Prevalence, provenance distribution and variation in the variety names of Philippine traditional corn germplasm

Count, frequency, geographic distribution, and pattern of naming varieties of Philippine corn germplasm were determined from the nationwide collecting records. A total of 2,046 records out of 3,064 were provided with variety name and provenance data. Eighty-four unique names were enumerated. Frequencies of occurrence were classified as high, medium, low, and rare. Ten names, tiniguib, mimis, calimpos, lagkitan, pilit, malagkit, tacuro, pulutan, dikket and sinabmit, classified as high frequency names comprised 72.6% of the total named records occurring across regions and provinces. Dikket is generally limited to northern Luzon regions; lagkitan and sinabmit in Southern Tagalog; tacuro, pulutan, malagkit in south Luzon and Bicol; pilit, mimis and tiniguib in central to southern Philippines regions. Western Visayas and Central Visayas regions had the most names enumerated. Eight names were classified as medium frequency while 19 names were listed as low frequency. Forty-six names were considered rare. Nine out of 63 provinces on records have the most number of names enumerated while 13 provinces have only one name unique to each province. Collecting records revealed that many different variety names indeed occur for the traditional and farmers' populations of the local corn germplasm. The names vary in frequency of occurrence from highly frequent to rare. The distribution of names indicated some pattern of geographic association to provenances of samples. Names, high frequency in particular, were noted to follow the commonly observed descriptive naming based on certain morphological traits. The distribution of names was also observed to be associated with geolinguistic regions. Observations thus provide a preview of potential variability in the field in different geographic regions of the country. Hence, germplasm exploration and collecting may include areas not represented in the current records to unravel potential additional variability. In addition, morphological characterization and/or molecular diversity analysis may help quantify levels of genetic variability potentially present among the local corn germplasm varieties which may relate to variety names.