1.
Seed
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A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering. The formation of the seed is part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, Seeds are the product of the ripened ovule, after fertilization by pollen and some growth within the mother plant. The embryo is developed from the zygote and the coat from the integuments of the ovule. Seed plants now dominate biological niches on land, from forests to both in hot and cold climates. The term seed also has a meaning that antedates the above—anything that can be sown, e. g. seed potatoes. In the case of sunflower and corn seeds, what is sown is the seed enclosed in a shell or husk, many structures commonly referred to as seeds are actually dry fruits. Plants producing berries are called baccate, sunflower seeds are sometimes sold commercially while still enclosed within the hard wall of the fruit, which must be split open to reach the seed. Different groups of plants have other modifications, the stone fruits have a hardened fruit layer fused to. Nuts are the one-seeded, hard-shelled fruit of plants with an indehiscent seed. Seeds are produced in several related groups of plants, and their manner of production distinguishes the angiosperms from the gymnosperms, angiosperm seeds are produced in a hard or fleshy structure called a fruit that encloses the seeds, hence the name. Some fruits have layers of hard and fleshy material. In gymnosperms, no special structure develops to enclose the seeds, however, the seeds do become covered by the cone scales as they develop in some species of conifer. Seed production in natural plant populations varies widely from year-to-year in response to weather variables, insects and diseases, over a 20-year period, for example, forests composed of loblolly pine and shortleaf pine produced from 0 to nearly 5 million sound pine seeds per hectare. Over this period, there were six bumper, five poor, and nine good seed crops, right after fertilization, the zygote is mostly inactive, but the primary endosperm divides rapidly to form the endosperm tissue. This tissue becomes the food the young plant will consume until the roots have developed after germination, after fertilization the ovules develop into the seeds. The ovule consists of a number of components, The funicle or seed stalk which attaches the ovule to the placenta and hence ovary or fruit wall, the nucellus, the remnant of the megasporangium and main region of the ovule where the megagametophyte develops. The micropyle, a pore or opening in the apex of the integument of the ovule where the pollen tube usually enters during the process of fertilization. The chalaza, the base of the ovule opposite the micropyle, the shape of the ovules as they develop often affects the final shape of the seeds
2.
Husk
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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
3.
Fruit
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In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate seeds, accordingly, fruits account for a substantial fraction of the worlds agricultural output, and some have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings. On the other hand, in usage, fruit includes many structures that are not commonly called fruits, such as bean pods, corn kernels, tomatoes. The section of a fungus that produces spores is called a fruiting body. Many common terms for seeds and fruit do not correspond to the botanical classifications, however, in botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary or carpel that contains seeds, a nut is a type of fruit and not a seed, and a seed is a ripened ovule. Examples of culinary vegetables and nuts that are botanically fruit include corn, cucurbits, eggplant, legumes, sweet pepper, in addition, some spices, such as allspice and chili pepper, are fruits, botanically speaking. g. Botanically, a grain, such as corn, rice, or wheat, is also a kind of fruit. However, the wall is very thin and is fused to the seed coat. The outer, often edible layer, is the pericarp, formed from the ovary and surrounding the seeds, the pericarp may be described in three layers from outer to inner, the epicarp, mesocarp and endocarp. Fruit that bears a prominent pointed terminal projection is said to be beaked, a fruit results from maturation of one or more flowers, and the gynoecium of the flower forms all or part of the fruit. Inside the ovary/ovaries are one or more ovules where the megagametophyte contains the egg cell, after double fertilization, these ovules will become seeds. The ovules are fertilized in a process starts with pollination. After pollination, a tube grows from the pollen through the stigma into the ovary to the ovule, later the zygote will give rise to the embryo of the seed, and the endosperm mother cell will give rise to endosperm, a nutritive tissue used by the embryo. As the ovules develop into seeds, the ovary begins to ripen and the ovary wall, in some multiseeded fruits, the extent to which the flesh develops is proportional to the number of fertilized ovules. The pericarp is often differentiated into two or three distinct layers called the exocarp, mesocarp, and endocarp, in some fruits, especially simple fruits derived from an inferior ovary, other parts of the flower, fuse with the ovary and ripen with it. In other cases, the sepals, petals and/or stamens and style of the fall off. When such other floral parts are a significant part of the fruit, it is called an accessory fruit, since other parts of the flower may contribute to the structure of the fruit, it is important to study flower structure to understand how a particular fruit forms. There are three modes of fruit development, Apocarpous fruits develop from a single flower having one or more separate carpels
4.
Cereal
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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
5.
Legume
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A legume is a plant or its fruit or seed in the family Fabaceae. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for their grain seed called pulse, for forage and silage. Well-known legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, lupin bean, mesquite, carob, soybeans, peanuts, Fabaceae is the most common family found in tropical rainforests and in dry forests in the Americas and Africa. A legume fruit is a dry fruit that develops from a simple carpel. A common name for type of fruit is a pod, although the term pod is also applied to a number of other fruit types, such as that of vanilla. Legumes are notable in that most of them have symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in structures called root nodules, for that reason, they play a key role in crop rotation. The term pulse, as used by the United Nations Food and this excludes green beans and green peas, which are considered vegetable crops. Also excluded are seeds that are grown for oil extraction. However, in usage, these distinctions are not always clearly made. Some Fabaceae, such as Scotch broom and other Genisteae, are leguminous but are not called legumes by farmers. Farmed legumes can belong to many classes, including forage, grain, blooms, pharmaceutical/industrial, fallow/green manure. Most commercially farmed species fill two or more roles simultaneously, depending upon their degree of maturity when harvested, grain legumes are cultivated for their seeds. The seeds are used for human and animal consumption or for the production of oils for industrial uses, grain legumes include beans, lentils, lupins, peas, and peanuts. Like other plant-based foods, pulses contain no cholesterol and little fat or sodium, Legumes are also an excellent source of resistant starch which is broken down by bacteria in the large intestine to produce short-chain fatty acids used by intestinal cells for food energy. Preliminary studies in humans include the potential for regular consumption of legumes in a diet to affect metabolic syndrome. There is evidence that a portion of pulses in a diet may lower blood pressure and reduce LDL cholesterol levels. Some, like alfalfa, clover, vetch, stylo, or Arachis, are sown in pasture, other forage legumes such as Leucaena or Albizia are woody shrub or tree species that are either broken down by livestock or regularly cut by humans to provide livestock feed. Legume species grown for their flowers include lupins, which are farmed commercially for their blooms as well as being popular in gardens worldwide, industrially farmed legumes include Indigofera and Acacia species, which are cultivated for dye and natural gum production, respectively
6.
Staple food
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The staple food of a specific society may be eaten as often as every day or every meal, and most people live on a diet based on just a small number of staples. Typical examples of staples include tubers and roots, and grains, legumes, such nonperishable foods are the only possible staples during seasons of shortage, such as dry seasons or cold temperate winters, against which times harvests have been stored. During seasons of plenty, wider choices of foods may be available. Most staple plant foods are derived either from cereals such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rice, or starchy tubers or root vegetables such as potatoes, yams, taro, arrowroot, other staple foods include pulses, sago, and fruits. Staple foods may contain, sorghum, olive oil, coconut oil. Most staples are plant materials, but in some fishing is the primary source of nutrition. Of the more than 50,000 edible plant species in the world, although there are over 10,000 species in the cereal family, just a few have been widely cultivated over the past 2,000 years. The staple food in different parts of the world is a function of weather patterns, local terrain, farming constraints, acquired tastes, for example, the main energy source staples in the average African diet are cereals, roots and tubers and animal products. In Western Europe the main staples in the diet are animal products, cereals and roots. Regional staples include rye, soybeans, barley, oats and teff, just 15 crop plants provide 90 percent of the worlds food energy intake, with rice, maize and wheat comprising two-thirds of human food consumption. The three are the staples of about 80% of the population, and rice feeds almost half of humanity. Roots and tubers, meanwhile, are important staples for over 1 billion people in the developing world, roots and tubers are high in carbohydrates, calcium and vitamin C but low in protein. Cassava root is a staple food in the developing world. With economic development and free trade, many countries have shifted away from low-nutrient-density staple foods to higher-nutrient-density staples, despite this trend, there is growing recognition of the importance of traditional staple crops in nutrition. Efforts are underway to identify better strains with superior nutrition, disease resistance, some foods like quinoa—a pseudocereal grain that originally came from the Andes—were also staple foods centuries ago. Oca, ulluco and amaranth seed are other foods claimed to be staples in Andean history, pemmican was a staple of the Plains Indians of North America. In 2010, the consumption of speciality grains such as quinoa was very small compared to other staples such as rice, wheat. These grains, once popular but then forgotten, are being reevaluated and reintroduced, most staple food is produced using modern and conventional farming practices
7.
Cooking banana
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Cooking bananas are banana cultivars in the genus Musa whose fruits are generally used in cooking. They may be eaten ripe or unripe and starchy. Some cooking bananas are also referred to as green bananas or plantains, the term plantain is loosely applied to any banana cultivar that is eaten when cooked. However, there is no formal distinction between bananas and plantains. Cooking is also a matter of custom, rather than necessity, ripe plantains can be eaten raw, since the starches are converted to sugars as they ripen. In more formal usage, the plantain is used only for true plantains. All modern plantain cultivars have three sets of chromosomes, many are hybrids derived from the cross of two wild species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The currently accepted name for all such crosses is Musa × paradisiaca. Using Simmonds and Shepherds genome-based nomenclature system, cultivars which are cooked often belong to the AAB Group, although some belong to the AAA Group, fei bananas from the Pacific Islands are often eaten roasted or boiled, and are thus informally referred to as mountain plantains. However, they do not belong to either of the two species that all modern cultivated banana cultivars descended from, all members of the genus Musa are indigenous to the tropical regions of Southeast Asia and Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and Northern Australia. Plantains are a food staple in West and Central Africa, the Caribbean islands, Central America. They are treated as a fruit with a relatively neutral flavour. As with all bananas, part of the attractiveness of plantains as food is that they fruit all year round, plantains contain more starch and less sugar than dessert bananas, therefore they are usually cooked or otherwise processed before being eaten. They are always cooked or fried when eaten green, at this stage, the pulp is hard and the peel often so stiff that it has to be cut with a knife to be removed. Mature, yellow plantains can be peeled like typical dessert bananas and they can be eaten raw, but are not as flavourful as dessert bananas, so are usually cooked. When mature, yellow plantains are fried, they tend to caramelize and they can also be boiled, baked, microwaved or grilled over charcoal, either peeled or unpeeled. Plantains are a food in the tropical regions of the world. As a staple, plantains are treated in much the way as potatoes and with a similar neutral flavour
8.
Breadfruit
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Breadfruit is a species of flowering tree in the mulberry and jackfruit family originating in the South Pacific and that was eventually spread to the rest of Oceania. Its name is derived from the texture of the ripe fruit when cooked, similar to freshly baked bread. According to DNA fingerprinting studies, breadfruit has its origins in the region of Oceania from New Guinea through the Indo-Malayan Archipelago to western Micronesia, the trees have been widely planted in tropical regions elsewhere, including lowland Central America, northern South America, and the Caribbean. In addition to the serving as a staple food in many cultures. Sir Joseph Banks and others saw the value of breadfruit as a highly productive food in 1769, in 1787, William Bligh was appointed Captain of the HMS Bounty, and ordered to proceed to the South Pacific to collect the plants. Although Bligh won the Royal Society medal for his efforts, the introduction was not entirely successful, Breadfruit trees grow to a height of 26 m. The large and thick leaves are cut into pinnate lobes. All parts of the tree yield latex, which is useful for boat caulking, the trees are monoecious, with male and female flowers growing on the same tree. The male flowers emerge first, followed shortly afterward by the female flowers, the latter grow into capitula, which are capable of pollination just three days later. Pollination occurs mainly by bats, but cultivated varieties produce fruit without pollination. The compound, false fruit develops from the perianth, and originates from 1. Breadfruit is one of the food plants, with a single tree producing up to 200 or more grapefruit-sized fruits per season. In the South Pacific, the trees yield 50 to 150 fruits per year, usually round, productivity varies between wet and dry areas. Studies in Barbados indicate a potential of 16 to 32 tons per hectare. The ovoid fruit has a surface, and each fruit is divided into many achenes, each achene surrounded by a fleshy perianth. Most selectively bred cultivars have seedless fruit, whereas seeded varieties are mainly for their edible seeds. Breadfruit is usually propagated using root cuttings, Breadfruit is closely related to the breadnut, from which it might have been naturally selected. It is noticeably similar in appearance to its relative of the same genus, Breadfruit has hundreds of varieties and thousands of common names varying according to its geographic distribution, and is cultivated in some 90 countries
9.
Tuber
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Tubers are enlarged structures in some plant species used as storage organs for nutrients. They are used for the plants perennation, to energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing season. Stem tubers form from thickened rhizomes or stolons, common plant species with stem tubers include potato and yam. Some sources also treat modified lateral roots under the definition, these are encountered in sweet potato, cassava, the term originates from Latin tuber, meaning lump, bump, swelling. Some sources define the term tuber to mean only structures derived from stems, a stem tuber forms from thickened rhizomes or stolons. The top sides of the tuber produce shoots that grow into stems and leaves. They tend to form at the sides of the parent plant and are most often located near the soil surface, the underground stem tuber is normally a short-lived storage and regenerative organ developing from a shoot that branches off a mature plant. The offsprings or new tubers are attached to a parent tuber or form at the end of a hypogeogenous rhizome, some plants also form smaller tubers and/or tubercules which act like seeds, producing small plants that resemble seedlings. Stem tubers generally start off as enlargements of the section of a seedling. Tuberous begonia, yams, and Cyclamen are commonly grown stem tubers, mignonette vine produces aerial stem tubers on 12-to-25-foot-tall vines, the tubers fall to the ground and grow. Enlarged stolons thicken to develop into storage organs, the tuber has all the parts of a normal stem, including nodes and internodes. The nodes are the eyes and each has a leaf scar, the nodes or eyes are arranged around the tuber in a spiral fashion beginning on the end opposite the attachment point to the stolon. The terminal bud is produced at the farthest point away from the stolon attachment, internally, a tuber is filled with starch stored in enlarged parenchyma like cells. The inside of a tuber has the cell structures of any stem, including a pith, vascular zones. The tuber is produced in one growing season and used to perennate the plant, as the main shoot develops from the tuber, the base of the shoot close to the tuber produces adventitious roots and lateral buds on the shoot. The shoot also produces stolons that are long etiolated stems, the stolon elongates during long days with the presence of high auxins levels that prevent root growth off of the stolon. Before new tuber formation begins, the stolon must be a certain age, the enzyme lipoxygenase makes a hormone, jasmonic acid, which is involved in the control of potato tuber development. The stolons are easily recognized when potato plants are grown from seeds, as the plants grow, stolons are produced around the soil surface from the nodes
10.
Sweet potato
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The sweet potato is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the morning glory family Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting, tuberous roots are a root vegetable, in some parts of the English-speaking world, sweet potatoes are locally known by other names such as kumara, but people usually confused it with yam due to their similar appearances. The young leaves and shoots are eaten as greens. The sweet potato is only related to the potato and does not belong to the nightshade family Solanaceae. The plant is a perennial vine, bearing alternate heart-shaped or palmately lobed leaves. The edible tuberous root is long and tapered, with a smooth skin whose color ranges between yellow, orange, red, brown, purple, and beige and its flesh ranges from beige through white, red, pink, violet, yellow, orange, and purple. Sweet potato cultivars with white or pale yellow flesh are less sweet and moist than those with red, Ipomoea batatas is native to the tropical regions in the Americas. Of the approximately 50 genera and more than 1,000 species of Convolvulaceae, I. batatas is the crop plant of major importance—some others are used locally. The genus Ipomoea that contains the sweet potato also includes several garden flowers called morning glories, some cultivars of Ipomoea batatas are grown as ornamental plants under the name tuberous morning glory, used in a horticultural context. To add to the confusion, a different crop plant, the oca, is called a yam in many parts of Polynesia, the United States Department of Agriculture requires that the label yam always be accompanied by sweet potato in U. S. retail sales of sweet potato. Although the sweet potato is not closely related botanically to the common potato, the first Europeans to taste sweet potatoes were members of Christopher Columbuss expedition in 1492. Later explorers found many cultivars under an assortment of local names, the Spanish combined this with the Quechua word for potato, papa, to create the word patata for the common potato. The first record of the sweet potato is found in the Oxford English Dictionary of 1775. In Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic the sweet potato is called batata, in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Central America, and the Philippines, the sweet potato is known as camote, derived from the Nahuatl word camotli. In New Zealand, the most common cultivar is the red cultivar called kumara, a derived from the Māori name kūmara. Kumara is particularly popular as a food, or in contemporary cuisine as kumara chips, often served with sour cream. Occasionally, shops in Australia will label purple cultivars as purple sweet potato to denote the difference to the other cultivars, about 95% of Australias production is of the orange cultivar named Beauregard, originally from North America, known simply as sweet potato. A reddish-purple cultivar, Northern Star, is 4% of production and is sold as kumara, the origin and domestication of sweet potato is thought to be in either Central America or South America
11.
Cassava
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Manihot esculenta is a woody shrub native to South America of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. It is extensively cultivated as a crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root. Though it is often called yuca in Spanish and in the United States, it differs from the yucca, Cassava, when dried to a powdery extract, is called tapioca, its fermented, flaky version is named garri. Cassava is the third-largest source of carbohydrates in the tropics, after rice. Cassava is a staple food in the developing world, providing a basic diet for over half a billion people. It is one of the most drought-tolerant crops, capable of growing on marginal soils, Nigeria is the worlds largest producer of cassava, while Thailand is the largest exporter of dried cassava. Cassava is classified as sweet or bitter. Like other roots and tubers, both bitter and sweet varieties of cassava contain antinutritional factors and toxins, with the bitter varieties containing much larger amounts, the more toxic varieties of cassava are a fall-back resource in times of famine or food insecurity in some places. Farmers often prefer the bitter varieties because they deter pests, animals, the cassava root is long and tapered, with a firm, homogeneous flesh encased in a detachable rind, about 1 mm thick, rough and brown on the outside. Commercial cultivars can be 5 to 10 cm in diameter at the top, a woody vascular bundle runs along the roots axis. The flesh can be chalk-white or yellowish, Cassava roots are very rich in starch and contain small amounts of calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin C. However, they are poor in protein and other nutrients, in contrast, cassava leaves are a good source of protein, but deficient in the amino acid methionine and possibly tryptophan. Forms of the domesticated species can also be found growing in the wild in the south of Brazil. By 4,600 BC, manioc pollen appears in the Gulf of Mexico lowlands, the oldest direct evidence of cassava cultivation comes from a 1, 400-year-old Maya site, Joya de Cerén, in El Salvador. With its high potential, it had become a staple food of the native populations of northern South America, southern Mesoamerica. Cassava was a food of pre-Columbian peoples in the Americas and is often portrayed in indigenous art. The Moche people often depicted yuca in their ceramics, spaniards in their early occupation of Caribbean islands did not want to eat cassava or maize, which they considered insubstantial, dangerous, and not nutritious. They much preferred foods from Spain, specifically wheat bread, olive oil, red wine, and meat, for these Christians in the New World, cassava was not suitable for communion since it could not undergo transubstantiation and become the body of Christ
12.
Intensive farming
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Intensive farming or intensive agriculture is any of various types of agriculture that involve higher levels of input and output per unit of agricultural land area. It is characterised by a low ratio, higher use of inputs such as capital and labour. This is in contrast to agriculture in which the inputs per unit land are lower. The term intensive has various senses, some of which refer to organic farming methods and others of which refer to nonorganic, both increase the yields of food and fiber per acre as compared to traditional animal husbandry. In CAFO, feed is brought to the animals, while in MIRG the animals are repeatedly moved to fresh forage. Most commercial agriculture is intensive in one or more ways, forms that rely especially heavily on industrial methods are often called industrial agriculture, which is characterised by innovations designed to increase yield. Techniques include planting multiple crops per year, reducing the frequency of fallow years, intensive farms are widespread in developed nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide. Most of the meat, dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced by such farms, smaller intensive farms usually include higher inputs of labor and more often use sustainable intensive methods. The farming practices commonly found on farms are referred to as appropriate technology. These farms are widespread in both developed countries and worldwide, but are growing more rapidly. Most of the food available in specialty markets such as farmers markets is produced by these smallholder farms, agricultural development in Britain between the 16th century and the mid-19th century saw a massive increase in agricultural productivity and net output. This in turn supported unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant percentage of the workforce, historians cited enclosure, mechanization, four-field crop rotation, and selective breeding as the most important innovations. Industrial agriculture arose along with the Industrial Revolution, by the early 19th century, agricultural techniques, implements, seed stocks and cultivars had so improved that yield per land unit was many times that seen in the Middle Ages. The industrialization phase involved a process of mechanization. Horse-drawn machinery such as the McCormick reaper revolutionized harvesting, while inventions such as the cotton gin reduced the cost of processing, during this same period, farmers began to use steam-powered threshers and tractors, although they were expensive and dangerous. Mechanical harvesters, planters, transplanters and other equipment were then developed and these inventions increased yields and allowed individual farmers to manage increasingly large farms. The identification of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus as critical factors in plant growth led to the manufacture of synthetic fertilizers, in 1909 the Haber-Bosch method to synthesize ammonium nitrate was first demonstrated. Farmers adopting this approach were initially referred to as humus farmers, chemicals developed for use in World War II gave rise to synthetic pesticides
13.
Harvest
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Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, on smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity of the growing season. On large mechanized farms, harvesting utilizes the most expensive and sophisticated farm machinery, the term harvesting in general usage may include immediate postharvest handling, including cleaning, sorting, packing, and cooling. Harvest, a noun, came from the Old English word hærfest, meaning autumn, harvest-time, the harvest came to also mean the activity of reaping, gathering, and storing grain and other grown products during the autumn, and also the grain and other grown products themselves. Harvest was also verbified, To harvest means to reap, gather, people who harvest and equipment that harvests are harvesters, while they do it, they are harvesting. In history, crop failures and subsequent famines have triggered human migration, rural exodus, over years, unsustainable farming of land degrades soil fertility and diminishes crop yield. With a steadily growing population and local overpopulation, even slightly diminishing yields are already the equivalent to a partial harvest failure. Fortunately, fertilizers obviate the need for regeneration in the first place. Harvesting commonly refers to grain and produce, but also has other uses, the term harvest is also used in reference to harvesting grapes for wine. Within the context of irrigation, water harvesting refers to the collection, instead of harvest, the term exploit is also used, as in exploiting fisheries or water resources. Energy harvesting is the process of capturing and storing energy that would otherwise go unexploited, body harvesting, or cadaver harvesting, is the process of collecting and preparing cadavers for anatomical study. In a similar sense, organ harvesting is the removal of tissues or organs from a donor for purposes of transplanting. Harvesting or Domestic Harvesting in Canada refers to hunting, fishing, and plant gathering by First Nations, Métis, for example, in the Gwichin Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement, Harvesting means gathering, hunting, trapping or fishing. Similarly, in the Tlicho Land Claim and Self Government Agreement, Harvesting means, in relation to wildlife, hunting, trapping or fishing and, in relation to plants or trees, combine Harvester Harvest Harvest festival Overharvesting Threshing Winnowing
14.
Silo
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A silo is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store grain or fermented feed known as silage, Silos are more commonly used for bulk storage of grain, coal, cement, carbon black, woodchips, food products and sawdust. Three types of silos are in use today, tower silos, bunker silos. There are different types of cement silos such as the low-level mobile silo and the static upright cement silo, the low-level silos are fully mobile with capacities from 10 to 75 tons. They are simple to transport and are easy to set up on site and these mobile silos generally come equipped with an electronic weighing system with digital display and printer. This allows any quantity of cement or powder discharged from the silo to be controlled, the static upright silos have capacities from 20 to 80 tons. These are considered an option for the storage of cement or other powders. Cement silos can be used in conjunction with bin-fed batching plants, Cement can be stored in different types of Silos like Horizontal Mobile Silos, Concrete Silos, Steel Panel Silos etc. depending upon the requirement of the end user. While Mobile Silos come in a small storage capacity of approximately 90MT of Cement. A majority of Silos that store more than 5000 MT of Cement are constructed from Concrete, a good compromise between cost, construction time and ease of operation is Steel Panel Silos. Storage silos are cylindrical structures, typically 10 to 90 ft in diameter and 30 to 275 ft in height with the slipform and Jumpform concrete silos being the diameter and taller silos. They can be made of many materials, wood staves, concrete staves, cast concrete, and steel panels have all been used, and have varying cost, durability, and airtightness tradeoffs. Silos storing grain, cement and woodchips are typically unloaded with air slides or augers, Silos can be unloaded into rail cars, trucks or conveyors. Bottom silo unloaders are utilized at times but have problems with difficulty of repair, an advantage of tower silos is that the silage tends to pack well due to its own weight, except in the top few feet. However, this may be a disadvantage for items like chopped wood, the tower silo was invented by Franklin Hiram King. In bumper crop times, the grain is stored in piles without silos or bins. Concrete stave silos are constructed from small precast concrete blocks with ridged grooves along each edge that lock them together into a high strength shell. Concrete is much stronger in compression than tension, so the silo is reinforced with steel hoops encircling the tower and compressing the staves into a tight ring
15.
Mill (grinding)
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A mill is a device that breaks solid materials into smaller pieces by grinding, crushing, or cutting. Such comminution is an important unit operation in many processes, there are many different types of mills and many types of materials processed in them. Historically mills were powered by hand, working animal, wind or water, today they are usually powered by electricity. The grinding of solid matters occurs under exposure of mechanical forces that trench the structure by overcoming of the interior bonding forces, after the grinding the state of the solid is changed, the grain size, the grain size disposition and the grain shape. Milling also refers to the process of breaking down, separating, sizing, aggregate milling processes are also used to remove or separate contamination or moisture from aggregate or soil and to produce dry fills prior to transport or structural filling. To calculate the needed grinding work against the grain size changing three half-empirical models are used and these can be related to the Hukki relationship between particle size and the energy required to break the particles. In stirred mills, the Hukki relationship does not apply and instead, a reliable value for the grain sizes dA and dE is d80. This value signifies that 80% of the matter has a smaller grain size. The Bonds grinding coefficient for different materials can be found in various literature, to evaluate the grinding results the grain size disposition of the source material and of the ground material is needed. Grinding degree is the ratio of the sizes from the grain disposition, pretended grinding degree Z a = d 1 a The discharge die gap a of the grinding machine is used for the ground solid matter in this formula. In materials processing a grinder is a machine for producing fine particle size reduction through attrition, see also crusher for mechanisms producing larger particles. A typical type of grinder is the ball mill. Ball mills normally operate with a ball charge of 30%. Ball mills are characterized by their diameter and longer length. The feed is at one end of the cylinder and the discharge is at the other, ball mills are commonly used in the manufacture of Portland cement and finer grinding stages of mineral processing, one example being the Sepro tyre drive Grinding Mill. Industrial ball mills can be as large as 8.5 m in diameter with a 22 MW motor, however, small versions of ball mills can be found in laboratories where they are used for grinding sample material for quality assurance. A rotating drum causes friction and attrition between steel rods and ore particles, but note that the term rod mill is also used as a synonym for a slitting mill, which makes rods of iron or other metal. Rod mills are less common than ball mills for grinding minerals, the rods used in the mill, usually a high-carbon steel, can vary in both the length and the diameter
16.
Flour
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Flour is a powder made by grinding raw grains or roots and used to make many different foods. While wheat is the most common base for flour, maize flour has been important in Mesoamerican cuisine since ancient times, rye flour is a constituent of bread in central Europe. The English word flour is originally a variant of the word flower, both derive from the Old French fleur or flour, which had the literal meaning blossom, and a figurative meaning the finest. The phrase fleur de farine meant the finest part of the meal, since flour resulted from the elimination of coarse, the earliest archaeological evidence for wheat seeds crushed between simple millstones to make flour dates to 6000 BC. The Romans were the first to grind seeds on cone mills, in 1879, at the beginning of the Industrial Era, the first steam mill was erected in London. In the 1930s, some began to be enriched with iron, niacin, thiamine. In the 1940s, mills started to enrich flour and folic acid was added to the list in the 1990s, an important problem of the industrial revolution was the preservation of flour. Transportation distances and a relatively slow distribution system collided with natural shelf life, the reason for the limited shelf life is the fatty acids of the germ, which react from the moment they are exposed to oxygen. This occurs when grain is milled, the fatty acids oxidize, depending on climate and grain quality, this process takes six to nine months. In the late 19th century, this process was too short for a production and distribution cycle. As vitamins, micronutrients and amino acids were completely or relatively unknown in the late 19th century, without the germ, flour cannot become rancid. Degermation started in densely populated areas and took approximately one generation to reach the countryside, heat-processed flour is flour where the germ is first separated from the endosperm and bran, then processed with steam, dry heat or microwave and blended into flour again. Milling of flour is accomplished by grinding grain between stones or steel wheels, today, stone-ground usually means that the grain has been ground in a mill in which a revolving stone wheel turns over a stationary stone wheel, vertically or horizontally with the grain in between. These terms are now applied broadly to uses of water. More recently, the Unifine mill, a mill, was developed in the mid-20th century. Home users have begun grinding their own flour from organic wheat berries on a variety of electric flour mills, the grinding process is not much different from grinding coffee but the mills are larger. This provides fresh flour with the benefits of wheat germ and fiber without spoilage, Flour contains a high proportion of starches, which are a subset of complex carbohydrates also known as polysaccharides. The kinds of used in cooking include all-purpose flour, self-rising flour
17.
Expeller pressing
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Expeller pressing is a mechanical method for extracting oil from raw materials trademarked by Anderson International Corp. Mr. Valerius D. Anderson founded the V. D. Anderson Company in Cleveland, in 1900, Mr. V. D. Anderson created the first successful continuously operated Expeller® press. The raw materials are squeezed under high pressure in a single step, when used for the extraction of food oils, typical raw materials are nuts, seeds and algae, which are supplied to the press in a continuous feed. As the raw material is pressed, friction causes it to heat up, an expeller press is a screw-type machine that mainly presses oil seeds through a caged barrel-like cavity. Other materials used with an expeller press include but are not limited to meat by-products, synthetic rubber, raw materials enter one side of the press and waste products exit the other side. The machine uses friction and continuous pressure from the drives to move. The oil seeps through small openings that do not allow seed fiber solids to pass through, afterward, the pressed seeds are formed into a hardened cake, which is removed from the machine. Pressure involved in expeller pressing creates heat in the range of 140–210 °F, some companies claim that they use a cooling apparatus to reduce this temperature to protect certain properties of the oils being extracted. Expeller processing cannot remove every last trace of liquid from the raw material, a significant amount remains trapped inside of the cake left over after pressing. Some raw materials, however, do not release oil by simple expelling, in order to remove oil from commodities that do not respond to expelling or to extract the final traces of oil after expelling, it is necessary to use solvent extraction. The earliest expeller presses utilized a continuous screw design, the compression screws were much like the screws of a screw conveyor—that is, the helicoid flighting started at one end and ended at the other. Valerius Anderson invented the interrupted screw design and patented it in the year 1900 and he wrote that brewers slops, slaughterhouse refuse and other soft and mushy materials dewater poorly in continuous screw presses. His invention consisted of putting interruptions in the flighting of a compression screw and it was much like having a hanger bearing in a screw conveyor, there is no flighting on the shaft at that point, so material tends to stop moving and pile up. It is only after solids accumulate in the gap that the downstream flighting catches material, when this happens, material is forced along its way. The result is better dewatering and thus a more consistent press cake, after the 1900 patent, a major improvement was made with the addition of resistor teeth. Fitted into the gaps where there is no flighting, these increase the agitation within the press. As the years went by, applications of the interrupted screw design were expanded beyond slippery and this took place because competing continuous screw presses worked best only under conditions of constant feed, at constant consistency. If either the consistency or the flow rate diminished, squeezing would diminish until it was inadequate for proper moisture removal, at the same time, if the consistency increased, the press could jam
18.
Oil
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An oil is any neutral, nonpolar chemical substance that is a viscous liquid at ambient temperatures and is both hydrophobic and lipophilic. Oils have a carbon and hydrogen content and are usually flammable. The general definition of oil includes classes of compounds that may be otherwise unrelated in structure, properties. Oils may be animal, vegetable, or petrochemical in origin and they are used for food, fuel, medical purposes, lubrication, and the manufacture of many types of paints, plastics, and other materials. Specially prepared oils are used in religious ceremonies and rituals as purifying agents. First attested in English 1176, the oil comes from Old French oile, from Latin oleum, which in turn comes from the Greek ἔλαιον, olive oil, oil. The earliest attested forms of the word are the Mycenaean Greek
19.
Commodity market
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A commodity market is a market that trades in primary economic sector rather than manufactured products. Soft commodities are products such as wheat, coffee, cocoa. Hard commodities are mined, such as gold and oil, Investors access about 50 major commodity markets worldwide with purely financial transactions increasingly outnumbering physical trades in which goods are delivered. Futures contracts are the oldest way of investing in commodities, Futures are secured by physical assets. Commodity markets can include physical trading and derivatives trading using spot prices, forwards, futures, farmers have used a simple form of derivative trading in the commodity market for centuries for price risk management. A financial derivative is an instrument whose value is derived from a commodity termed an underlier. Derivatives are either exchange-traded or over-the-counter, derivatives such as futures contracts, Swaps, Exchange-traded Commodities, forward contracts have become the primary trading instruments in commodity markets. Futures are traded on regulated commodities exchanges, Over-the-counter contracts are privately negotiated bilateral contracts entered into between the contracting parties directly. Exchange-traded funds began to feature commodities in 2003, Gold ETFs are based on electronic gold that does not entail the ownership of physical bullion, with its added costs of insurance and storage in repositories such as the London bullion market. According to the World Gold Council, ETFs allow investors to be exposed to the market without the risk of price volatility associated with gold as a physical commodity. Commodity-based money and commodity markets in an early form are believed to have originated in Sumer between 4500 BC and 4000 BC. Sumerians first used clay tokens sealed in a vessel, then clay writing tablets to represent the amount—for example. These promises of time and date of delivery resemble futures contract, early civilizations variously used pigs, rare seashells, or other items as commodity money. Since that time traders have sought ways to simplify and standardize trade contracts, Gold and silver markets evolved in classical civilizations. At first the precious metals were valued for their beauty and intrinsic worth and were associated with royalty, in time, they were used for trading and were exchanged for other goods and commodities, or for payments of labor. Gold, measured out, then became money, golds scarcity, unique density and the way it could be easily melted, shaped, and measured made it a natural trading asset. Beginning in the late 10th century, commodity markets grew as a mechanism for allocating goods, labor, land, indeed, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, often cited as the first stock exchange, originated as a market for the exchange of commodities. Early trading on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange often involved the use of sophisticated contracts, including short sales, forward contracts
20.
Canola
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B. campestris L. or Brassica juncea. To be called canola, the oil must contain less than 2% erucic acid, health concerns center around the fact that standard production may leave trace amounts of chemical solvent and that non-organic canola may be made from plants that have been genetically modified. It is also used as a source of biodiesel, in the 1970s, the Rapeseed Association of Canada chose the name canola to represent Can for Canada, and ola for oil. One dictionary purports that it stands for Can + o + l + a, Canola was developed through conventional plant breeding from rapeseed, an oilseed plant already used in ancient civilization as a fuel. The word rape in rapeseed comes from the Latin word rapum meaning turnip, turnip, rutabaga, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, mustard, and many other vegetables are related to the two natural canola varieties commonly grown, which are cultivars of B. napus and B. rapa. The change in name serves to distinguish it from natural rapeseed oil, Brassica oilseed varieties are some of the oldest plants cultivated by humanity, with documentation of its use in India 4,000 years ago, and use in China and Japan 2,000 years ago. Its use in Northern Europe for oil lamps is documented to the 13th century and its use was limited until the development of steam power, when machinists found rapeseed oil clung to water- and steam-washed metal surfaces better than other lubricants. World War II caused high demand for the oil as a lubricant for the increasing number of steam engines in naval. When the war blocked European and Asian sources of rapeseed oil, a shortage developed. After the war, demand declined sharply, and farmers began to look for other uses for the plant, Rapeseed oil extracts were first put on the market in 1956–1957 as food products, but these suffered from several unacceptable characteristics. Rapeseed oil had a taste and a disagreeable greenish color. It also contained a concentration of erucic acid. Feed meal from the plant also was not particularly appealing to livestock. A variety developed in 1998 is considered to be the most disease- and this and other recent varieties have been produced using genetic engineering. In 2011, 26% of the acres sown were genetically modified canola, Canola was originally a trademark, but is now a generic term for edible varieties of rapeseed oil in North America and Australia. In Canada, a definition of canola is codified in Canadian law. As of the 2013/2014 season, production in the ten leading territories was, Rapeseed is traded on the Euronext exchange. Canola oil is made at a facility by slightly heating
21.
Maize
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Maize, also known as corn, is a large grain plant first domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The six major types of corn are dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, popcorn, flour corn, the leafy stalk of the plant produces separate pollen and ovuliferous inflorescences or ears, which are fruits, yielding kernels or seeds. Maize kernels are used in cooking as a starch. Most historians believe maize was domesticated in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico, recent research modified this view somewhat, scholars now indicate the adjacent Balsas River Valley of south-central Mexico as the center of domestication. The Olmec and Mayans cultivated maize in numerous varieties throughout Mesoamerica, cooked and its believed that beginning about 2500 BC, the crop spread through much of the Americas. The region developed a network based on surplus and varieties of maize crops. Nevertheless, recent data indicates that the spread of maize took place even earlier, according to Piperno, A large corpus of data indicates that it was dispersed into lower Central America by 7600 BP and had moved into the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP. Since then, even earlier dates have been published, the study also demonstrated that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands. Later, maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths and this is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands. Before they were domesticated, maize plants only grew small,25 millimetres long corn cobs, Maize is the most widely grown grain crop throughout the Americas, with 361 million metric tons grown in the United States in 2014. Approximately 40% of the crop—130 million tons—is used for corn ethanol, genetically modified maize made up 85% of the maize planted in the United States in 2009. After the arrival of Europeans in 1492, Spanish settlers consumed maize and explorers and traders carried it back to Europe, Spanish settlers far preferred wheat bread to maize, cassava, or potatoes. Maize flour could not be substituted for wheat for bread, since in Christian belief only wheat could undergo transubstantiation. At another level, Spaniards worried that by eating indigenous foods, which they did not consider nutritious, that not only would they weaken, despite these worries, Spaniards did consume maize and archeological evidence from Florida sites indicate they cultivated it as well. Maize spread to the rest of the world because of its ability to grow in diverse climates and it was cultivated in Spain just a few decades after Columbuss voyages and then spread to Italy, West Africa and elsewhere. The word maize derives from the Spanish form of the indigenous Taíno word for the plant and it is known by other names around the world. The word corn outside North America, Australia, and New Zealand refers to any cereal crop, in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, corn primarily means maize, this usage started as a shortening of Indian corn. Indian corn primarily means maize, but can more specifically to multicolored flint corn used for decoration
22.
Rice
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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
23.
Soybean
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Glycine max, commonly known as soybean in North America or soya bean, is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean which has numerous uses. The plant, classed as a rather than a pulse by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Fat-free soybean meal is a significant and cheap source of protein for animal feeds, for example, soybean products, such as textured vegetable protein, are ingredients in many meat and dairy substitutes. The beans contain significant amounts of acid, dietary minerals. Soy vegetable oil, used in food and industrial applications, is product of processing the soybean crop. Traditional non-fermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk from which tofu and tofu skin are made, fermented soy foods include soy sauce, fermented bean paste, natto and tempeh. The main countries growing soybeans are the United States, Brazil, the English words soy and soya are ultimately derived from the Japanese pronunciation of shōyu, the Sino-Japanese word for soy sauce, by way of the Dutch adaptation of the same word, soja. The genus Glycine Willd. is divided two subgenera, Glycine and Soja. Includes the cultivated soybean, Glycine max Merr. and the wild soybean, Glycine soja is the wild ancestor of Glycine max, and grows wild in China, Japan, Korea and Russia. The subgenus Glycine consists of at least 25 wild perennial species, for example, Glycine canescens F. J. Herm. and G. tomentella Hayata, perennial soybean originated in Africa and is now a widespread pasture crop in the tropics. Like some other crops of long domestication, the relationship of the soybean to wild-growing species can no longer be traced with any degree of certainty. It is a variety with a very large number of cultivars. Like most plants, soybeans grow in distinct morphological stages as they develop from seeds into fully mature plants, the first stage of growth is germination, a process that first becomes apparent as a seeds radicle emerges. This is the first stage of growth and occurs within the first 48 hours under ideal growing conditions. The first photosynthetic structures, the cotyledons, develop from the hypocotyl and these cotyledons both act as leaves and as a source of nutrients for the immature plant, providing the seedling nutrition for its first 7 to 10 days. The first true leaves develop as a pair of single blades, subsequent to this first pair, mature nodes form compound leaves with three blades. Mature trifoliolate leaves, having three to four leaflets per leaf, are often between 6–15 cm long and 2–7 cm broad, under ideal conditions, stem growth continues, producing new nodes every four days. Before flowering, roots can grow 1.9 cm per day, if rhizobia are present, root nodulation begins by the time the third node appears
24.
Wheat
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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
25.
Poaceae
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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
26.
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
27.
Barley
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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
28.
Oat
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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
29.
Starch
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Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of a large number of glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants as an energy store and it is the most common carbohydrate in human diets and is contained in large amounts in staple foods such as potatoes, wheat, maize, rice, and cassava. Pure starch is a white, tasteless and odorless powder that is insoluble in water or alcohol. It consists of two types of molecules, the linear and helical amylose and the branched amylopectin, depending on the plant, starch generally contains 20 to 25% amylose and 75 to 80% amylopectin by weight. Glycogen, the store of animals, is a more branched version of amylopectin. In industry, starch is converted into sugars, for example by malting and it is processed to produce many of the sugars used in processed foods. Dissolving starch in water gives wheatpaste, which can be used as a thickening, stiffening or gluing agent. The biggest industrial non-food use of starch is as an adhesive in the papermaking process, starch can be applied to parts of some garments before ironing, to stiffen them. The word starch is from a Germanic root with the strong, stiff. Amylum for starch is from the Greek αμυλον, amylon which means not ground at a mill, the root amyl is used in biochemistry for several compounds related to starch. Starch grains from the rhizomes of Typha as flour have been identified from grinding stones in Europe dating back to 30,000 years ago, starch grains from sorghum were found on grind stones in caves in Ngalue, Mozambique dating up to 100,000 years ago. Pure extracted wheat starch paste was used in Ancient Egypt possibly to glue papyrus, the extraction of starch is first described in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder around AD 77–79. Romans used it also in cosmetic creams, to powder the hair, persians and Indians used it to make dishes similar to gothumai wheat halva. Rice starch as surface treatment of paper has been used in production in China. In addition to starchy plants consumed directly,66 million tonnes of starch were being produced per year world-wide by 2008. In the EU this was around 8.5 million tonnes, with around 40% being used for applications and 60% for food uses. Most green plants use starch as their energy store, an exception is the family Asteraceae, where starch is replaced by the fructan inulin. In photosynthesis, plants use light energy to produce glucose from carbon dioxide, the glucose is used to make cellulose fibers, the structural component of the plant, or is stored in the form of starch granules, in amyloplasts
30.
Carbohydrate
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A carbohydrate is a biological molecule consisting of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms, usually with a hydrogen–oxygen atom ratio of 2,1, in other words, with the empirical formula Cmn. This formula holds true for monosaccharides, some exceptions exist, for example, deoxyribose, a sugar component of DNA, has the empirical formula C5H10O4. Carbohydrates are technically hydrates of carbon, structurally it is accurate to view them as polyhydroxy aldehydes and ketones. The term is most common in biochemistry, where it is a synonym of saccharide, a group that includes sugars, starch, the saccharides are divided into four chemical groups, monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides. Monosaccharides and disaccharides, the smallest carbohydrates, are referred to as sugars. The word saccharide comes from the Greek word σάκχαρον, meaning sugar, while the scientific nomenclature of carbohydrates is complex, the names of the monosaccharides and disaccharides very often end in the suffix -ose. For example, grape sugar is the glucose, cane sugar is the disaccharide sucrose. Carbohydrates perform numerous roles in living organisms, polysaccharides serve for the storage of energy and as structural components. The 5-carbon monosaccharide ribose is an important component of coenzymes and the backbone of the genetic molecule known as RNA, the related deoxyribose is a component of DNA. Saccharides and their derivatives include many other important biomolecules that play key roles in the system, fertilization, preventing pathogenesis, blood clotting. In food science and in informal contexts, the term carbohydrate often means any food that is particularly rich in the complex carbohydrate starch or simple carbohydrates. Often in lists of information, such as the USDA National Nutrient Database, the term carbohydrate is used for everything other than water, protein, fat, ash. This will include chemical compounds such as acetic or lactic acid, carbohydrates are found in wide variety of foods. The important sources are cereals, potatoes, sugarcane, fruits, table sugar, bread, milk, starch and sugar are the important carbohydrates in our diet. Starch is abundant in potatoes, maize, rice and other cereals, sugar appears in our diet mainly as sucrose which is added to drinks and many prepared foods such as jam, biscuits and cakes. Glucose and fructose are found naturally in fruits and some vegetables. Glycogen is carbohydrate found in the liver and muscles, cellulose in the cell wall of all plant tissue is a carbohydrate. It is important in our diet as fibre which helps to maintain a healthy digestive system, formerly the name carbohydrate was used in chemistry for any compound with the formula Cm n
31.
Eleusine coracana
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Eleusine coracana, or finger millet, is an annual herbaceous plant widely grown as a cereal crop in the arid and semiarid areas in Africa and Asia. It is a tetraploid and self-pollinating species probably evolved from its wild relative Eleusine africana, Finger millet is native to the Ethiopian and Ugandan highlands. Finger millet originated in East Africa and came to India around 2000 BCE and it has been found in an Indian archaeological site dated to 1800 BCE. Main cultivation areas are Eastern and Southern African countries and Southern Asia, Finger millet is a short-day plant with a growing optimum at 12 h daylenght for most varieties. Its main growing area ranges from 20° N to 20° S, nevertheless, finger millet is found to be grown at 30° N in the Himalaya region. It is generally considered as a drought tolerant crop, but compared with other millets, such as pearl millet and sorghum it preferes moderate rainfall. The majority of worldwide finger millet farmers grow it rainfed, although yields often can be improved when irrigation is applied. In India, finger millet is a typical rabi crop, heat tolerance of finger millet is high. For Ugandan finger millet varieties for instance, the average growth temperature ranges at about 27 °C. Relatively to other millet species finger millet has a tolerance to cool temperatures. It is grown from about 500 meters above sea level up to about 2400 meters above sea level, by that, it can be cultivated on higher elevations than most tropical crops. Finger millet can grow on soils, including highly weathered tropical lateritic soils. Furthermore, it can tolerate soil salinity up to a certain extent and its ability to bear waterlogging is limited, therefore good drainage of the soils and moderate water holding capacity are optimal. Finger millet can tolerate moderately acidic soils but also moderately alkaline soils, Finger millet monocrops grown under rainfed conditions are most common in drier areas of Eastern Africa. In addition, intercropping with legumes, such as cowpea or pigeon pea, are quite common in East Africa. Tropical Central Africa supports scattered regions of finger millet intercropping mostly with legumes and its seeds are very small, which leads to a relatively slow development in early growing stages. This makes finger millet a weak competitor for light, water, in East and Southern Africa, the closely related species Eleusine indica is a severe weed competitor of finger millet. Especially in early growing stages of the crop and the weed and when broadcast seeding instead of row seeding is applied, besides Eleusine indica, the species Xanthium strumarium, which is animal disperesed and the stolon-owning species Cyperus rotondus and Cynodon dactylon are important finger millet weeds
32.
Fonio
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Fonio is the term for two cultivated grains in the Digitaria genus which are notable crops in parts of West Africa. The crops have C4 metabolisms and are medium in height, the number of chromosomes for the species can be diploid, tetraploid, or hexaploid. The name is from Wolof foño, white fonio, D. exilis, also called hungry rice, is the most important of a diverse group of wild and domesticated Digitaria species that are harvested in the savannas of West Africa. Fonio has the smallest seeds of all species of millet and it has potential to improve nutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and support sustainable use of the land. Fonio has continued to be important locally because it is nutritious and one of the worlds fastest-growing cereals, reaching maturity in as little as six to eight weeks. It is a crop that can be relied on in areas with poor soils. The grains are used in porridge and couscous, for bread, the small grains make it difficult and time-consuming to remove the husk. Traditional methods include pounding it in a mortar with sand or popping it over a flame, the invention of a simple fonio husking machine offers an easier mechanical way to dehusk. Archived from the original on October 13,2005, kuta, Danladi Dada, Kwon-Ndung, Emmanuel, Dachi, Stephen, Ukwungwu, Mark, Imolehin, Emmanuel Dada. Potential role of biotechnology tools for genetic improvement of lost crops of Africa, revue Internationale d’Agriculture Tropicale et Botanique appliquée,2, 544-550. Fonio millets, Ethnobotany, genetic diversity and evolution, morales-Payán, J. Pablo, J. Ortiz, Richard, Cicero, Julio, Taveras, Francisco. Digitaria exilis as a crop in the Dominican Republic, supplement to, Trends in new crops and new uses. Portères, R. Laire culturale du Digitaria iburua Stapf, portères, R. Les céréales mineures du genre Digitaria en Afrique et Europe. Journal d’Agriculture Tropicale et Botanique Appliquée, 349–386, 477–510, 620–675, portères, R. African cereals, eleusine, fonio, black fonio, teff, Brachiaria, Paspalum, Pennisetum and African rice. In Harlan, J. R. De Wet, J. M. J
33.
Foxtail millet
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Foxtail millet is an annual grass grown for human food. It is the second-most widely planted species of millet, and the most important in East Asia and it has the longest history of cultivation among the millets, having been grown in India since antiquity. According to recent research, it was first domesticated in China around 6,000 BC, other names for the species include dwarf setaria, foxtail bristle-grass, giant setaria, green foxtail, Italian millet, German millet, and Hungarian millet. Foxtail millet is a grass with slim, vertical, leafy stems which can reach a height of 120–200 cm. The seedhead is a dense, hairy panicle 5–30 cm long, the small seeds, around 2 mm in diameter, are encased in a thin, papery hull which is easily removed in threshing. Seed color varies greatly between varieties, the grain obtained from it is called jopsal, a word that is commonly used in Korean as a metaphor for pettiness or innumerable small things. It is the commonly used for the grain after it has been husked, unhusked grain is called guzi in North China. Marathi, kang or rala Sinhala, thana haal Tamil, thinai, kavalai, or kambankorai, the gruel made from millet, the staple of Ancient Tamils, is called kali, moddak kali, kuul, or sangati. In South India, it has been a staple diet among people for a time from the sangam period. It is popularly quoted in the old Tamil texts and is associated with Lord Muruga. In China, foxtail millet is the most common millet and one of the food crops. In Southeast Asia, foxtail millet is commonly cultivated in its dry, in Europe and North America it is planted at a moderate scale for hay and silage, and to a more limited extent for birdseed. It is a warm season crop, typically planted in late spring, Harvest for hay or silage can be made in 65–70 days, and for grain in 75–90 days. Its early maturity and efficient use of water make it suitable for raising in dry areas. Diseases of foxtail millet include leaf and head blast disease caused by Magnaporthe grisea, smut disease caused by Ustilago crameri, the unharvested crop is also susceptible to attack by birds and rodents. The wild antecedent of foxtail millet has been identified as Setaria viridis. Zohary and Hopf note that the difference between the wild and cultivated forms is their seed dispersal biology. Wild and weedy forms shatter their seed while the cultivars retain them, more recently, the Cishan culture of China has been identified as the earliest to domesticate foxtail millet around 6500–5500 BC
34.
Job's tears
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Jobs tears or Jobs-tears, scientific name Coix lacryma-jobi, also known as coixseed, tear grass, hato mugi, adlay or adlai, is a tall grain-bearing perennial tropical plant of the family Poaceae. It is native to Southeast Asia but elsewhere is cultivated in gardens as an annual and it has been naturalized in the southern United States and the New World tropics. In its native environment it is grown in areas where rice. Jobs tears are commonly sold as Chinese pearl barley in Asian supermarkets. There are two varieties of the species, one wild and one cultivated. The wild variety, Coix lacryma-jobi var. lacryma-jobi, has hard-shelled pseudocarps—very hard, pearly white, oval structures used as beads for making rosaries, necklaces, the cultivated variety Coix lacryma-jobi var. Ma-yuen is harvested as a crop, has a soft shell. The species was named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 with the epithet as a Latin translation of the tear of Job. As of February 2015, four varieties are accepted by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, widely distributed throughout the Asian subcontinent to peninsular Malaysia and Taiwan, naturalized elsewhere. South China to peninsular Malaysia and the Philippines, besides the use for ornamental purposes, Jobs tears grains are useful as a source of food and folk medicine. Throughout East Asia, Jobs tears are available in dried form, the grains are generally spherical, with a groove on one end, and polished white in color, though in Japan unpolished yuuki hatomugi, which is unpolished and brown in color, is also available. In Korea, a drink called yulmu cha is made from powdered Jobs tears. A similar drink, called Yi Ren Jiang, also appears in Chinese cuisine, the grains are usually strained from the liquid but may also be consumed separately or together. In both Korea and China, distilled liquors are also made from the grain, one such example is the South Korean liquor called okroju, which is made from rice and Jobs tears. An ancient Chinese beer recipe included the grain as an ingredient, in Japan, an aged vinegar is made from the grain. In southern Vietnam, a sweet, cold soup called sâm bổ lượng has Jobs Tears as one of its ingredients and this dish derives from the southern Chinese tong sui called qīng bǔ liáng. In Thailand, it is consumed in teas and other drinks. It is also used alongside other herbs in traditional Chinese medicine, a common folk story is that the corn beads sprang up along the path during the 1838 forced march of many Cherokees to Oklahoma from their southeastern North American homelands by the U. S. military
35.
Paspalum scrobiculatum
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Paspalum scrobiculatum, Kodo millet, is an annual grain that is grown in primarily in India, but also in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and in West Africa where it originates. It is grown as a crop in most of these areas. Kodo millet is a monocot and a grass that grows to heights of approximately four feet. It has an inflorescence that produces 4-6 racemes that are 4–9 cm long and its slender, light green leaves grow to be 20 to 40 centimeters in length. The seeds it produces are very small and ellipsoidal, being approximately 1.5 mm in width and 2 mm in length, Kodo millet has a shallow root system which may be ideal for intercropping. Paspalum scrobiculatum var. scrobiculatum is grown in India as an important crop, the domestication process is still ongoing. In southern India, it is called kodo or kodra, and it is a minor food crop eaten in many Asian countries, primarily in India where in some regions it is extremely important. It grows wild as a perennial in the west of Africa, often it grows as a weed in rice fields. Many farmers do not mind it, as it can be harvested as a crop if their primary crop fails. In the Southern United States and Hawaii, it is considered to be a noxious weed, Kodo millet is propagated from seed, ideally in row planting instead of broadcast sowing. Its preferred soil type is a fertile, clay-based soil. Var. scrobiculatum is better suited to dried conditions than its wild counterpart, with very low competition from other plants or weeds for nutrients, it can grow well in poor-nutrient soils. However, it does best in soils supplemented with a general fertilizer, the recommended dose for optimal growth is 40 kg of nitrogen plus 20 kg of phosphorus per hectare. A case study in Indias Rewa district in 1997 showed a 72% increase in kodo millet grain yields as opposed to no fertilizer and it should be noted that lodging issues may accompany this. Kodo millet prefers full light for growth, but can tolerate some partial shading. Its ideal temperature for growth is 25-27 °C and it requires four months until maturity and harvesting. The kodo millet is prone to lodging at maturity, causing loss of grain, to prevent this, limited fertilization is recommended. While plenty of fertilizer dramatically improves yields, there is the risk of lodging accompanying vigorous growth, a good balance is applying 14–22 kg of nitrogen
36.
Millet
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Millets are a group of highly variable small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Millets are important crops in the tropics of Asia and Africa. The crop is favored due to its productivity and short growing season under dry, millets are indigenous to many parts of the world. The most widely grown millet is pearl millet, which is an important crop in India, Finger millet, proso millet, and foxtail millet are also important crop species. Millets have been important food staples in human history, particularly in Asia and they have been in cultivation in East Asia for the last 10,000 years. Consumption of the minor millets has been practiced since the beginning of the ancient civilizations of the world, generally, the millets are small-grained, annual, warm-weather cereals belonging to grass family. They are highly tolerant of extreme conditions such as drought and are nutritious compared to the major cereals such as rice. They contain low phytic acid and are rich in fiber, iron, calcium. Moreover, these millets release sugar slowly in the blood and also diminish the glucose absorption, major millets are the most widely cultivated species. Eragrostideae tribe, Eleusine coracana, Finger millet - the fourth-most cultivated millet, paniceae tribe, Panicum miliaceum, Proso millet - the third-most cultivated millet. Pennisetum glaucum, Pearl millet - the most cultivated millet, setaria italica, Foxtail millet - the second-most cultivated millet. Jobs tears - of minor importance as a crop, eragrostideae tribe, Eragrostis tef, Teff - often not considered to be a millet. White fonio, Black fonio, Raishan, Polish millet - of minor importance as a crop, Japanese barnyard millet, Indian barnyard millet, Burgu millet, Common barnyard grass. Collectively, the members of this genus are called barnyard grasses or barnyard millets, other common names to identify these seeds include Jhangora, Samo seeds or Morio / Mario / Moraiaya seeds. Panicum sumatrense, Little millet Paspalum scrobiculatum, Kodo millet Urochloa ramosa, guinea millet Foxtail Millet is known to have been the first domesticated millet. Chinese legends attribute the domestication of millet to Shennong, the legendary Emperor of China, millets also formed important parts of the prehistoric diet in Indian, Chinese Neolithic and Korean Mumun societies. Broomcorn and foxtail millet were important crops beginning in the Early Neolithic of China, for example, some of the earliest evidence of millet cultivation in China was found at Cishan. Evidence at Cishan for foxtail millet dates back to around 6500 BC, a 4, 000-year-old well-preserved bowl containing well-preserved noodles made from foxtail millet and broomcorn millet was found at the Lajia archaeological site in China
37.
Pearl millet
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Pearl millet is the most widely grown type of millet. It has been grown in Africa and the Indian subcontinent since prehistoric times, the center of diversity, and suggested area of domestication, for the crop is in the Sahel zone of West Africa. Recent archaeobotanical research has confirmed the presence of domesticated pearl millet on the Sahel zone of northern Mali between 2500 and 2000 BC, cultivation subsequently spread and moved overseas to India. The earliest archaeological records in India date to around 2000 BC, cultivation also spread throughout eastern and southern parts of Africa. Pearl millet is grown in the northeastern part of Nigeria. It is a source of food to the local villagers of that region. The crop grows easily in that due to its ability to withstand harsh weather conditions like drought. Records exist for cultivation of millet in the United States in the 1850s. With ovoid grains of 3 –4 mm length pearl millet has the largest kernels of all varieties of millet which can be white, pale yellow, brown, grey. The 1000-seed weight can be anything from 2.5 to 14 g with a mean of 8 g, the height of the plant ranges from 0.5 –4 m. Pearl millet is well adapted to growing areas characterized by drought, low soil fertility and it performs well in soils with high salinity or low pH. Because of its tolerance to difficult growing conditions, it can be grown in areas where other crops, such as maize or wheat. Pearl millet is an annual crop well-suited for double cropping. Today pearl millet is grown on over 260,000 km2 of land worldwide and it accounts for approximately 50% of the total world production of millets. In Pakistan, باجرا, ٻاجھري Sindhi, In USA, cattail millet Kambu is the Tamil name of Pearl millet and is an important food across the Tamil Nadu. It is the important food for Tamil people consumed predominantly in the hot humid summer months from February through July every year. It is made into a gruel and consumed along with milk or consumed as dosa or aboriginal Tamil idly. Its also the street food during summer in Tamil Nadu
38.
Proso millet
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It is still extensively cultivated in India, Nepal, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Middle East, Turkey and Romania. In the United States, proso is mainly grown for birdseed and it is sold as health food, and due to its lack of gluten, it can be included in the diets of people who cannot tolerate wheat. The name comes from the general and generic name for millet. Proso is well adapted to many soil and climatic conditions, it has a growing season. The water requirement of proso is probably the lowest of any major cereal and it is an excellent crop for dryland and no-till farming. Proso millet is an annual grass whose plants reach an height of 100 cm. Like corn, it has a C4 photosynthesis, the seeds are small and can be cream, yellow, orange-red, or brown in colour. Proso is an annual grass like all other millets, but it is not closely related to pearl millet, foxtail millet, finger millet, unlike the foxtail millet, the wild ancestor of the proso millet has not yet been satisfactorily identified. This millet has been found in Neolithic sites in Georgia, in Germany by Linear Pottery culture. Proso millet is a relatively low-demanding crop and diseases are not known, consequently, in the United States it is often used as an intercrop. Thus, proso millet can help to avoid a summer fallow and its superficial root system and its resistance to atrazine residue make proso millet a good intercrop between two water- and pesticide-demanding crops. The stubbles of the last crop, by allowing more heat into the soil, while millet occupies the ground, because of its superficial root system, the soil can replenish its water content for the next crop. Later crops, for example, a wheat, can in turn benefit from the millet stubble. Due to its C4 photosynthetic system, proso millet is thermophilic like maize, therefore, shady locations of the field should be avoided. It is sensitive to temperatures lower than 10 to 13 degrees Celsius. Proso millet is highly drought-resistant, which makes it of interest to regions with low water availability, the soil should be light or medium-heavy. Due to its root systems, soil compaction must be avoided. Furthermore, proso millet does not tolerate soil wetness caused by dammed-up water, the seedbed should be finely crumbled as for sugar beet and rapeseed
39.
Sorghum
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Sorghum is a genus of flowering plants in the grass family Poaceae. Seventeen of the species are native to Australia, with the range of some extending to Africa, Asia, Mesoamerica. One species is grown for grain, while others are used as fodder plants, either intentionally cultivated or allowed to grow naturally. The plants are cultivated in warm climates worldwide and naturalized in many places, Sorghum is in the subfamily Panicoideae and the tribe Andropogoneae. One species, Sorghum bicolor, native to Africa with many cultivated forms now, is an important crop worldwide, used for food, animal fodder, the production of alcoholic beverages, and biofuels. Most varieties are drought- and heat-tolerant, and are important in arid regions. These varieties form important components of pastures in many tropical regions, S. bicolor is an important food crop in Africa, Central America, and South Asia, and is the fifth-most important cereal crop grown in the world. Some species of sorghum can contain levels of cyanide, hordenine. When stressed by drought or heat, plants can contain toxic levels of cyanide and/or nitrates at later stages in growth. Another Sorghum species, Johnson grass, is classified as a species in the US by the Department of Agriculture. Sorghum is efficient in converting solar energy to chemical energy, biofuel, using sweet sorghum as a high sugar content from its stalk for ethanol production, is being developed with biomass which can be turned into charcoal, syngas, and bio-oil. In a 100 gram amount, raw sorghum provides 329 calories, 72% carbohydrates, 4% fat and 11% protein. Sorghum supplies numerous essential nutrients in rich content, including protein, fiber, the B vitamins, niacin, thiamin and vitamin B6, Sorghum nutrient contents generally are similar to those of raw oats. Among other similarities to oats, sorghum contains no gluten, making it useful for gluten-free diets, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World, The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100. Species Profile- Johnsongrass, National Invasive Species Information Center, United States National Agricultural Library, lists general information and resources for Johnsongrass
40.
Rye
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Rye is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is a member of the tribe and is closely related to barley. Rye grain is used for flour, rye bread, rye beer, crisp bread, some whiskeys, some vodkas and it can also be eaten whole, either as boiled rye berries or by being rolled, similar to rolled oats. Rye is a grain and should not be confused with ryegrass, which is used for lawns, pasture. Rye is one of a number of species grow wild in central and eastern Turkey. It is possible that rye traveled west from Turkey as an admixture in wheat. Since the Middle Ages people have cultivated rye widely in Central and it serves as the main bread cereal in most areas east of the French-German border and north of Hungary. In Southern Europe, it was cultivated on marginal lands, claims of much earlier cultivation of rye, at the Epipalaeolithic site of Tell Abu Hureyra in the Euphrates valley of northern Syria remain controversial. Critics point to inconsistencies in the dates, and identifications based solely on grain. Winter rye is any breed of rye planted in the fall to provide cover for the winter. It grows during warmer days of the winter when sunlight temporarily warms the plant above freezing and it is sometimes used in winter gardens and is a common nurse crop. Rye is grown primarily in Eastern, Central and Northern Europe, the main rye belt stretches from northern Germany through Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia into central and northern Russia. Rye is also grown in North America, in South America, in Oceania, in Turkey, in Kazakhstan, production levels of rye have fallen in most of the producing nations, as of 2012. For instance, production of rye in Russia fell from 13.9 million metric tons in 1992 to 2.1 t in 2012, most rye is consumed locally or exported only to neighboring countries, rather than being shipped worldwide. Rye is highly susceptible to the ergot fungus, consumption of ergot-infected rye by humans and animals results in a serious medical condition known as ergotism. Ergotism can cause physical and mental harm, including convulsions, miscarriage, necrosis of digits, hallucinations. Historically, damp northern countries that have depended on rye as a staple crop were subject to epidemics of this condition. There have been occurrence of ergotism with periods where there were incidents of people persecuted for being witches
41.
Eragrostis tef
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Eragrostis tef, known as teff, Williams lovegrass, annual bunch grass, taf, or xaafii, is an annual grass, a species of lovegrass native to Eritrea and Ethiopia. Eragrostis tef has an attractive nutrition profile, being high in fiber and iron and providing protein. It is similar to millet and quinoa in cooking, but the seed is much smaller and cooks faster, Eragrostis tef is adapted to environments ranging from drought stress to waterlogged soil conditions. Maximum teff production occurs at altitudes of 1,800 to 2,100 m, growing season rainfall of 450 to 550 mm, teff is daylight-sensitive and flowers best with 12 hours of daylight. Teff is an important food grain in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where it is used to make injera or keyta and it is now raised in the US, in Idaho and Nevada. In addition to people from traditional teff-consuming countries, customers include those on gluten-restricted diets, because of its small seeds, a handful is enough to sow a large area. This property makes teff particularly suited to a seminomadic lifestyle, Ethiopia had a long-standing ban in effect on the export of teff grain or flour from the country prompted by increasing grain prices. In 2015, that ban was lifted after the introduction of farming techniques which improved yields by 40%, between 8000 and 5000 BC, the people of the Ethiopian highlands were among the first to domesticate plants and animals for food. Teff was one of the earliest plants domesticated, teff is believed to have originated in Ethiopia and Eritrea between 4000 BC and 1000 BC. Genetic evidence points to E. pilosa as the most likely wild ancestor, a 19th-century identification of teff seeds from an ancient Egyptian site is now considered doubtful, the seeds in question are more likely of E. aegyptiaca, a common wild grass in Egypt. Teff is noted for its quality and high yield, when compared to other forage rotations. It is also known as an emergency crop because it is planted late in the spring when the season is warmer. It does not tolerate any type of frost, the first draft of the Eragrostis tef genome was published in 2014. In 1996, the US National Research Council characterized teff as having the potential to improve nutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, teff has been widely cultivated and used in Ethiopia and neighboring countries, accounting for about a quarter of total cereal production in Ethiopia. Teff is an ingredient for preparing injera, a sourdough-risen flatbread. Teff is high in protein, carbohydrates and fiber, in one study in Ethiopia, farmers indicated a preference among consumers for white teff over darker colored varieties. As a nutritious fodder, teff is used to feed ruminants in Ethiopia, teff is also valued for its fine straw, which is traditionally mixed with mud for building purposes. Purdue University Center for New Crops & Plant Products – Eragrostis tef University of Bern Tef Improvement Project Dressler, S. Schmidt, M. & Zizka, african plants – a Photo Guide
42.
Triticale
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Triticale, /trɪtɪˈkeɪliː/ is a hybrid of wheat and rye first bred in laboratories during the late 19th century in Scotland and Germany. Commercially available triticale is almost always a second-generation hybrid, i. e. a cross between two kinds of primary triticales, as a rule, triticale combines the yield potential and grain quality of wheat with the disease and environmental tolerance of rye. Only recently has it been developed into a viable crop. Depending on the cultivar, triticale can more or less resemble either of its parents and it is grown mostly for forage or fodder, although some triticale-based foods can be purchased at health food stores or are to be found in some breakfast cereals. When crossing wheat and rye, wheat is used as the female parent, the resulting hybrid is sterile and must be treated with colchicine to induce polyploidy and thus the ability to reproduce itself. The primary producers of triticale are Poland, Germany, Belarus, France, in 2014, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization,17.1 million tons were harvested in 37 countries across the world. The triticale hybrids are all amphidiploid, which means the plant is diploid for two genomes derived from different species, in other words, triticale is an allotetraploid. In earlier years, most work was done on octoploid triticale, different ploidy levels have been created and evaluated over time. The tetraploids showed little promise, but hexaploid triticale was successful enough to find commercial application, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center triticale improvement program was intended to improve food production and nutrition in developing countries. Triticale was thought to have potential in the production of bread and other products, such as cookies, pasta, pizza dough. The protein content is higher than that of wheat, although the fraction is less. The grain has also stated to have higher levels of lysine than wheat. Acceptance would require the industry to adapt to triticale, as the milling techniques employed for wheat are unsuited to triticale. Sell et al. found triticale could be used as a feed grain, as a feed grain, triticale is already well established and of high economic importance. It has received attention as an energy crop, and research is currently being conducted on the use of the crops biomass in bioethanol production. Triticale hybrids include, × Triticosecale blaringhemii A. Camus × Triticosecale neoblaringhemii A. Camus × Triticosecale schlanstedtense Wittm, × Triticosecale semisecale K. Hammer & Filat. Earlier work with wheat-rye crosses was difficult due to low survival of the hybrid embryo. These two factors were difficult to predict and control, to improve the viability of the embryo and thus avoid its abortion, in vitro culture techniques were developed
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Wild rice
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Wild rice are four species of grasses forming the genus Zizania, and the grain that can be harvested from them. The grain was historically gathered and eaten in both North America and China, while now a delicacy in North America, the grain is eaten less in China, where the plants stem is used as a vegetable. Wild rice is not directly related to Asian rice, whose wild progenitors are O. rufipogon and O. nivara, although they are close cousins, wild-rice grains have a chewy outer sheath with a tender inner grain that has a slightly vegetal taste. The plants grow in water in small lakes and slow-flowing streams, often. The grain is eaten by dabbling ducks and other aquatic wildlife, wild rice, also an annual, grows in the Saint Lawrence River and on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. Texas wild rice is a plant found only in a small area along the San Marcos River in central Texas. One species is native to Asia, Manchurian wild rice, is a native to China. Texas wild rice is in danger of extinction due to loss of habitat in its limited range. The pollen of Texas wild rice can only travel about 30 inches away from a parent plant, if pollen does not land on a receptive female flower within that distance, no seeds are produced. Manchurian wild rice has almost disappeared from the wild in its native range, the species most commonly harvested as grain are annual species, Zizania palustris is now grown commercially, but Zizania aquatica was also used extensively in the past by Indians. Native Americans and others harvest wild rice by canoeing into a stand of plants, the size of the knockers, as well as other details, are prescribed in state and tribal law. By Minnesota statute, knockers must be at most 1 in diameter,30 in long, the plants are not beaten with the knockers but require only a gentle brushing to dislodge the mature grain. The Ojibwa people call this plant manoomin, meaning harvesting berry, some seeds fall to the muddy bottom and germinate later in the year. Several Native American cultures, such as the Ojibwa, consider wild rice to be a component in their culture. Tribes that are recorded as historically harvesting Zizania aquatica are the Dakota, Menominee, Meskwaki, Ojibwa, Omaha, Ponca, Thompson, Native people who utilized Zizania palustris are the Chippewa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi. The rice is harvested with a canoe, one person vans rice into the canoe with two small poles while the other paddles slowly or uses a push pole, for these groups, this harvest is an important cultural event. The Menominee tribe were named Omanoominii by the neighboring Ojibwa after this plant, because of its nutritional value and taste, wild rice increased in popularity in the late 20th century, and commercial cultivation began in the U. S. and Canada to supply the increased demand. In 1950, James and Gerald Godward started experimenting with wild rice in a meadow north of Brainerd
44.
Buckwheat
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Buckwheat is a plant cultivated for its grain-like seeds and as a cover crop. To distinguish it from a species, Fagopyrum tataricum, it is also known as Japanese buckwheat. Despite the name, buckwheat is not related to wheat, as it is not a grass, instead, buckwheat is related to sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb. Because its seeds are eaten and rich in carbohydrates, it is referred to as a pseudocereal. The cultivation of grain declined sharply in the 20th century with the adoption of nitrogen fertilizer that increased the productivity of other staples. The name buckwheat or beech wheat comes from its seeds, which resemble the much larger seeds of the beech nut from the beech tree. The word may be a translation of Middle Dutch boecweite, boec, beech and weite, wheat, the wild ancestor of common buckwheat is F. esculentum ssp. ancestrale. F. homotropicum is interfertile with F. esculentum and the forms have a common distribution, in Yunnan. The wild ancestor of tartary buckwheat is F. tataricum ssp. potanini, common buckwheat was domesticated and first cultivated in inland Southeast Asia, possibly around 6000 BCE, and from there spread to Central Asia and Tibet, and then to the Middle East and Europe. Domestication most likely place in the western Yunnan region of China. Buckwheat is documented in Europe in Finland by at least 5300 BCE as a first sign of agriculture, russian-speakers call buckwheat гречка meaning of Greece, due to its introduction in the seventh century by the Byzantine Greeks, the same is the case in Ukrainian. The oldest remains found in China so far date to circa 2600 BCE and it is the worlds highest-elevation domesticate, being cultivated in Yunnan on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau or on the plateau itself. Buckwheat was one of the earliest crops introduced by Europeans to North America, dispersal around the globe was complete by 2006, when a variety developed in Canada was widely planted in China. In India, buckwheat flour is known as kuttu ka atta and is associated with Navratri festival. On the day of festival, food items made only from buckwheat are consumed. Buckwheat, a crop, does well on low-fertility or acidic soils. Too much fertilizer, especially nitrogen, reduces yields, in hot climates it can only be grown by sowing late in the season, so that it blooms in cooler weather. The presence of pollinators greatly increases the yield, the nectar from buckwheat flower makes a dark-colored honey
45.
Amaranth
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Amaranthus, collectively known as amaranth, is a cosmopolitan genus of annual or short-lived perennial plants. Some amaranth species are cultivated as leaf vegetables, pseudocereals, most of the Amaranthus species are summer annual weeds and are commonly referred to as pigweed. Catkin-like cymes of densely packed flowers grow in summer or autumn, approximately 60 species are recognized, with inflorescences and foliage ranging from purple, through red and green to gold. Members of this genus share many characteristics and uses with members of the related genus Celosia. Amaranth derives from Greek ἀμάραντος, unfading, with the Greek word for flower, ἄνθος, the more accurate amarant is an archaic variant. Amaranthus shows a variety of morphological diversity among and even within certain species. Although the family is distinctive, the genus has few distinguishing characters among the 70 species included and this complicates taxonomy and Amaranthus has generally been considered among systematists as a difficult genus. Formerly, Sauer classified the genus into two subgenera, differentiating only between monoecious and dioecious species, Acnida Aellen ex K. R, although this classification was widely accepted, further infrageneric classification was needed to differentiate this widely diverse group. Currently, Amaranthus includes three recognized subgenera and 70 species, although numbers are questionable due to hybridization and species concepts. Infrageneric classification focuses on inflorescence, flower characters and whether a species is monoecious/dioecious, a modified infrageneric classification of Amaranthus was published by Mosyakin & Robertson and includes three subgenera, Acnida, Amaranthus, and Albersia. The taxonomy is further differentiated by sections within each of the subgenera, species include, One cup of cooked amaranth grain provides 251 calories and is an excellent source of protein, dietary fiber, and some dietary minerals. Amaranth is particularly rich in manganese, magnesium, iron, cooked amaranth leaves are an excellent source of vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, manganese, and folate. Amaranth does not contain gluten, so it may be a healthy and it has high biological value and its benefits are not limited to people with gluten-related disorders, but are applicable to the general population. Quantity and quality of proteins of amaranth are superior to those of wheat and it also contains higher concentrations of folic acid than wheat, and its fiber and minerals contents are higher than those of other cereals. Amaranth contains phytochemicals that may be antinutrient factors, such as polyphenols, saponins, tannins, known to the Aztecs as huauhtli, it is thought to have represented up to 80% of their energy consumption before the Spanish conquest. Another important use of amaranth throughout Mesoamerica was to prepare ritual drinks, to this day, amaranth grains are toasted much like popcorn and mixed with honey, molasses, or chocolate to make a treat called alegría, meaning joy in Spanish. Diego Durán described the festivities for Huitzilopochtli, the name of which means hummingbird of the side or left-handed hummingbird. The Aztec month of Panquetzaliztli was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, people decorated their homes and trees with paper flags, ritual races, processions, dances, songs, prayers, and finally human sacrifices were held
46.
Amaranthaceae
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Amaranthaceae is a family of flowering plants known as the amaranth family. It now includes the former goosefoot family Chenopodiaceae, and contains about 165 genera and 2,040 species, making it the most species-rich lineage within the flowering plant order of Caryophyllales. Most of these species are annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs, some are shrubs, many species have stems with thickened nodes. The wood of the stem has a typical anomalous secondary growth. The leaves are alternate, sometimes opposite. The simple leaves are flat or terete, their shape is extremely variable, in some species, the leaves are reduced to minute scales. In most cases, neither basal or terminal aggregations of leaves occur, the flowers are solitary or aggregated in cymes, spikes, or panicles and typically perfect and actinomorphic. Bracts and bracteoles are either herbaceous or scarious, flowers are regular with a herbaceous or scarious perianth of mostly five tepals, often joined. One to five stamens are opposite to tepals or alternating, inserting from a hypogynous disc, the anthers have two or four pollen sacs. In tribe Caroxyloneae, antheres have vesicular appendages, the pollen grains are spherical with many pores, with pore numbers from a few to 250. One to three carpels are fused to a superior ovary with one basal ovule, the diaspores are seeds or fruits, more often the perianth persists and is modified in fruit for means of dispersal. Sometimes even bracts and bracteoles may belong to the diaspore, more rarely the fruit is a circumscissile capsule or a berry. The horizontal or vertical seed often has a thickened or woody seed coat, the green or white embryo is either spirally or annular. The basic chromosome number is mostly 8-9, widespread in the Amaranthaceae is the occurrence of betalain pigments. The former Chenopodiaceae often contain isoflavonoids, in phytochemical research, several methylenedioxyflavonols, saponins, triterpenoids, ecdysteroids, and specific root-located carbohydrates have been found. With around 800 species that are C4-plants, the Amaranthaceae represent the largest group with this photosynthesis pathway among the eudicots, within the family, several types of C4-photosynthesis occur, and about 17 different types of leaf anatomy are realized. Therefore, this photosynthesis pathway seems to have developed about 15 times independently during the evolution of the family. About two-thirds of the C4-species belong to the former Chenopodiaceae, the first occurrence of C4-photosynthesis dates from the early miocene, about 24 million years ago, but in some groups, this photosynthesis pathway has evolved much later, about 6 million years ago
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