1.
Rice
–
Rice is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima. As a cereal grain, it is the most widely consumed staple food for a part of the worlds human population. It is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest worldwide production, after sugarcane and maize, wild rice, from which the crop was developed, may have its native range in Australia. Chinese legends attribute the domestication of rice to Shennong, the emperor of China. Genetic evidence has shown that rice originates from a single domestication 8, previously, archaeological evidence had suggested that rice was domesticated in the Yangtze River valley region in China. From East Asia, rice was spread to Southeast and South Asia, Rice was introduced to Europe through Western Asia, and to the Americas through European colonization. There are many varieties of rice and culinary preferences tend to vary regionally, in some areas such as the Far East or Spain, there is a preference for softer and stickier varieties. Rice, a monocot, is grown as an annual plant, although in tropical areas it can survive as a perennial. The rice plant can grow to 1–1.8 m tall, occasionally more depending on the variety and it has long, slender leaves 50–100 cm long and 2–2.5 cm broad. The small wind-pollinated flowers are produced in a branched arching to pendulous inflorescence 30–50 cm long, the edible seed is a grain 5–12 mm long and 2–3 mm thick. Rice cultivation is well-suited to countries and regions with low costs and high rainfall, as it is labor-intensive to cultivate. However, rice can be grown practically anywhere, even on a hill or mountain area with the use of water-controlling terrace systems. Although its parent species are native to Asia and certain parts of Africa, centuries of trade, the traditional method for cultivating rice is flooding the fields while, or after, setting the young seedlings. The name wild rice is used for species of the genera Zizania and Porteresia. The Greek word is the source of all European words, the origin of the Greek word is unclear. It is sometimes held to be from the Tamil word அரிசி, however, Krishnamurti disagrees with the notion that Old Tamil arici is the source of the Greek term, and proposes that it was borrowed from descendants of Proto-Dravidian *wariñci instead. The varieties of rice are typically classified as long-, medium-, the grains of long-grain rice tend to remain intact after cooking, medium-grain rice becomes more sticky. Medium-grain rice is used for dishes, for risotto in Italy
Rice
–
A mixture of brown, white, and red indica rice, also containing
wild rice, Zizania species
Rice
–
Oryza sativa with small
wind-pollinated flowers
Rice
–
Cooked brown rice from Bhutan
Rice
–
Rice can come in many shapes, colours and sizes. Photo by the
IRRI.
2.
Cereal grain
–
A cereal is any grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain, composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran. Cereal grains are grown in quantities and provide more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop and are therefore staple crops. Edible grains from plant families, such as buckwheat, quinoa. In their natural form, cereals are a source of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, oils. When refined by the removal of the bran and germ, the endosperm is mostly carbohydrate. In some developing nations, grain in the form of rice, wheat, millet, in developed nations, cereal consumption is moderate and varied but still substantial. The word cereal is derived from Ceres, the Roman goddess of harvest, agriculture allowed for the support of an increased population, leading to larger societies and eventually the development of cities. It also created the need for organization of political power, as decisions had to be made regarding labor and harvest allocation and access rights to water. Agriculture bred immobility, as populations settled down for long periods of time, early Neolithic villages show evidence of the development of processing grain. The Levant is the ancient home of the ancestors of wheat, barley and peas, there is evidence of the cultivation of figs in the Jordan Valley as long as 11,300 years ago, and cereal production in Syria approximately 9,000 years ago. During the same period, farmers in China began to farm rice and millet, using man-made floods, fiber crops were domesticated as early as food crops, with China domesticating hemp, cotton being developed independently in Africa and South America, and Western Asia domesticating flax. The first cereal grains were domesticated by early primitive humans, about 8,000 years ago, they were domesticated by ancient farming communities in the Fertile Crescent region. Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley were three of the so-called Neolithic founder crops in the development of agriculture, around the same time, millets and rices were starting to become domesticated in East Asia. Sorghum and millets were also being domesticated in sub-Saharan West Africa, while each individual species has its own peculiarities, the cultivation of all cereal crops is similar. Most are annual plants, consequently one planting yields one harvest, wheat, rye, triticale, oats, barley, and spelt are the cool-season cereals. These are hardy plants grow well in moderate weather and cease to grow in hot weather. The warm-season cereals are tender and prefer hot weather, barley and rye are the hardiest cereals, able to overwinter in the subarctic and Siberia. Many cool-season cereals are grown in the tropics, however, some are only grown in cooler highlands, where it may be possible to grow multiple crops per year
Cereal grain
–
Cereal
Cereal grain
–
A wheat field in
Dorset, England
Cereal grain
–
Cereal
grain seeds from left to right:
wheat,
spelt,
barley,
oat.
Cereal grain
–
Threshing; Tacuinum Sanitatis, 14th century
3.
Flower
–
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in plants that are floral. The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs, Flowers may facilitate outcrossing or allow selfing. Some flowers produce diaspores without fertilization, Flowers contain sporangia and are the site where gametophytes develop. Many flowers have evolved to be attractive to animals, so as to them to be vectors for the transfer of pollen. After fertilization, the ovary of the flower develops into fruit containing seeds, the essential parts of a flower can be considered in two parts, the vegetative part, consisting of petals and associated structures in the perianth, and the reproductive or sexual parts. A stereotypical flower consists of four kinds of structures attached to the tip of a short stalk, each of these kinds of parts is arranged in a whorl on the receptacle. The four main whorls are as follows, Collectively the calyx, corolla, the next whorl toward the apex, composed of units called petals, which are typically thin, soft and colored to attract animals that help the process of pollination. Androecium, the whorl, consisting of units called stamens. Stamens consist of two parts, a called a filament, topped by an anther where pollen is produced by meiosis. Gynoecium, the innermost whorl of a flower, consisting of one or more units called carpels, the carpel or multiple fused carpels form a hollow structure called an ovary, which produces ovules internally. Ovules are megasporangia and they in turn produce megaspores by meiosis which develop into female gametophytes and these give rise to egg cells. The gynoecium of a flower is described using an alternative terminology wherein the structure one sees in the innermost whorl is called a pistil. A pistil may consist of a carpel or a number of carpels fused together. The sticky tip of the pistil, the stigma, is the receptor of pollen, the supportive stalk, the style, becomes the pathway for pollen tubes to grow from pollen grains adhering to the stigma. The relationship to the gynoecium on the receptacle is described as hypogynous, perigynous, although the arrangement described above is considered typical, plant species show a wide variation in floral structure. These modifications have significance in the evolution of flowering plants and are used extensively by botanists to establish relationships among plant species, the four main parts of a flower are generally defined by their positions on the receptacle and not by their function. Many flowers lack some parts or parts may be modified into other functions and/or look like what is typically another part, in some families, like Ranunculaceae, the petals are greatly reduced and in many species the sepals are colorful and petal-like. Other flowers have modified stamens that are petal-like, the flowers of Peonies and Roses are mostly petaloid stamens
Flower
–
A poster with flowers or clusters of flowers produced by twelve species of flowering plants from different families
Flower
–
Main parts of a mature flower (
Ranunculus glaberrimus)
Flower
–
Reproductive parts of Easter Lily (Lilium longiflorum). 1. Stigma, 2. Style, 3. Stamens, 4. Filament, 5. Petal
Flower
–
Left: A normal zygomorphic Streptocarpus flower. Right: An aberrant peloric Streptocarpus flower. Both of these flowers appeared on the Streptocarpus hybrid 'Anderson's Crows' Wings'.
4.
Straw
–
Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry stalks of cereal plants, after the grain and chaff have been removed. Straw makes up half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye. It has many uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder and it is usually gathered and stored in a straw bale, which is a bundle of straw tightly bound with twine or wire. Bales may be square, rectangular, or round, depending on the type of baler used. Current and historic uses of straw include, Animal feed Straw may be fed as part of the component of the diet to cattle or horses that are on a near maintenance level of energy requirement. It has a low energy and nutrient content. The heat generated when microorganisms in a herbivores gut digest straw can be useful in maintaining body temperature in cold climates, due to the risk of impaction and its poor nutrient profile, it should always be restricted to part of the diet. It may be fed as it is, or chopped into short lengths, basketry Bee skeps and linen baskets are made from coiled and bound together continuous lengths of straw. The technique is known as lip work, bedding, humans or livestock The straw-filled mattress, also known as a palliasse, is still used in many parts of the world. It is commonly used as bedding for ruminants and horses and it may be used as bedding and food for small animals, but this often leads to injuries to mouth, nose and eyes as straw is quite sharp. Biofuels The use of straw as an energy source is increasing rapidly, especially for biobutanol. Straw or hay briquettes are a substitute to coal. Biogas Straw, processed first as briquettes, has been fed into a plant in Aarhus University, Denmark. Biomass The use of straw in large-scale biomass power plants is becoming mainstream in the EU, the straw is either used directly in the form of bales, or densified into pellets which allows for the feedstock to be transported over longer distances. Finally, torrefaction of straw with pelletisation is gaining attention, because it increases the density of the resource. This processing step also makes storage easier, because torrefied straw pellets are hydrophobic. Torrefied straw in the form of pellets can be directly co-fired with coal or natural gas at high rates and make use of the processing infrastructures at existing coal. Because the torrefied straw pellets have superior structural, chemical and combustion properties to coal, they can replace all coal, first generation pellets are limited to a co-firing rate of 15% in modern IGCC plants
Straw
–
Large round bales
Straw
–
Bundles of rice straw
Straw
–
Pile of "small square" straw bales, sheltered under a
tarpaulin
Straw
–
Straw or hay briquettes are a biofuel substitute to coal
5.
Livestock
–
Livestock are domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber, and labor. The term is used to refer solely to those raised for food. In recent years, some organizations have also raised livestock to promote the survival of rare breeds, animal husbandry practices have varied widely across cultures and time periods. Originally, livestock were not confined by fences or enclosures, but these practices have largely shifted to intensive animal farming and these practices increase yield of the various commercial outputs, but have led to increased concerns about animal welfare and environmental impact. Livestock production continues to play an economic and cultural role in numerous rural communities. Livestock as a word was first used between 1650 and 1660, as a merger between the live and stock. Older English sources, such as the King James Version of the Bible, the word cattle is derived from Old North French catel, which meant all kinds of movable personal property, including livestock, which was differentiated from immovable real estate. In later English, sometimes smaller livestock such as chickens and pigs were referred to as small cattle, today, the modern meaning of cattle, without a modifier, usually refers to domesticated bovines, but sometimes livestock refers only to this subgroup. Legal definition United States federal legislation sometimes more narrowly defines the term to make specified agricultural commodities either eligible or ineligible for a program or activity, for example, the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 defines livestock only as cattle, swine, and sheep. Animal-rearing originated during the transition to settled farming communities from hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Animals are domesticated when their breeding and living conditions are controlled by humans, over time, the collective behaviour, lifecycle and physiology of livestock have changed radically. Many modern farm animals are unsuited to life in the wild, dogs were domesticated in East Asia about 15,000 years ago. Goats and sheep were domesticated around 8000 BC in Asia, swine or pigs were domesticated by 7000 BC in the Middle East and China. The earliest evidence of horse domestication dates to around 4000 BC, the term livestock is nebulous and may be defined narrowly or broadly. Broadly, livestock refers to any breed or population of animal kept by humans for a useful and this can mean domestic animals, semidomestic animals, or captive wild animals. Semidomesticated refers to animals which are only lightly domesticated or of disputed status and these populations may also be in the process of domestication. Some people may use the term livestock to refer to only used for red meat. Livestock are used by humans for a variety of purposes, many of which have an economic value, Livestock products include, Meat A useful form of dietary protein and energy, meat is the edible tissue of the animal carcass
Livestock
–
Domestic sheep and a
cow (heifer) pastured together in
South Africa
Livestock
–
Alpaca Mammal,
herbivore
Livestock
–
Banteng Mammal,
herbivore
Livestock
–
Bison Mammal,
herbivore
6.
Agriculture
–
Agriculture is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of human civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science, the history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture farming has become the dominant agricultural methodology, genetically modified organisms are an increasing component of agriculture, although they are banned in several countries. Agricultural food production and water management are increasingly becoming global issues that are fostering debate on a number of fronts, the major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials. Specific foods include cereals, vegetables, fruits, oils, meats, fibers include cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax. Raw materials include lumber and bamboo, other useful materials are also produced by plants, such as resins, dyes, drugs, perfumes, biofuels and ornamental products such as cut flowers and nursery plants. The word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agricultūra, from ager, field, Agriculture usually refers to human activities, although it is also observed in certain species of ant, termite and ambrosia beetle. To practice agriculture means to use resources to produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops. This definition includes arable farming or agronomy, and horticulture, all terms for the growing of plants, even then, it is acknowledged that there is a large amount of knowledge transfer and overlap between silviculture and agriculture. In traditional farming, the two are often combined even on small landholdings, leading to the term agroforestry, Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 11 separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 15,000 years ago, rice was domesticated in China between 13,500 and 8,200 years ago, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago. From around 11,500 years ago, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Cattle were domesticated from the aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 9,000 years ago. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 7,000 years ago, cotton was domesticated in Peru by 5,600 years ago, and was independently domesticated in Eurasia at an unknown time
Agriculture
–
Agriculture
Agriculture
–
Fields in
Záhorie (
Slovakia) - a typical Central European agricultural region.
Agriculture
–
Domestic sheep and a
cow (heifer) pastured together in
South Africa.
Agriculture
–
A
Sumerian harvester's sickle made from baked clay (ca. 3000 BC).
7.
Fodder
–
Fodder, a type of animal feed, is any agricultural foodstuff used specifically to feed domesticated livestock, such as cattle, goats, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs. Fodder refers particularly to food given to the animals, rather than that which they forage for themselves, Fodder is also called provender and includes hay, straw, silage, compressed and pelleted feeds, oils and mixed rations, and sprouted grains and legumes. Most animal feed is from plants, but some manufacturers add ingredients to processed feeds that are of animal origin, in many cases the production of grass for cattle fodder is a valuable intercrop between crops for human consumption, because it builds the organic matter in the soil. Some agricultural byproducts fed to animals may be considered unsavory by human consumers, alfalfa Barley Birdsfoot trefoil Brassica spp. This practice is now banned in most countries where it has occurred, the US Dept. of Health and Human Services regulates drugs of the Veterinary Feed Directive type that can be present within commercial livestock feed. Fodder in the form of sprouted grains and legumes can be grown in small, systems have been developed recently that allow for many tons of sprouts to be produced each day, year round. Sprouted grains can increase the nutritional value of the grain compared with feeding the ungerminated grain to stock. In addition, they use less water than traditional forage, making them ideal for drought conditions, sprouted barley and other cereal grains can be grown hydroponically in a carefully controlled environment. Under hydroponic conditions, sprouted fodder at 150 mm tall with a 50 mm root mat is at its peak for animal feed, although products such are barley are grain, when sprouted they are approved by the American Grassfed Association to be used as livestock feed. Cannon fodder Factory farming Feed manufacturing Forage Grain Pasture Karl Heinrich Ritthausen Die Eiweisskörper der Getreidearten, beiträge zur Physiologie der Samen der Kulturgewachese, der Nahrungs- und Futtermitel, Bonn,1872 from Google books. Compar Fresh or Ensiled Fodders on the Production of Greenhouse Gases Following Enteric Fermentation in Beef Cattle, université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue,2011. UK Food Standards Agency, Animal feed legislation and guidance FAO Feed Safety guidelines Fodder Plants at Agriculture Guide An article from Agriculture Guide
Fodder
–
A fodder factory set up by an individual farmer to produce customised cattle feed
Fodder
–
Round
hay bales
Fodder
–
Newton of Cawdor stack of bales, sweet-smelling fodder stored for winter
Fodder
–
Cut green fodder being transported to cattle in
Tanzania
8.
Plough
–
A plough or plow is a tool or farm implement used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting to loosen or turn the soil. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by working animals such as horses or cattle, a plough may be made of wood, iron, or steel frame with an attached blade or stick used to cut the earth. It has been an instrument for most of recorded history. The plough represents one of the major agricultural inventions in human history, as the plough is drawn through the soil it creates long trenches of fertile soil called furrows. In modern use, a field is typically left to dry out. Ploughing and cultivating a soil homogenises and modifies the upper 12 to 25 cm of the soil to form a plough layer, in many soils, the majority of fine plant feeder roots can be found in the topsoil or plough layer. Ploughs were initially human-powered, but the process became more efficient once animals were pressed into service. The first animal-powered ploughs were undoubtedly pulled by oxen, and later in areas by horses and mules. In industrialised countries, the first mechanical means of pulling a plough were steam-powered, modern competitions take place for ploughing enthusiasts like the National Ploughing Championships in Ireland. By not ploughing, beneficial fungi and microbial life can develop that will bring air into the soil, retain water. A healthy soil full of active fungi and microbial life, combined with a crop, suppresses weeds and pests naturally. Thus the intensive use of water-, oil- and energy hungry irrigation, fertilisers, cultivated land becomes more fertile and productive over time, while tilled land tends to go down in productivity over time due to erosion and the removal of nutrients with every harvest. Proponents of permaculture claim that it is the way of farming that can be maintained when fossil fuel runs out. The term plough or plow, as used today, was not common until 1700, the modern word plough comes from Old Norse plógr, and therefore Germanic, but it appears relatively late, and is thought to be a loanword from one of the north Italic languages. Words with the same root appeared with related meanings, in Raetic plaumorati wheeled heavy plough, and in Latin plaustrum farm cart, plōstrum, plōstellum cart, and plōxenum, plōximum cart box. The word must have referred to the wheeled heavy plough. Orel tentatively attaches plough to a PIE stem *blōkó-, which gave Armenian peɫem to dig and Welsh bwlch crack, on modern ploughs and some older ploughs, the mouldboard is separate from the share and runner, so these parts can be replaced without replacing the mouldboard. Abrasion eventually destroys all parts of a plough that come into contact with the soil, digging sticks, hoes, and mattocks were not invented in any one place, and hoe-cultivation must have been common everywhere agriculture was practiced
Plough
–
Traditional ploughing: a farmer works the land with horses and plough
Plough
–
Modern tractor ploughing in South Africa. This plough has five non-reversible mouldboards. The fifth, empty furrow on the left will be filled by the first furrow of the next pass.
Plough
–
Oxen driven ploughing
Plough
–
Ploughing with
buffalo in
Hubei, China
9.
Soil
–
Soil is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids, and countless organisms that together support life on Earth. Soil is called the Skin of the Earth and interfaces with the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the term pedolith, used commonly to refer to the soil, literally translates ground stone. Soil consists of a phase of minerals and organic matter, as well as a porous phase that holds gases. Accordingly, soils are often treated as a system of solids, liquids. Soil is a product of the influence of climate, relief, organisms, Soil continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness soil has been considered as an ecosystem by soil ecologists. Most soils have a dry bulk density between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cm3, while the particle density is much higher. Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, Soil science has two basic branches of study, edaphology and pedology. Edaphology is concerned with the influence of soils on living things, pedology is focused on the formation, description, and classification of soils in their natural environment. In engineering terms, soil is referred to as regolith, or loose material that lies above the solid geology. Soil is commonly referred to as earth or dirt, technically, as soil resources serve as a basis for food security, the international community advocates its sustainable and responsible use through different types of soil governance. Soil is a component of the Earths ecosystem. The worlds ecosystems are impacted in far-reaching ways by the carried out in the soil, from ozone depletion and global warming, to rainforest destruction. Following the atmosphere, the soil is the next largest carbon reservoir on Earth, as the planet warms, soils will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere due to its increased biological activity at higher temperatures. Thus, soil carbon losses likely have a positive feedback response to global warming. Since soil has a range of available niches and habitats. A gram of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial, Soil has a mean prokaryotic density of roughly 108 organisms per gram, whereas the ocean has no more than 107 procaryotic organisms per milliliter of seawater. Since plant roots need oxygen, ventilation is an important characteristic of soil and this ventilation can be accomplished via networks of interconnected soil pores, which also absorb and hold rainwater making it readily available for plant uptake
Soil
–
A represents soil; B represents
laterite, a
regolith; C represents
saprolite, a less-weathered regolith; the bottom-most layer represents
bedrock.
Soil
–
Loess field in Germany.
Soil
–
Surface-water-
gley developed in
glacial till, Northern Ireland.
Soil
–
Iron-rich soil near Paint Pots in
Kootenay National Park,
Canada
10.
Middle English
–
This stage of the development of the English language roughly followed the High to the Late Middle Ages. Middle English developed out of Late Old English, seeing many dramatic changes in its grammar, pronunciation and this largely forms the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by the era of Early Modern English, by that time, a variant of the Northumbrian dialect was developing into the Scots language. During the Middle English period many Old English grammatical features were simplified or disappeared, noun, adjective and verb inflections were simplified, a process that included the reduction of most grammatical case distinctions. Middle English also saw an adoption of Norman French vocabulary, especially in areas such as politics, law. Everyday English vocabulary remained mostly Germanic, with Old Norse influence becoming apparent, significant changes in pronunciation took place, especially for long vowels and diphthongs, which in the later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift. Little survives of early Middle English literature, most likely due to the Norman domination, poets wrote both in the vernacular and courtly English. It is popularly believed that William Shakespeare wrote in Middle English, the latter part of the 11th century was a period of transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English. The influence of Old Norse certainly helped move English from a synthetic language towards a more analytic or isolating word order and it was, after all, a salutary influence. The gain was greater than the loss, there was a gain in directness, in clarity, and in strength. The change to Old English from Old Norse was substantive, pervasive and it is most important to recognise that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of the word was so nearly the same in the two languages only the endings would put obstacles in the way of mutual understanding. In the mixed population which existed in the Danelaw these endings must have led to confusion, tending gradually to become obscured. This blending of peoples and languages resulted in simplifying English grammar. There are also many Norman-derived terms relating to the cultures that arose in the 12th century. Sometimes, and particularly later, words were taken from Latin, giving such sets as kingly, later French borrowings came from standard rather than Norman French, this leads to such cognate pairs as warden, guardian. The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not, of course, change the language immediately, the general population would have spoken the same dialects as before the Conquest, these changed slowly until written records of them became available for study, which varies in different regions. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Middle English had no standard language, Early Middle English has a largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, but a greatly simplified inflectional system
Middle English
–
A page from
Geoffrey Chaucer 's
The Canterbury Tales
11.
Old English language
–
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century, Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain, Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and this included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century, the oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmons Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century, with the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, a later literary standard, dating from the later 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English
Old English language
–
A detail of the first page of the
Beowulf manuscript, showing the words "ofer hron rade", i.e. "over the whale's road (=sea)". It is an example of an Old English stylistic device, the
kenning.
Old English language
–
"Her swutelað seo gecwydrædnes ðe" Old English inscription over the arch of the south porticus in the 10th-century
St Mary's parish church, Breamore, Hampshire
Old English language
–
The first page of the
Beowulf manuscript with its opening Hƿæt ƿē Gārde/na ingēar dagum þēod cyninga / þrym ge frunon... "Listen! We of the Spear-Danes from days of yore have heard of the glory of the folk-kings..."
12.
Old High German
–
Old High German is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 700 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the half of the 8th century. There are, however, a number of Elder Futhark inscriptions dating to the 6th century, as well as single words, during the migration period, the Elbe Germanic tribes settled in what became Alamannia, the Duchy of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Lombardy. Old High German comprises the dialects of these groups which underwent the Second Sound Shift during the 6th Century, namely all of Elbe Germanic, in the south, the Langobards, who had settled in Northern Italy, maintained their dialect until their conquest by Charlemagne in 774. This area did not become German-speaking again until the German eastward expansion of the early 12th century, though there was some attempt at conquest, Old High German literacy is a product of the monasteries, notably at St. Gallen, Reichenau and Fulda. Its origins lie in the establishment of the German church by Boniface in the mid 8th century, einhard tells how Charlemagne himself ordered that the epic lays should be collected for posterity. It was the neglect or religious zeal of later generations that led to the loss of these records, thus, it was Charlemagnes weak successor, Louis the Pious, who destroyed his fathers collection of epic poetry on account of its pagan content. Hrabanus Maurus, a student of Alcuins and abbot at Fulda from 822, was an important advocate of the cultivation of German literacy, among his students were Walafrid Strabo and Otfrid of Weissenburg. Notker Labeo towards the end of the Old High German period was among the greatest stylists in the language, the main difference between Old High German and the West Germanic dialects from which it developed is that it underwent the High German consonant shift. This is generally dated approximately to the late 5th and early 6th centuries—hence dating its start to around 500, the result of this sound change is that the consonantal system of German remains different from all other West Germanic languages, including English and Low German. Grammatically, however, Old High German remained very similar to Old English, Old Dutch, by the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had all been reduced to /ə/. Since these vowels were part of the endings in the nouns and verbs. For these reasons,1050 is seen as the start of the Middle High German period, for this reason the dialects may be termed monastery dialects. It declined after the conquest of the Lombard Kingdom by the Franks in 774 and it is classified as Upper German on the basis of evidence of the Second Sound Shift. The continued existence of a West Frankish dialect in the Western, claims that this might have been the language of the Carolingian court or that it is attested in the Ludwigslied, whose presence in a French manuscript suggests bilingualism, are controversial. The charts show the vowel and consonant systems of the East Franconian dialect in the 9th century and this is the dialect of the monastery of Fulda, and specifically of the Old High German Tatian. Old High German had five long vowels and six phonemic short vowels. Both occurred in stressed and unstressed syllables, notes, All back vowels likely had front-vowel allophones as a result of Umlaut
Old High German
–
The (Late Old High) German speaking area of the
Holy Roman Empire around 950.
13.
Einkorn wheat
–
Einkorn wheat can refer either to the wild species of wheat, Triticum boeoticum, or to the domesticated form, Triticum monococcum. The wild and domesticated forms are considered separate species, as here, or as subspecies. Einkorn is a species of hulled wheat, with tough glumes that tightly enclose the grains. The cultivated form is similar to the wild, except that the ear stays intact when ripe, the domestic form is known as petit épeautre in French, Einkorn in German, einkorn or littlespelt in English, piccolo farro in Italian and escanda menor in Spanish. Einkorn wheat was one of the first plants to be domesticated and cultivated, remnants of Einkorn have been found with the iceman mummy Ötzi. It is a variety of wild wheat, usually less than 70 centimetres tall and is not very productive of edible seeds. The principal difference between wild einkorn and cultivated einkorn is the method of seed dispersal, in the wild variety the seed head usually shatters and drops the kernels of wheat onto the ground. This facilitates a new crop of wheat, in the domestic variety, the seed head remains intact. But harvesting einkorn with intact seed heads was easier for early human harvesters, over time and through selection, conscious or unconscious, the human preference for intact seed heads created the domestic variety, which also has slightly larger kernels than wild einkorn. Domesticated einkorn thus requires human planting and harvesting for its continuing existence and this process of domestication might have taken only 20 to 200 years with the end product a wheat easier for humans to harvest. Einkorn wheat is one of the earliest cultivated forms of wheat, grains of wild einkorn have been found in Epi-Paleolithic sites of the Fertile Crescent. Although gathered from the wild for thousands of years, Einkorn Wheat was first domesticated approximately 10,000 years BP in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A or B periods. Evidence from DNA finger-printing suggests einkorn was first domesticated near Karaca Dağ in southeast Turkey, an important characteristic facilitating the domestication of einkorn and other annual grains is that the plants are largely self-pollinating. Thus, the traits of einkorn could be perpetuated at less risk of cross-fertilization with wild plants which might have traits—e. g. Smaller seeds, shattering seed heads, etc. -- less desirable for human management, from the northern part of the Fertile Crescent, the cultivation of einkorn wheat spread to the Caucasus, the Balkans, and central Europe. Einkorn wheat was more grown in cooler climates than emmer wheat. Cultivation of einkorn in the Middle East began to decline in favor of emmer wheat around 2000 BC, cultivation of einkorn was never extensive in Italy, southern France, and Spain. Einkorn continued to be cultivated in areas of northern Europe throughout the Middle Ages
Einkorn wheat
–
Einkorn wheat
Einkorn wheat
–
The kernel of einkorn wheat is contained within these spikelets.
Einkorn wheat
–
Wild einkorn, Karadag, central Turkey
14.
Poaceae
–
Poaceae or Gramineae is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants known as grasses. Poaceae includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and cultivated lawns, Grasses have stems that are hollow except at the nodes and narrow alternate leaves borne in two ranks. The lower part of each leaf encloses the stem, forming a leaf-sheath, with ca 780 genera and around 12,000 species, Poaceae are the fifth-largest plant family, following the Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, Fabaceae and Rubiaceae. Grasslands such as savannah and prairie grasses are dominant are estimated to constitute 40. 5% of the land area of the Earth, excluding Greenland. Grasses are also an important part of the vegetation in many habitats, including wetlands, forests. Though commonly called grasses, seagrasses, rushes, and sedges fall outside this family, the rushes and sedges are related to the Poaceae, being members of the order Poales, but the seagrasses are members of order Alismatales. The name Poaceae was given by John Hendley Barnhart in 1895, based on the tribe Poeae described in 1814 by Robert Brown, the term is derived from the Ancient Greek πόα. Grasses include some of the most versatile plant life-forms, a cladogram shows subfamilies and approximate species numbers in brackets, Before 2005, fossil findings indicated that grasses evolved around 55 million years ago. Recent findings of grass-like phytoliths in Cretaceous dinosaur coprolites have pushed this back to 66 million years ago. In 2011, revised dating of the origins of the rice tribe Oryzeae suggested a date as early as 107 to 129 Mya, a multituberculate mammal with grass-eating adaptations seems to suggest that grasses were already around at 120 mya. This separation occurred within the short time span of about 4 million years. Grass leaves are always alternate and distichous, and have parallel veins. Each leaf is differentiated into a lower sheath hugging the stem, the leaf blades of many grasses are hardened with silica phytoliths, which discourage grazing animals, some, such as sword grass, are sharp enough to cut human skin. A membranous appendage or fringe of hairs called the ligule lies at the junction between sheath and blade, preventing water or insects from penetrating into the sheath, flowers of Poaceae are characteristically arranged in spikelets, each having one or more florets. The spikelets are further grouped into panicles or spikes, the part of the spikelet that bears the florets is called the rachilla. A spikelet consists of two bracts at the base, called glumes, followed by one or more florets, a floret consists of the flower surrounded by two bracts, one external—the lemma—and one internal—the palea. The flowers are usually hermaphroditic—maize being an important exception—and anemophilous or wind-pollinated, the perianth is reduced to two scales, called lodicules, that expand and contract to spread the lemma and palea, these are generally interpreted to be modified sepals. This complex structure can be seen in the image on the right, the fruit of grasses is a caryopsis, in which the seed coat is fused to the fruit wall
Poaceae
Poaceae
–
Grass flowers
Poaceae
–
Setaria verticillata from
Panicoideae
Poaceae
–
Tragus roxburghii from
Chloridoideae
15.
Cereal
–
A cereal is any grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain, composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran. Cereal grains are grown in quantities and provide more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop and are therefore staple crops. Edible grains from plant families, such as buckwheat, quinoa. In their natural form, cereals are a source of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, oils. When refined by the removal of the bran and germ, the endosperm is mostly carbohydrate. In some developing nations, grain in the form of rice, wheat, millet, in developed nations, cereal consumption is moderate and varied but still substantial. The word cereal is derived from Ceres, the Roman goddess of harvest, agriculture allowed for the support of an increased population, leading to larger societies and eventually the development of cities. It also created the need for organization of political power, as decisions had to be made regarding labor and harvest allocation and access rights to water. Agriculture bred immobility, as populations settled down for long periods of time, early Neolithic villages show evidence of the development of processing grain. The Levant is the ancient home of the ancestors of wheat, barley and peas, there is evidence of the cultivation of figs in the Jordan Valley as long as 11,300 years ago, and cereal production in Syria approximately 9,000 years ago. During the same period, farmers in China began to farm rice and millet, using man-made floods, fiber crops were domesticated as early as food crops, with China domesticating hemp, cotton being developed independently in Africa and South America, and Western Asia domesticating flax. The first cereal grains were domesticated by early primitive humans, about 8,000 years ago, they were domesticated by ancient farming communities in the Fertile Crescent region. Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley were three of the so-called Neolithic founder crops in the development of agriculture, around the same time, millets and rices were starting to become domesticated in East Asia. Sorghum and millets were also being domesticated in sub-Saharan West Africa, while each individual species has its own peculiarities, the cultivation of all cereal crops is similar. Most are annual plants, consequently one planting yields one harvest, wheat, rye, triticale, oats, barley, and spelt are the cool-season cereals. These are hardy plants grow well in moderate weather and cease to grow in hot weather. The warm-season cereals are tender and prefer hot weather, barley and rye are the hardiest cereals, able to overwinter in the subarctic and Siberia. Many cool-season cereals are grown in the tropics, however, some are only grown in cooler highlands, where it may be possible to grow multiple crops per year
Cereal
–
Cereal
Cereal
–
A wheat field in
Dorset, England
Cereal
–
Cereal
grain seeds from left to right:
wheat,
spelt,
barley,
oat.
Cereal
–
Threshing; Tacuinum Sanitatis, 14th century
16.
Barley
–
Barley, a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago, Barley has been used as animal fodder, as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various health foods. It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of various cultures, Barley grains are commonly made into malt in a traditional and ancient method of preparation. In 2014, barley was ranked fourth among grains in quantity produced behind corn, rice, the Old English word for barley was bære, which traces back to Proto-Indo-European and is cognate to the Latin word farina flour. The direct ancestor of modern English barley in Old English was the derived adjective bærlic, the first citation of the form bærlic in the Oxford English Dictionary dates to around 966 CE, in the compound word bærlic-croft. The underived word bære survives in the north of Scotland as bere, the word barn, which originally meant barley-house, is also rooted in these words. Barley is a member of the grass family and it is a self-pollinating, diploid species with 14 chromosomes. The wild ancestor of domesticated barley, Hordeum vulgare subsp, spontaneum, is abundant in grasslands and woodlands throughout the Fertile Crescent area of Western Asia and northeast Africa, and is abundant in disturbed habitats, roadsides and orchards. Outside this region, the barley is less common and is usually found in disturbed habitats. However, in a study of genome-wide diversity markers, Tibet was found to be a center of domestication of cultivated barley. Wild barley has a spike, upon maturity, the spikelets separate. Domesticated barley has nonshattering spikes, making it easier to harvest the mature ears. The nonshattering condition is caused by a mutation in one of two linked genes known as Bt1 and Bt2, many cultivars possess both mutations. The nonshattering condition is recessive, so varieties of barley that exhibit this condition are homozygous for the mutant allele, spikelets are arranged in triplets which alternate along the rachis. In wild barley, only the central spikelet is fertile, while the two are reduced. This condition is retained in certain cultivars known as two-row barleys, a pair of mutations result in fertile lateral spikelets to produce six-row barleys. Recent genetic studies have revealed that a mutation in one gene, two-row barley has a lower protein content than six-row barley, thus a more fermentable sugar content. High-protein barley is best suited for animal feed, Malting barley is usually lower protein which shows more uniform germination, needs shorter steeping, and has less protein in the extract that can make beer cloudy
Barley
–
Barley
Barley
Barley
–
The cross-section of a barley root
Barley
–
Two-row and six-row barley
17.
Oat
–
The oat, sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name. While oats are suitable for consumption as oatmeal and rolled oats. The wild ancestor of Avena sativa and the related minor crop. Genetic evidence shows the forms of A. sterilis grew in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East. Domesticated oats appear relatively late, and far from the Near East, oats, like rye, are usually considered a secondary crop, i. e. derived from a weed of the primary cereal domesticates wheat and barley. As these cereals spread westwards into cooler, wetter areas, this may have favored the oat weed component, oats are best grown in temperate regions. Oats are a plant, and can be planted either in autumn or in the spring. Oats have numerous uses in foods, most commonly, they are rolled or crushed into oatmeal, oatmeal is chiefly eaten as porridge, but may also be used in a variety of baked goods, such as oatcakes, oatmeal cookies and oat bread. Oats are also an ingredient in many cold cereals, in particular muesli, historical attitudes towards oats have varied. Oat bread was first manufactured in Britain, where the first oat bread factory was established in 1899, in Scotland, they were, and still are, held in high esteem, as a mainstay of the national diet. In Scotland, a dish was made by soaking the husks from oats for a week, so the fine, floury part of the meal remained as sediment to be strained off, boiled and eaten. Oats are also used there as a thickener in soups. Oats are also used as feed for horses when extra carbohydrates. The oat hull may be crushed for the horse to easily digest the grain. They may be given alone or as part of a food pellet. Cattle are also fed oats, either whole or ground into a coarse flour using a mill, burr mill. Winter oats may be grown as a groundcover and ploughed under in the spring as a green fertilizer. They also can be used for pasture, they can be grazed a while, then allowed to head out for grain production, Oat straw is prized by cattle and horse producers as bedding, due to its soft, relatively dust-free, and absorbent nature
Oat
–
Oat
Oat
–
Closeup of oat florets (small flowers)
Oat
–
Oat grains in their
husks
Oat
–
A sample of oat
bran
18.
Wheat
–
Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region but now cultivated worldwide. In 2016, world production of wheat was 749 million tonnes, making it the second most-produced cereal after maize, since 1960, world production of wheat and other grain crops has tripled and is expected to grow further through the middle of the 21st Century. This grain is grown on land area than any other commercial food. World trade in wheat is greater than for all other crops combined, globally, wheat is the leading source of vegetal protein in human food, having a protein content of about 13%, which is relatively high compared to other major cereals and staple foods. The archaeological record suggests that wheat was first cultivated in the regions of the Fertile Crescent around 9600 BCE. In a small part of the population, gluten – the major part of wheat protein – can trigger coeliac disease, non-coeliac gluten sensitivity, gluten ataxia. Cultivation and repeated harvesting and sowing of the grains of wild grasses led to the creation of domestic strains, in domesticated wheat, grains are larger, and the seeds remain attached to the ear by a toughened rachis during harvesting. In wild strains, a more fragile rachis allows the ear to easily shatter, as the traits that improve wheat as a food source also involve the loss of the plants natural seed dispersal mechanisms, highly domesticated strains of wheat cannot survive in the wild. Cultivation of wheat began to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent after about 8000 BCE, jared Diamond traces the spread of cultivated emmer wheat starting in the Fertile Crescent sometime before 8800 BCE. Archaeological analysis of wild emmer indicates that it was first cultivated in the southern Levant with finds dating back as far as 9600 BCE, Genetic analysis of wild einkorn wheat suggests that it was first grown in the Karacadag Mountains in southeastern Turkey. Dated archeological remains of wheat in settlement sites near this region, including those at Abu Hureyra in Syria. With the anomalous exception of two grains from Iraq ed-Dubb, the earliest carbon-14 date for einkorn wheat remains at Abu Hureyra is 7800 to 7500 years BCE. Remains of harvested emmer from several sites near the Karacadag Range have been dated to between 8600 and 8400 BCE, that is, in the Neolithic period and these remains were dated by Willem van Zeist and his assistant Johanna Bakker-Heeres to 8800 BCE. They also concluded that the settlers of Tell Aswad did not develop this form of emmer themselves, the cultivation of emmer reached Greece, Cyprus and India by 6500 BCE, Egypt shortly after 6000 BCE, and Germany and Spain by 5000 BCE. The early Egyptians were developers of bread and the use of the oven, by 3000 BCE, wheat had reached the British Isles and Scandinavia. A millennium later it reached China, the oldest evidence for hexaploid wheat has been confirmed through DNA analysis of wheat seeds, dating to around 6400-6200 BCE, recovered from Çatalhöyük. The first identifiable bread wheat with sufficient gluten for yeasted breads has been identified using DNA analysis in samples from a dating to approximately 1350 BCE at Assiros in Macedonia. From Asia, wheat continued to spread throughout Europe, in the British Isles, wheat straw was used for roofing in the Bronze Age, and was in common use until the late 19th century
Wheat
–
Wheat
Wheat
–
Spikelets of a hulled wheat,
einkorn
Wheat
–
Green wheat a month before harvest
Wheat
–
Wheat harvest on the
Palouse,
Idaho, United States
19.
Bracts
–
In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis, or cone scale. Bracts are often different from foliage leaves and they may be smaller, larger, or of a different color, shape, or texture. Typically, they look different from the parts of the flower. The state of having bracts is referred to as bracteate or bracteolate, some bracts are brightly colored and serve the function of attracting pollinators, either together with the perianth or instead of it. Examples of this type of bract include Euphorbia pulcherrima and Bougainvillea, in grasses, each floret is enclosed in a pair of papery bracts, called the lemma and palea, while each spikelet has a further pair of bracts at its base called glumes. These bracts form the chaff removed from cereal grain during threshing and winnowing, bats may detect acoustic signals from dish-shaped bracts such as those of Marcgravia evenia. A prophyll is a structure, such as a bracteole. The term can mean the lower bract on a peduncle. The frequently showy pair of bracts of Euphorbia species in subgenus Lacanthis are the cyathophylls, bracts subtend the cone scales in the seed cones of many conifers, and in some cases, such as Pseudotsuga, they extend beyond the cone scales. A small bract is called a bracteole or bractlet, technically this is any bract that arises on a pedicel instead of subtending it. Bracts that appear in a whorl subtending an inflorescence are called an involucre. An involucre is a common feature beneath the inflorescences of many Apiaceae, Asteraceae, Dipsacaceae and Polygonaceae, each flower in an inflorescence may have its own whorl of bracts, in this case called an involucel. In this case they may be called chaff, paleas, or receptacular bracts and are usually minute scales or bristles, many asteraceous plants have bracts at the base of each inflorescence. The term involucre is also used for a highly conspicuous bract or bract pair at the base of an inflorescence, in the family Betulaceae, notably in the genera Carpinus and Corylus, the involucre is a leafy structure that protects the developing nuts. Beggar-tick has narrow involucral bracts surrounding each inflorescence, each of which also has a bract below it. There is then a pair of bracts on the main stem. It is a calyx-like extra whorl of floral appendages, each individual segment of the epicalyx is called an episepal because they resemble the sepals. They are present in family Malvaceae, the Hibiscus family, fragaria may or may not have an epicalyx
Bracts
–
Papery (upper) and leafy bracts on hay rattle (
Rhinanthus minor). All the "leaves" in this image are bracts.
Bracts
–
Bracts of
Bougainvillea glabra, differ in colour from the non-bract leaves, and attract pollinators
Bracts
–
Bracts along a
banana flower stalk surround the rows of flowers
Bracts
–
Euphorbia milii var. vulcanii cyathia bearing a pair of pinkish cyathophylls
20.
Palea (botany)
–
Palea, in botany, has two separate meanings. It may be used as a term for one of the receptacular bracts found in the family Asteraceae. Otherwise, it refers to one of the organs in the spikelet of the grass family. Known collectively as chaff, the paleas, when present, each one of the florets that cover the upper surface of the receptacle. The palea is the uppermost of the two chaff-like bracts that enclose the grass floret and it is often cleft at the tip, implying that it may be a double structure derived from the union of two separate organs. This has led to suggestions that it may be remains of the grass sepals. The third member may be absent or it may be represented by the lemma, the perianth interpretation of palea is supported by the expression of MADS-box genes in this organ during development, as is the case in sepals of eudicot plants
Palea (botany)
–
Parts of a single grass spikelet, consisting of two glumes, four fertile florets, with one additional central floret that may or may not be sterile
21.
Husk
–
Husk in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed. It often refers to the outer covering of an ear of maize as it grows on the plant. Literally, a husk or hull includes the outer covering of a seed. It can also refer to the exuvia of bugs or small animals left behind after moulting, in cooking, hull can also refer to other waste parts of fruits and vegetables, notably the cap or sepal of a strawberry. The husk of a legume and some similar fruits is called a pod, plantago-seed mucilage is often referred to as husk, or psyllium husk. Crop plants of species have been selected that have hulless seeds, including pumpkins, oats. Husking of corn is the process of removing its outer layers, dehulling is the process of removing the hulls from beans and other seeds. This is sometimes done using a known as a huller. To prepare the seeds to have extracted from them, they are cleaned to remove any foreign objects. Next, the seeds have their hulls, or outer coverings, or husk, there are three different types of dehulling systems that can be used to process soybeans, Hot dehulling, warm dehulling and cold dehulling. Hot dehulling is the system offered in areas where beans are processed directly from the field, warm dehulling is often used by processors who import their soybeans. Cold dehulling is used in plants that have existing drying and conditioning equipment, the different dehulling temperature options are for different types of production, beans and preparation equipment. In third-world countries, husking and dehulling is often done by hand using a large mortar. These are usually made of wood, and operated by one or more people, the husk is biodegradable and may be composted. Chaff Gum Horsebread, a type of bread in which the chaff is not removed Rice hulls Rice pounder Threshing Winnowing
Husk
–
Corn being husked in the yard of a
Dungan farmer in
Kyrgyzstan
Husk
–
Women in
Cape Verde using multiple pestles in a large
mortar
Husk
–
History
Husk
22.
Einkorn
–
Einkorn wheat can refer either to the wild species of wheat, Triticum boeoticum, or to the domesticated form, Triticum monococcum. The wild and domesticated forms are considered separate species, as here, or as subspecies. Einkorn is a species of hulled wheat, with tough glumes that tightly enclose the grains. The cultivated form is similar to the wild, except that the ear stays intact when ripe, the domestic form is known as petit épeautre in French, Einkorn in German, einkorn or littlespelt in English, piccolo farro in Italian and escanda menor in Spanish. Einkorn wheat was one of the first plants to be domesticated and cultivated, remnants of Einkorn have been found with the iceman mummy Ötzi. It is a variety of wild wheat, usually less than 70 centimetres tall and is not very productive of edible seeds. The principal difference between wild einkorn and cultivated einkorn is the method of seed dispersal, in the wild variety the seed head usually shatters and drops the kernels of wheat onto the ground. This facilitates a new crop of wheat, in the domestic variety, the seed head remains intact. But harvesting einkorn with intact seed heads was easier for early human harvesters, over time and through selection, conscious or unconscious, the human preference for intact seed heads created the domestic variety, which also has slightly larger kernels than wild einkorn. Domesticated einkorn thus requires human planting and harvesting for its continuing existence and this process of domestication might have taken only 20 to 200 years with the end product a wheat easier for humans to harvest. Einkorn wheat is one of the earliest cultivated forms of wheat, grains of wild einkorn have been found in Epi-Paleolithic sites of the Fertile Crescent. Although gathered from the wild for thousands of years, Einkorn Wheat was first domesticated approximately 10,000 years BP in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A or B periods. Evidence from DNA finger-printing suggests einkorn was first domesticated near Karaca Dağ in southeast Turkey, an important characteristic facilitating the domestication of einkorn and other annual grains is that the plants are largely self-pollinating. Thus, the traits of einkorn could be perpetuated at less risk of cross-fertilization with wild plants which might have traits—e. g. Smaller seeds, shattering seed heads, etc. -- less desirable for human management, from the northern part of the Fertile Crescent, the cultivation of einkorn wheat spread to the Caucasus, the Balkans, and central Europe. Einkorn wheat was more grown in cooler climates than emmer wheat. Cultivation of einkorn in the Middle East began to decline in favor of emmer wheat around 2000 BC, cultivation of einkorn was never extensive in Italy, southern France, and Spain. Einkorn continued to be cultivated in areas of northern Europe throughout the Middle Ages
Einkorn
–
Einkorn wheat
Einkorn
–
The kernel of einkorn wheat is contained within these spikelets.
Einkorn
–
Wild einkorn, Karadag, central Turkey
23.
Emmer
–
Emmer wheat, also known as farro especially in Italy, or hulled wheat, is a type of awned wheat. The domesticated species are Triticum turgidum subsp, dicoccum and Triticum turgidum conv. durum. The wild species is called Triticum turgidum subsp, along with einkorn wheat, emmer was one of the first crops domesticated in the Near East. It was widely cultivated in the ancient world, but is now a relict crop in regions of Europe. Strong similarities in morphology and genetics show that wild emmer is the wild ancestor, because wild and domesticated emmer are interfertile with other tetraploid wheats, some taxonomists consider all tetraploid wheats to belong to one species, T. turgidum. Under this scheme, the two forms are recognized at subspecies level, thus T. turgidum subsp, either naming system is equally valid, the latter lays more emphasis on genetic similarities. For a wider discussion, see Wheat#Genetics & Breeding and Wheat taxonomy Wild emmer grows wild in the Near East, like einkorn and spelt wheats, emmer is a hulled wheat. In other words, it has strong glumes that enclose the grains, on threshing, a hulled wheat spike breaks up into spikelets. These require milling or pounding to release the grains from the glumes, Wild emmer wheat spikelets effectively self-cultivate by propelling themselves mechanically into soils with their awns. During a period of increased humidity during the night, the awns of the spikelet become erect and draw together, and in the process push the grain into the soil. During the daytime, the humidity drops and the awns slacken back again, however, fine hairs on the awns act as hooks in the soil. During the course of alternating stages of daytime and nighttime humidity, the awns pumping movements, Wild emmer is native to the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, growing in the grass and woodland of hill country from modern-day Israel to Iran. The origin of wild emmer has been suggested, without universal agreement among scholars, in 1906, Aaron Aaronsohns discovery of wild emmer wheat growing in Rosh Pinna created a stir in the botanical world. Emmer wheat has been found in excavations and ancient tombs. Emmer was collected from the wild and eaten by hunter gatherers for thousands of years before its domestication. Grains of wild emmer discovered at Ohalo II had a radiocarbon dating of 17,000 BC and at the Pre Pottery Neolithic A site of Netiv Hagdud are 10, the location of the earliest site of emmer domestication is still unclear and under debate. Emmer is found in a number of Neolithic sites scattered around the fertile crescent. From its earliest days of cultivation, emmer was a more prominent crop than its contemporaries and competitors, einkorn wheat
Emmer
–
Emmer wheat
Emmer
–
History
24.
Spelt
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Spelt, also known as dinkel wheat, or hulled wheat, is a species of wheat cultivated since approximately 5000 BC. Spelt is sometimes considered a subspecies of the related species common wheat. It is a wheat, which means it has six sets of chromosomes. Over the years 2004 to 2014, spelt gained widespread popularity as a substitute for making artisan breads, pasta. It is a species known from genetic evidence to have originated as a naturally occurring hybrid of a domesticated tetraploid wheat such as emmer wheat. The much later appearance of spelt in Europe might thus be the result of a later, second, recent DNA evidence supports an independent origin for European spelt through this hybridisation. Whether spelt has two origins in Asia and Europe, or single origin in the Near East, is currently unresolved. In Greek mythology spelt was a gift to the Greeks from the goddess Demeter, being a sailing people, the Greeks taught the rest of the world how to use, cultivate and honour zeiá. Remains of spelt have been found in some later Neolithic sites in Central Europe, during the Bronze Age, spelt spread widely in central Europe. In the Iron Age, spelt became a wheat species in southern Germany and Switzerland. References to the cultivation of wheat in Biblical times, in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and in ancient Greece are incorrect. In the Middle Ages, spelt was cultivated in parts of Switzerland, Tyrol, Spelt was introduced to the United States in the 1890s. In the 20th century, spelt was replaced by wheat in almost all areas where it was still grown. The organic farming movement revived its popularity somewhat toward the end of the century, in a 100 gram serving, uncooked spelt provides 338 calories and is an excellent source of protein, dietary fiber, several B vitamins and numerous dietary minerals. Richest nutrient contents include manganese, phosphorus and niacin, cooking substantially reduces many nutrient contents. Spelt contains about 70% total carbohydrates, including 11% as dietary fiber, in comparison to hard red winter wheat, spelt has a more soluble protein matrix characterized by a higher gliadin, glutenin ratio. Spelt flour is becoming more easily available, Spelt bread is sold in health food shops and some bakeries in an increasing variety of types of loaf, similar in colour to light rye breads but usually with a slightly sweet and nutty flavour. Biscuits, crackers, and pretzels are also produced, but are likely to be found in a specialty bakery or health food store than in a regular grocers shop
Spelt
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Spelt
Spelt
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Spelt, without and with
husks
Spelt
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History
25.
Threshing
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Threshing is the process of loosening the edible part of cereal grain from the scaly, inedible chaff that surrounds it. It is the step in grain preparation after harvesting and before winnowing, Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain. Threshing may be done by beating the grain using a flail on a threshing floor, another traditional method of threshing is to make donkeys or oxen walk in circles on the grain on a hard surface. A modern version of this in some areas is to spread the grain on the surface of a road so the grain may be threshed by the wheels of passing vehicles. Hand threshing was laborious, with a bushel of wheat taking about an hour, in the late 18th century, before threshing was mechanized, about one-quarter of agricultural labor was devoted to it. Industrialization of threshing began in 1786 with the invention of the machine by Scotsman Andrew Meikle. Today, in developed areas, it is now mostly done by machine, usually by a combine harvester, which harvests, threshes, the cereal may be stored in a barn or silos. A threshing bee was traditionally a bee in which people gathered together to pitch in. Such bees were sometimes festivals or events within larger harvest festivals, today the original purpose is largely obsolete, but the festival tradition lives on in some modern examples that commemorate the past and include flea markets, hog wrestling, and dances. Swing Riots Threshing-board Threshing floor Threshing machine Threshing stone Winnowing
Threshing
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An animal-powered thresher
Threshing
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Threshing with hand flails, Great Britain, c. 1750. Image from c. 1875.
Threshing
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Threshing floor,
Santorini, Greece
Threshing
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Ludovic Bassarab 's La treierat ("Threshing"), showing peasants in
Romanian dress around a
combine harvester
26.
Winnowing
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Wind winnowing is an agricultural method developed by ancient cultures for separating grain from chaff. It is also used to remove weevils or other pests from stored grain, threshing, the loosening of grain or seeds from the husks and straw, is the step in the chaff-removal process that comes before winnowing. In its simplest form it involves throwing the mixture into the air so that the wind blows away the lighter chaff, techniques included using a winnowing fan or using a tool on a pile of harvested grain. In Callimachus Hymn to Zeus, Adrasteia lays the infant Zeus in a golden líknon, her goat suckles him and he is given honey. In the Odyssey, the dead oracle Teiresias tells Odysseus to walk away from Ithaca with an oar until a wayfarer tells him it is a winnowing fan, and there to build a shrine to Poseidon. In Ancient China the method was improved by mechanisation with the development of the winnowing fan. This was featured in Wang Zhens book the Nong Shu of 1313 AD, ruth 3,2 Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor, proverbs 20,8 When a king sits on his throne to judge, he winnows out all evil with his eyes. Proverbs 20,26 A wise king winnows out the wicked, isaiah 41,16 You will winnow them, the wind will pick them up, and a gale will blow them away. But you will rejoice in the Lord and glory in the Holy One of Israel, I will bring bereavement and destruction on my people, for they have not changed their ways. Jeremiah 51,2 I will send foreigners to Babylon to winnow her and to devastate her land, in Matthew 3,12, a sentence introduces the separation of wheat and chaff by His winnowing fan is in his hand. In Saxon settlements such as one identified in Northumberland as Bedes Ad Gefrin the buildings were shown by a reconstruction to have opposed entries. In barns a draught created by the use of these opposed doorways was used in winnowing, the technique developed by the Chinese was not adopted in Europe until the 18th century, when winnowing machines used a sail fan. The rotary winnowing fan was exported to Europe, brought there by Dutch sailors between 1700 and 1720, apparently they had obtained them from the Dutch settlement of Batavia in Java, Dutch East Indies. The Swedes imported some from south China at about the same time, until the beginning of the 18th century, no rotary winnowing fans existed in the West. The development of the winnowing barn allowed rice plantations in South Carolina to increase their yields dramatically, in 1737 Andrew Rodger, a farmer on the estate of Cavers in Roxburghshire, developed a winnowing machine for corn, called a Fanner. These were successful and the family sold them throughout Scotland for many years, as the Industrial Revolution, the winnowing process was mechanized by the invention of additional winnowing machines, such as fanning mills. Threshing Rice huller Rice pounder Sieving Winnowing engine machine Winnowing Winnowing machine The dictionary definition of winnowing at Wiktionary
Winnowing
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Rice winnowing, Uttarakhand, India
Winnowing
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Chinese rotary fan winnowing machine, from the Tiangong Kaiwu encyclopedia (1637) by
Song Yingxing
Winnowing
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Le vanneur (The Winnower) by
Jean-François Millet, a 19th-century depiction of winnowing by fan
Winnowing
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Winnowing machine
27.
Durum wheat
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Durum wheat, pasta wheat or macaroni wheat is the only tetraploid species of wheat of commercial importance that is widely cultivated today. It was developed by selection of the domesticated emmer wheat strains formerly grown in Central Europe and the Near East around 7000 BC. Like emmer, durum wheat is awned and it is the predominant wheat that grows in the Middle East. Durum in Latin means hard, and the species is the hardest of all wheats and this refers to the resistance of the grain to milling, in particular of the starchy endosperm, implying dough made from its flour is weak or soft. This makes durum favorable for semolina and pasta and less practical for flour, despite its high protein content, durum is not a strong wheat in the sense of giving strength to dough through the formation of a gluten network. Durum contains 27% extractable, wet gluten, about 3% higher than in common wheat. Durum wheat is a wheat, having 4 sets of chromosomes for a total of 28, unlike hard red winter and hard red spring wheats. Commercially produced dry pasta, or pasta secca, is made almost exclusively from durum semolina, most home made fresh pastas, such as orecchiette and tagliatelle, also use durum wheat or a combination of soft and hard wheats. Husked but unground, or coarsely ground, it is used to produce the semolina in the couscous of North Africa and it is also used for Levantine dishes such as tabbula, kishk, kibba, bitfun and the bulghur for pilafs. In North African cuisine and Levantine cuisine, it forms the basis of many soups, gruels, stuffings, puddings, when ground as fine as flour, it is used for making bread. In the Middle East, it is used for flat round breads and it is not, however, good for cakes, which are made from soft wheat to ensure softness. Durum flour and semolina are good for making pasta because it does not create doughs hard to shape, technically, the dough is relatively plastic, contrasting with the strong elastic doughs obtained from bread flours. Durum wheat is thus used in breadmaking. Its protein content is almost as high as that of spring or winter wheat and so is its gluten content. Pure durum wheat breads are often dense, containing little air bubbles, the uncooked dough splits easily and is easier to shape, as for instance to make pies or pastas. The use of wheat to produce pasta was described as early as the 10th century by Ibn Wahshīya of Cairo, the North Africans called the product itrīya, from which Italian sources derived the term tria during the 15th century. Another type of pasta, al-fidawsh, was popular in al-Andalus, from there it was transmitted to Christian Spain, and it frequently appears in Hispano-Muslim cookbooks. From al-fidawsh was derived the Spanish word for noodles, fideos, in the American Great Plains, durum wheat is used almost exclusively for making pasta products such as spaghetti and macaroni
Durum wheat
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Durum
Durum wheat
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History
28.
Common wheat
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Common wheat, also known as bread wheat, is a cultivated wheat species. About 95% of the wheat produced is common wheat, which is the most widely grown of all crops, numerous forms of wheat have evolved under human selection. This diversity has led to confusion in the naming of wheats, for more information, see the taxonomy of wheat. Albimonte Manital Bread wheat is an allohexaploid, of the six sets of chromosomes, two come from Triticum urartu and two from Aegilops speltoides. This hybridisation created the species Triticum turgidum 5800–8200 years ago, the last two sets of chromosomes came from wild goat-grass Aegilops tauschii 2300–4300 years ago. Free-threshing wheat is closely related to spelt, as with spelt, genes contributed from Aegilops tauschii give bread wheat greater cold hardiness than most wheats, and it is cultivated throughout the worlds temperate regions. Common wheat was first domesticated in Western Asia during the early Holocene, wheat first reached North America with Spanish missions in the 16th century, but North Americas role as a major exporter of grain dates from the colonization of the prairies in the 1870s. As grain exports from Russia ceased in the First World War, modern wheat varieties have short stems, the result of RHt dwarfing genes that reduce the plants sensitivity to gibberellic acid, a plant hormone that lengthens cells. RHt genes were introduced to modern varieties in the 1960s by Norman Borlaug from Norin 10 cultivars of wheat grown in Japan. Short stems are important because the application of high levels of chemical fertilizers would otherwise cause the stems to grow too high, stem heights are also even, which is important for modern harvesting techniques. Compact wheats are closely related to wheat, but have a much more compact ear. Their shorter rachis segments lead to spikelets packed closer together, compact wheats are often regarded as subspecies rather than species in their own right. International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants
Common wheat
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Common wheat
Common wheat
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A field of wheat in
Deggendorf, Germany
Common wheat
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Ears of compact wheat
Common wheat
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History
29.
Hay
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Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for grazing animals such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hay is also fed to animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs may be fed hay, but they do not digest it as efficiently as more fully herbivorous animals and it is also fed during times when an animal is unable to access pasture, such as when animals are kept in a stable or barn. Commonly used plants for hay include mixtures of such as ryegrass, timothy, brome, fescue, Bermuda grass, orchard grass. Hay may also include legumes, such as alfalfa and clovers, legumes in hay are ideally cut pre-bloom. Other pasture forbs are also sometimes a part of the mix, straw is used mainly for animal bedding. Although straw is used as fodder, particularly as a source of dietary fiber. It is the leaf and seed material in the hay that determines its quality, farmers try to harvest hay at the point when the seed heads are not quite ripe and the leaf is at its maximum when the grass is mowed in the field. Hay is very sensitive to conditions, particularly when it is harvested. In drought conditions, both seed and leaf production are stunted, making hay that has a ratio of dry coarse stems that have very low nutritional values. If the weather is too wet, the cut hay may spoil in the field before it can be baled, the hay may also develop rot and mold after being baled, creating the potential for toxins to form in the feed, which could make the animals sick. It also has to be stored in a manner to prevent it from getting wet, mold and spoilage reduce nutritional value and may cause illness in animals. A symbiotic fungus in fescue may cause illness in horses and cattle, the successful harvest of maximum yields of high-quality hay is entirely dependent on the coincident occurrence of optimum crop, field, and weather conditions. When this occurs, there may be a period of activity on the hay farm while harvest proceeds until weather conditions become unfavourable. Hay or grass is the foundation of the diet for all grazing animals, Hay is usually fed to an animal in place of allowing the animal to graze on grasses in a pasture, particularly in the winter or during times when drought or other conditions make pasture unavailable. Animals that can eat hay vary in the types of grasses suitable for consumption, the ways they consume hay, most animals are fed hay in two daily feedings, morning and evening. However, this schedule is more for the convenience of humans, some animals, especially those being raised for meat, may be given enough hay that they simply are able to eat all day. The proper amount of hay and the type of hay required varies somewhat between different species, some animals are also fed concentrated feeds such as grain or vitamin supplements in addition to hay
Hay
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Good quality hay is green and not too coarse, and includes plant heads and leaves as well as stems. This is fresh grass/alfalfa hay, newly baled.
Hay
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Close view of loose grass hay.
Hay
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Poor quality hay is dry, bleached out and coarse-stemmed. Sometimes, hay stored outdoors will look like this on the outside but still be green inside the bale. A dried, bleached or coarse bale is still edible and provides some nutritional value as long as it is dry and not moldy, dusty, or rotting.
Hay
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Horses eating hay
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