Engineering New Combinations
The Native Americans identified resistant plants, such as resistant teosinte. Today, breeders cross varietals containing a resistant gene (shown in red) with a wild variety that is sensitive, such as our delicious Kansas corn. Like the Native Americans, we get a resistant corn recombinant. That's the way that plant breeding has worked for centuries.
Remember, to get the modern corn took some 8,000 years of plant breeding and it might take us a long time. Why? Because every time you make a cross you don't just get the old corn plant plus the new gene you wanted. Instead, we might get back only one kernel per spike as well, or we might get back some awful taste or some other toxin that is toxic to humans from the wild variety. So this is not a particularly safe method. By constant back-crossing it might be possible to get this resistant plant, but that could take an enormous amount of time.
  
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Winding Your Way Through DNA Resource Book Index
