Growing Food: A Guide to Food Production

The gap in yields between irrigated and non-irrigated areas has widened, and is expected to widen further. Yields of rice grown ...

The risk of beriberi developing can be reduced by “parboiling”, an ancient Indian Rye Secale cereale Seigle (French); (Saat)-Rog ...

PLANTING Soil: rye grows well in a very wide range of soils, including poorly drained and infertile, sandy soils. Tolerant of ac ...

UTILISATION The seed of rye contains a high proportion of gluten, and is used for making black bread (schwartzbrot), rye crispbr ...

Hybrid sorghums are widely grown in South Asia and Latin America, and also have good yield potential in Africa. Yields of these ...

With this enormous range of plant types it may be misleading to make generalised statements about “sorghum”. The information giv ...

GROWTH CONDITIONS Day length: most of the sorghums are short-day plants, but there is wide variation in varietal response to pho ...

Diseases: these tend to be more serious in warmer, more humid conditions: Anthracnose is very common. Stems and leaves become re ...

LIMITATIONS “bird resistant” varieties such as Seredo (Sereno) are less palatable due to their high tannin (polyphenol) content, ...

There is virtually no gluten in the grain, so teff cannot be made into leavened bread. The pancake-like enjera is made by fermen ...

optimum. Different varieties are adapted to grow at different altitudes. Normally only brown seeded varieties are grown above ab ...

LIMITATIONS (Teff) Teff seed is very small which makes it a very labour intensive crop. Every step, from land preparation, weedi ...

Hard grain varieties (which have a vitreous endosperm) are normally grown in for bread. Soft grain varieties (which have a mealy ...

Intermediate (Alternate or Facultative) Wheat They differ from the winter wheats in that they do not need low temperatures in o ...

Maize and cowpeas—wheat should do well. Cotton—wheat performs somewhere between the two above. Green manure—wheat yields about t ...

Cutworms—more serious in arid and semi-arid regions. The larvae attack at or below the soil surface. developing grain causing ...

Septoria Glume Blotch—very similar to Leaf Blotch. observe this. Control by crop rotation, seed dressing and cultural strategies ...

UTILISATION Seed/grain: wheat has become increasingly important in many tropical countries and has partly replaced other cereals ...

2B. LEGUMES The grain of food legumes—also known as grain legumes, or pulses—is second in importance only to cereals as a source ...

The Camel Thorn Acacia albida (syn. Faidherbia albidia) Although Acacia albida is not strictly speaking a human food crop, no di ...