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Crop Desiccant
Pre-harvest crop desiccation is the application of an agent to a crop just before harvest to kill the leaves and/or plants so that the crop dries out from environmental conditions, or "dry-down", more quickly and evenly. Crop desiccants (not to be confused with a chemical desiccants) include herbicides and defoliants, used to accelerate the natural drying of plant tissues. Desiccation of crops through the use of herbicides is practiced worldwide on a variety of food and non-food crops. Uses Crop desiccation can improve the efficiency and economics of mechanical harvesting. In grain crops such as wheat, barley and oats, uniformly dried crops do not have to be windrowed (swathed and dried) prior to harvest, but can easily be straight-cut and harvested. This saves the farmer time and money, which is important in northern regions where the growing season is short. In a non-food crop such as cotton, reliance on natural frost may be too late to be effective in some regions. Thus leav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Potatoes Awaiting Harvest - Geograph
The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern United States to southern Chile. Genetic studies show that the cultivated potato has a single origin, in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia. Potatoes were domesticated there about 7,000–10,000 years ago from a species in the '' S. brevicaule'' complex. Many varieties of the potato are cultivated in the Andes region of South America, where the species is indigenous. The Spanish introduced potatoes to Europe in the second half of the 16th century from the Americas. They are a staple food in many parts of the world and an integral part of much of the world's food supply. Following millennia of selective breeding, there are now over 5,000 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
