Each month, the NSF Current newsletter highlights research and
education efforts supported by the National Science Foundation.
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please use the links below: History is rife with examples of
corn's usefulness to society from its original domestication
over 6,000 years ago by the Indians of modern Central America to
Columbus' diary entry of 1492 noting its 'very good taste.'
Besides being a Thanksgiving dinner staple, corn is used for
biofuel and feedstock. More than 80 million acres of land in the
United States are devoted to growing corn, accounting for more
than 90 percent of the total value of feed grain. The importance
of sequencing the corn genome cannot be underrated. Through a
joint National Science Foundation (NSF) and United States
Department of Agriculture grant, a consortium of researchers led
by the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University are
close to mapping the enti