Just Say No to Abuse Declaring War on Terrorism. Today, corn continues to be the backbone of modern American agriculture. During his 1540 expedition into the Southwest, Coronado found blue corn and other flour corns to be major staples of Pueblo Indians. Blue corn is still an important element in Native American religious rituals.
Most blue corns are flour corns.
The kernels are made of soft, floury endosperm covered by a hard shell. A thin layer of the outer cells contain blue pigment, giving the corn its color. Unlike most commercial hybrid dent corns that can yield 8,000 to 10,000 pounds of grain per acre, blue corn is open-pollinated and usually has relatively low yields of 1,000 to 4,000 pounds per acre. Blue corn plants also vary in height and flowering periods. Plants may send up extra stalks and tend to lodge or fall over when they mature, making blue corn difficult to harvest mechanically.