Beer made from barley grains has been consumed since ancient Egyptian times. Modern day growers plant what is profitable – and grains for malting barley command higher prices than animal feed grains. […]
When planning their successful farming enterprise, farmers often start with buying high-quality seed. Before even reaching the marketplace, Certified Seed goes through inspection to ensure: the amount of weed seeds present does […]
Most plant-based foods we eat today are a product of innovative plant breeding programs. Careful choice of plant parents is followed by a multitude of intentional, hand-pollinated blooms. These result in thousands […]
Plant genebanks, such as the USDA-ARS National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS), conserve vast collections of crops. They are saved for use in breeding and research programs. These collections are primarily conserved as […]
There is a humble, wild chile pepper that grows in Arizona. Commonly called chiltepín, it is the wild relative of hundreds of domesticated pepper varieties grown (and eaten) all over the world. […]
Flaxseed is one of humanity’s oldest, and most widely adopted multi-use crops. For over ten thousand years, the oil-rich seeds have been an important source of nutrition for both humans and livestock. […]
Ripe, juicy tomatoes are one of the hallmarks of a summer picnic – and a key ingredient in salads and the classic BLT. Like many of our modern crops, today’s tomatoes have […]
When it comes to crop yield, most of us are concerned with what it will look like at harvest time. How many kilograms of a harvest can we expect – and when. […]
Every food-related action you take calls a world into being. We call this world the food system, and it is a vast network of farms, fisheries, processors, manufacturers, stores, restaurants, and home […]
Most of us associate cotton with its fiber. A by-product of cotton fiber production is the leftover seeds. One item that can be made from the seed is cottonseed oil, but that […]