Golden Bantam
| Golden Bantam | |
|---|---|
| Art | Maize ( Zea mays L. subsp. Mays ) |
| origin | United States |
| breeder | W. Atlee Burpee |
| Breeding year | 1902 |
| ancestry | |
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Golden Bantam is a traditional, non-seeded and GMO-free sugar - or sweet corn variety. Solid maize varieties ( suitable for reproduction ) have been largely replaced in conventional cultivation by more robust hybrid varieties (based on the so-called heterosis effect ). Today, for economic reasons, some of these are genetically modified.
"Save our Seeds" campaign
The Future Foundation for Agriculture made the maize variety known to a wider public when it distributed bantam seeds free of charge as part of the “SOS Save Our Seeds” campaign. The "Bantam Maize Campaign" aims to encourage gardeners and farmers to plant the genetically unmodified maize variety as food as well as for seed production. According to the Genetic Engineering Act, growers of solid-seeded bantam maize are entitled to find out where genetically modified maize is grown in their neighborhood and have a right to relative protection against outcrossing of genetically modified pollen (distance regulation).