…A gustatory digression: According to historical sources [E.H.C. [ie. the author]], serendipity played a part in a practical discovery (195371ya) from which many sweet corn worshipers now benefit. Soaking and chewing upon a corn seed to aid in concentration is a pervasive but minor indiscretion in the profession, generally conducted surreptitiously and especially embraced when seeking rare mutations or recombinants. Muttering, so it is said, “that’s shrunken, too”, then “super, it’s sweet!” our subject [John Laughnan] came upon the now popular and widely grown, high-sugar Super Sweet type.
When next the reader has a table ear with butter (or better, corn oil margarine) and salt, it might be gratefully remembered that the sh2 factor is so close to A1 that it was originally attractive as a marker in intensive genetic analyses—else it might yet be only a phenotypic curiosity. The gene of importance is now reversed, but ‘a’ is still present in Super Sweet strains despite crosses and crosses.
If this obscure recessive has any influence on flavor, our subject has never defined this by taste tests on recombinants, though he did propose that the A gene did not do what it is now known it does. But this was in the era when speculations on gene functions were permitted by reviewers; so much for consistent serendipity.