Acequias, GMOs and bioregional autonomy | Report on the condition of agriculture in Costilla County, Colorado – PART 2

With special reference to center of
origin land race cultivars and GMO crops

PART
2 | THE CULEBRA CENTER OF ORIGIN AND DIVERSITY

Devon
G. Peña | Viejo San Acacio, CO | November 16, 2015

Moderator’s Note: This is the second in a three part series plus a source bibliography.
The author is Co-Founder and President of The Acequia Institute and prepared
this report during August-September 2015. The report is intended as a
contribution to local agricultural, scientific, and environmental education for
Costilla County residents, farmers, and public officials. The information or
views presented in this report do not reflect the official views or policies of
The Acequia Institute or its Board of Directors and Officers or the University
of Washington.

What we are working to protect. Culebra-Gallegos
maíz de concho

grown at Acequia Institute farm in
Viejo San Acacio.

Photograph by Devon G. Peña

The Culebra Center of Origin and Agrobiodiversity

The acequia farmers of the southern
SLV (Costilla and Conejos counties) are among the oldest non-tribal indigenous
family farmers in the U.S. and are renowned for unique place-adapted heirloom
land race maize, bean, and pumpkin/squash varieties.

These native crops are considered
part of the land race populations of the extended Mesoamerican Center of
Origin. The concept of ‘center of origin’ was first developed by the Russian
scientist Nicolai Vavilov who identified several distinct biogeographical
regions across the globe that are home to the wild ancestors of crops
domesticated and diversified by indigenous farmers over millennia and remain places where the co-evolution of
crops and wild ancestors persists as a direct result of surviving indigenous
cultural selection and agroecological practices [our emphasis].[i]

According to noted ethnobotanist, Gary
P. Nabhan:

In the U.S. Southwest and northwestern Mexico, much of the
land is arid. Indigenous agriculture persists here, in some places beyond where
conventional modern agriculture is successful. In addition to the reason
usually given for genetic conservation to preserve for future generations genes
that may make commercial crop varieties less vulnerable to stresses and
maladies there are others worth considering with regard to native crops of this
binational region. (1985: 387-8).

Nabhan illustrates how
“Aridoamerica” is an overlooked center of origin and diversity. Vavilov’s
travels included vast stretches of Aridoamerica where he searched for and
identified dozens of native land race crops developed and sustained by
indigenous farmers with at least 25 plant species in advanced stages of
domestication cultivated since well before European invasion and conquest
(Nabhan 2011).

Centers of origin are also centers
of diversity. We propose that this includes the San Luis Valley. Nabhan appears
to include the Upper Sonoran desert country of the San Luis Valley (SLV) as a
northern periphery sub-basin of Aridoamerica (1988: 393).  More recent scientific research by Matsuoka,
et al. (2002) squarely places the SLV within the center of origin and diversity
of maize; see Figure 5 below.

Fig. 5. Center of origin teocintle and maize land race populations. The light blue dots include accessions from northern New Mexico and the San Luis Valley in Colorado. Source: Matsuoka, et al (2002).

As a center of origin and
agrobiodiversity, the Culebra watershed acequia farms are recognized, above
all, for their contributions to heirloom maize diversity and for sustaining
several vanishing artisan production methods and practices involving the use of
native crops. This is especially true of a maize white flint variety known as maíz de concho.

The ethnobotany of this white flint
maize, which is used to make chicos del
horno (adobe oven-roasted corn), is still a matter of research in-progress
and only a very few published sources are available (for e.g., see Peña 2015).
The Upper Rio Grande Hispano Farms study (1995-99) — co-directed by Dr. Devon
G. Peña with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH Grant
RO-22707-94) and the Ford Foundation  —
included what is likely the first scientific field and lab research on the
local white flint maize grown by acequia farmers in the Culebra watershed of
Colorado.

The maize geneticist Ralph
Bertrand-García of Colorado College did the field study in 1995.  Bertrand-García (in-press) found that the
white flint maize produced by the Corpus A. Gallegos family in San Luis is a
highly in-bred parent line, implying genetic purity and an absence of genes
from commercial conventional hybrids. We note that when the field study was
done there were no commercial plantings of GMO maize in the SLV.

Bertrand-García further suggests (in
personal communication to the author) that Culebra maíz de concho shares morphological qualities and
possibly gene sequence patches derived from ancient Anasazi corncob remnants
found at sites across the desert Southwest (Mesa Verde, Chaco, Grand Gulch).
Bertrand-García’s study supports oral histories in Costilla County declaring
that the local white flint maize originally came from Anasazi ancestral maize
populations via the modern-day Taos, San Juan, San Idelfonso, Picuris, and
other northern Pueblos (Corpus A. Gallegos interview with Devon G. Peña, July
18, 1996; archived at The Acequia Institute). Today, seed exchanges with
indigenous farmers in those communities continue.

The principal traits identified by
Bertrand-García include three that are adaptive responses to conditions in high
altitude cold desert environments with short growing seasons and late spring
and early fall frosts. These include: (1) rapid development with average of
74-80 days to maturity (between sowing and harvesting); (2) resistance to
desiccation and tissue damage from intense UV solar radiation at high altitude
and early or late frosts; and (3) adaptation to diurnal temperature extremes
with a daily average range between lows of 40°F and highs of 80°F during the
growing season.

These qualities are significant
traits, especially given the context of today’s climate change challenges. It
would seem that the genomic integrity of the Culebra bioregional land race
maize populations could be recognized as a national agrobiodiversity
conservation priority.

Santistevan (2003) also describes
the specific heirloom white flint used by acequia farmers as maíz de concho.
Adopting the scientific name Zea mays
clibanus for this population, he notes that the heirloom variety is grown
in rotation or intercropped with maíz de
diente, another local flint so named because farmers describe the kernels
as “horse’s teeth”.

In our own field observations, we
are seeing a variety of inbred parent lines as well as a constantly shifting
mosaic of native chimera varieties incorporating morphological, adaptive,
forage/biomass, nutritional, and culinary qualities valued by acequia
communities. Some chimeras of two or more parent lines from local land races
often have features expected separately in flint, dent, and flour maize land
races. One of our own heirloom varieties, gifted to The Acequia Institute by Corpus Aquino Gallegos of San Luis, Colorado, can be described as a “floury flint”
because it can be used, depending on the timing of harvest, to produce chicos
or pozol (hominy) as well as corn meal for masa
harina through a process known as nixtamalization.[ii]

Chicos del horno has been listed by
Slow Food USA as an endangered food in the Ark of Taste project. This designation includes concern for disappearing
artisan craft skills to construct and maintain the crucial adobe ovens and
place-based knowledge required to prepare the oven-roasted chicos for
consumption or sale. Chicos remain a significant part of our “First Foods” and
as an icon of our heritage cuisine. As such, chicos sit at the center of the
ethnic foodways of bioregional acequiera/o
culture.

Finally, maíz de concho varieties
bred and sown by the acequia farmers of Costilla County bear living evidence of
genetic affinity with wild ancestral forms. During the 2010 harvest cycle of
maíz de concho at Almunyah de las Dos
Acequias, the home of the Acequia Institute’s farm school and grassroots
agroecological and permaculture field station, we sowed a seventh generation of
Gallegos family heirloom white flint, the same parent line studied by
Bertrand-García (in-press); we found two stalks that produced tunicate
florescence instead of whole cob alignments of the maize kernels.

Figure 6 and 7 below present two
images: First is a diagram from the classic study by Noble Laureate geneticist
George W. Beadle (1980) on “The Ancestry of Corn”. In the diagram, (a) and (b)
are designated ‘teocintle’; (c) is designated as a ‘tunicate’ (a mutation in
which individual kernels remain aligned in separate single- or double-file
instead of clustered on a cob); (d) is designated as a ‘primitive’ ear, and (e)
is designated as ‘modern’ maize. Second is a photograph of the tunicate
florescence that we keyed as an example of a tendency in our maíz de concho to
revert back to wild ancestral forms. These occurrences are indicative of the
close genomic affinity our in-bred land race varieties have with wild and
intermediary relatives.

Fig. 6. Diagram of teocintle, tunicate, primitive, and modern maize. Source: Beadle (1980).

Fig. 7. Tunicate white flint. From 2010 harvest at Almunyah Dos Acequias.
Viejo San Acacio, CO. Compare with (c) in Fig. 6. Photograph by D. G. Peña

The photograph in Fig. 7
above shows the tunicate white flint mutation from our own accession of the
Gallegos family parent line of Culebra maíz de concho and was collected during
the 2010 harvest at Almunyah de las Dos Acequias Farm in Viejo San Acacio.
Comparing this mutation with Beadle’s 1980 diagram suggests that the occurrence
depicted in Fig. 7 above is an example of the regression/mutation of a
local land race to an intermediate wild stage. This is substantive evidence of
the legitimacy of center of origin land race status for Costilla County maize varieties
like Culebra-Gallegos maíz de concho.

Local youth participate in the
production of chicos del horno at Corpus A. Gallegos
Ranch. San Luis, CO

Photograph
by Devon G. Peña

---

[i] See Nabhan 2011 for a
detailed study of Vavilov’s journey through northwestern Mexico and the
American Southwest, a bioregion Nabhan describes as “Aridoamerica”.

[ii] A process for the
preparation of maize in which the grain is soaked and cooked in an alkaline
solution, usually limewater, and hulled; the process makes the lysine and other
essential amino acids available to the human digestive system, maximizing the
nutritional value of maize consumption, a point overlooked by many scientific
specialists studying maize who repeat the mythic refrain about the malnourished
state of so-called maize-dependent consumers.