Editing Zea (plant) (section)

===Early dispersal of maize in the Americas===

According to Matsuoka et al., the available early maize gene pool can be divided into three clusters:
* An Andean group, that includes the hand-grenade-shaped ear types and some other Andean maize (35 plants);
* All other South American and Mexican maize (80 plants);
* U.S. maize (40 plants)

Also, some other intermediate genomes, or admixtures of these clusters occur.

According to these authors, "The maize of the Andes Mountains with its distinctive hand grenade-shaped ears was derived from the maize of lowland South America, which in turn came from maize of the lowlands of Guatemala and southern Mexico."<ref name=Matsuoka2002 />