Maize

Maize (Zea Mays) also known as corn, is a large grain plant plant first domesticated by indigenous people in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant produces separate pollen and ovuliferous inflorescence or ears, which are fruit, yielding kernels or seeds.
                              Scientific Classification
         Kingdom - Plantae
          (unranked) - Angiosperms
            (unranked) - Monocots
               (unranked) - Commelinids
               Order - Poaceae
                  Family - Poaceae
                    Subfamily - Panicoideae
                      Tribe - Andropogoneae
                           Genus - Sea
                            Species - Z.mays
                              Subspecies - Z.mays subsp.mays
Maize has become a stable food in many parts of the world, with total production is surpassing that of wheat or rice. However, not all of this maize is consumed directly by humans. Some of the maize production is used for corn ethanol, animal feed and other maize products, such as corn starch and corn syrup. The six major types of corn are dent corn, Flint corn, Pod corn, Popcorn, Flour corn and sweet corn.
               History
Most historians believe Maize was domesticated in the Tehuacan valley of Mexico. Recent research modified this view somewhat; scholars now indicate the adjacent Balsas River valley of south-central Mexico as the center of domestication.
 The Olmec and Mayans cultivated Maize in numerous varieties throughout meso america, cooked, ground or processed through nixtamalization. It's believed that beginning about 2500 BC, the crop spread through much of Americas. The region developed a trade network based on surplus and varieties of Maize crops, nevertheless recent data indicates that the spread of Maize took place even earlier. According to piperno "A large corpus of databases indicates that it was dispersed into lower central America by 7600 BP (5600 BC) and have moved into they inter-Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP (5000 -4000 BC), since then, even have been published.