Glycyrrhiza lepidota be sweet and were used as food and for medicinal purposes by Native Americans. After eating a roasted root in 1806, Meriwether Lewis described an "agreeable flavour not unlike the sweet pittaitoe." American licorice is not sweet from sugar but from glycyrrhizin. Glycyrrhizin may increase blood pressure (aka hypertension) by interfering with cortisol conversion. The Zuni people chew the root to keep the mouth sweet and moist. American licorice is grazed by cattle, but not preferred and will increase under grazing as competing plants are grazed off. The new growth can be toxic. It has light green to white flowers
Plant genetics discovery and proliferation of hybrid corn varieties. Plant genetics can be used to predict which combination of plants may produce a plant with Hybrid vigor, or conversely many discoveries in Plant genetics have come from studying the effects of hybridization. Plants are generally more capable of surviving, and indeed flourishing, as polyploids. Polyploid organisms have more than two sets of homologous chromosomes. For example, humans have two sets of homologous chromosomes, meaning that a typical human will have 2 copies each of 23 different chromosomes, for a total of 46. Wheat on the other hand, while having only 7 distinct