a way of mutation in Upper Burma. Nowadays we are able to counterpart both of these arguments. Secondly, the fact that maize, if introduced into Asia in Post-Columbian times, must have been rapidly accepted merely indicates that, like the potato in Ireland, it met an acute and pressing need. Goodrich states that there are now in China some 6000 local histories called gazetteers written from A. Maize was first accurately described in one of them, published in the sixteenth century. In his publication, Collins characterised the new plants as possessing a number of unique characteristics No indications of these characteristics in any recorded form of Zea mays had thus far been found.
Several of the unique features combine to enable the plant to resist the drying out of the silks by dry, hot winds at the time of flowering. And when Collins found such a distinct difference in the appearance of normal and waxy maize endosperm, he suspected a difference in chemical composition, but the analysis did not yield any unusual results. The percentages of starch, oil, and protein were all within the normal range. Yet, he was intrigued by the physical nature of the starch, and wrote: “In view of the recent development of specialised maize products as human food, the unique type of starch may be of some economic importance.