Genetica

Carolina explaining Santiago the process of crossing maize:
"Well, the maize, have a feminine part and a masculine part. The male (macho) when you do not cover it, spreads its seeds all over the place, fertilizing several females (hembras). The female, when not covered, will be fertilized by several males. You then do not know which variety is the father and who was the mother of the maize ear (mazorca) and cannot decide it characteristics".
Farmers gathered find the sexual character of the storey very amusing, especially when Carolina adds: "Companero Chebo tried to make a cross between his amarillo (yellow) and his chaparro (short) maize, but they got a disease. Since he did not cover them well, he says it might be AIDS/SIDA, what do you think?"

Explaining hybrids to the farmers:
"Suppose we want a tall plant that resist the heat, we could then compare the process of hybridization to the following. We take Jenneke who is very tall and let here marry her brother, thus enhancing the tallness. If her daughter marries her brother too and this for many generations, we get grand-grand children that have many defects, but are very tall. On the other side we take Armando who is very resistant to the tropical heat and let him marry his sister. Their son marries their daughter and so on. We than have grand children with many defects, but heat resistant.
Now we marry the grand'grand daughter of Jenneke with the grand grand son of Armando and we have a hybrid. The first generation will have the desired traits (heat'resistant and tall) and do very well in other areas aswell, as the defects are gone by the mixture of these very different parents. However when they again get children, we find some with very good and some with very bad traits, but nothing like a stable offspring... ¨
Farmers laughing.