I found a lot of information about this just by doing a search on Google.

It seems that many of the hybrids are bred for resistance to this, so you probably won't have too much concern that your corn growing neighbors will come after you for contaminating their corn crop. I think you would still want to keep some distance to any other growers of corn in your area.

I remember back when I was a kid and my parents had corn that developed this on it; my mom was always warning me to not mess with it since it was toxic. That's the same thing that was said about tomatoes from years ago. Now this fungus is a gourmet item that has a market out there for it and I could have been eating it way back then if people were more informed.

GG

Hi - thanks for this, both posters. yes, it sure is interesting how something can be seen in an entirely different light depending on what part of the world you're from :-). My interest in huitlacoche was first sparked when it appeared in a friend's organic corn field. Apparently corn ears can be purposely inoculated with it and i've come across a few research articles on how to do so - unfortunately they're mostly in Spanish. If we'd known how, we could have cultured the fungus from my friend's field. The stuff is popping up across the country in fancy restaurants - and infected corn fetches $15-17 a pound, if I've correctly interpreted what I've found.