Famous Crop Scientists
Born in Iowa in 1914, and a wrestler at the University of Minnesota, he would go on to be director of CIMMYT in Mexico in 1964, and served as faculty at Texas A&M from 1984-2009. He is best known for developing high-yield, disease-resistant, semi-dwarf wheat cultivars, for which he was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, the title “Father of the Green Revolution,” and is credited with saving 1 billion people from starvation.
Norman Borlaug
As opposed to reticulate (net-shaped) venation, it is a leaf pattern where veins run side by side, and is characteristic of the Monocots (except in the Smiliaceae, a.k.a. Greenbriar family).
Parallel Venation
This soil type is considered ideal for farming or gardening and is comprised of a roughly 40-40-20 ratio by weight of sand-silt-clay, respectively.
Loam
This is the method of fertilizing crops by placing a band of fertilizer in the soil near the base of the plants, between rows, or around the perimeter of individual plants. It's a technique that's often used to provide nitrogen to crops during the growing season.
Sidedress Fertilizer
Arachis hypogaea – Native to South America, but a notable crop of Africa, China, and the southeastern United States; it is not a true nut but actually a legume (member of the family Fabaceae). Common uses include: for oil, for _____ butter, and as a traditional staple of baseball games.
Peanut
One of the most prominent African American scientists and inventors of the early 20th century, he is best known for promoting alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, and methods to prevent soil depletion while a professor at the Tuskegee Institute.
George Washington Carver
They are tiny pores in the epidermis of leaves, stems, and other plant organs that allow for gas exchange between the plant and the atmosphere. They are typically surrounded by guard cells that control their opening and closing. In cacti and other CAM photosynthesis plants, they only open at night.
Stomata
These are layers parallel to the soil surface whose physical, chemical and biological characteristics differ from the layers above and beneath. Indicated with letters, these layers are often defined by obvious physical features such as color or texture.
Horizons
Name the agricultural practice where non-harvested crops, such as clover or ryegrass, are planted with the goal of improving soil health, reducing erosion, and suppressing weeds?
Cover Cropping
Avena sativa – This cereal grain is a notable example of Vavilovian Mimicry, where a weed evolves to share characteristics with a crop plant through generations of involuntary artificial selection. Steel-cut or rolled, it is a preferred food of both Quakers and horses (although for reasons more traditional than scientific), and makes for a hearty breakfast.
Oats
He was a 20th century Russian and Soviet agronomist, botanist and geneticist who identified the centers of origin of cultivated plants. He is famous for a series of worldwide plant expeditions and for establishing the world’s first major seed bank in Leningrad. His scientific-political rivalry with Trofim Lysenko would lead to his imprisonment by Joseph Stalin and subsequent death in prison in 1943.
Nikolai Vavilov
They are an undifferentiated group of cells in plants that are responsible for the growth of new organs and the extension of roots and shoots; it is a region of rapid cell division. They are arguably analogous to stem cells in animals.
Apical Meristem
Its name is the Latin word for “ground,” – this is the dark organic matter in soil that is formed by the decomposition of plant and animal matter. It is rich in nutrients and retains moisture in the soil.
Humus
What term describes the agricultural practice that uses data from sensors, satellites, and drones to manage crop production at a highly localized level, improving efficiency and reducing waste?
Precision Agriculture
Piper nigrum – Part of the more basal clade of Angiosperms, the Magnoliids, this vine is native to the Malabar Coast of India and is the world’s most heavily traded spice. Besides its appearance on our dinner tables, it has been used as traditional medicine since antiquity. The phytochemical piperine is believed to be what makes us sneeze.
Black Pepper
She was a cytogeneticist who is famous for the discovery of transposons (a.k.a. transposable elements, or “jumping genes”) in maize, for which she won a long overdue Nobel Prize in 1983. She was the first woman to be awarded the National Medal of Science, in 1970. She was also the first person to create a genetic map of maize, demonstrated the role of the centromere and telomere, and proved the link between chromosomal crossover during meiosis and the recombination of genetic traits.
Barbara McClintock
The arrangement of leaves on a plant stem is known as what? (For example, cotton has a 3/8ths _______)
Phyllotaxy
This soil nutrient is the most frequently the limiting nutrient in low pH acidic soils, and is generally the second number listed on fertilizer bag ratios. This element is essential for energy transfer, root development, and overall plant health.
Phosphorus
This practice, in large part developed by scientists and extension agents at Texas A&M in the 1970s, uses both chemical and non-chemical practices in conjunction for the control of pests. It is a safer protocol than reliance on chemical pesticides alone, and mitigates the risks of evolved pesticide resistance, flare-ups of secondary insect pests after removal of their predators, and crop pesticide residues.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
Cyperus esculentus – While considered by many to be a weed, and invasive outside its native range, this triangle-stemmed monocot can actually be cultivated for its edible tubers, called earth almonds or tiger nuts, and is used to make Horchata (a sweet, milk-like beverage) in Hispanic countries.
Yellow Nutsedge
While working with the USDA in Texas, he developed nine rice varieties which eventually accounted for more than 90% of long-grain rice production. Later, at IRRI, in the Philippines, he created the high yielding rice variety IR8 in 1964, which increased Asian rice yields from 1-2 tons per hectare to 4-5 tons per hectare, playing a major role in the Green Revolution. The rice genetics chair that Dr. Michael Thompson currently occupies is named after him.
Henry “Hank” Beachill
It is an often single-celled layer that surrounds the endosperm tissue of grass seeds; unlike the cells of the starchy endosperm, they remain alive at maturity. The pigmentation of Indian Corn is due to anthocyanin expression in this layer.
Aleurone Layer
This is the process where plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it in the soil as organic matter, essentially acting as a "carbon sink.” It represents a promising natural solution to tackling climate change.
Carbon Sequestration
A farmer wants to apply nitrogen to a 10-acre field of corn at a rate of 120 pounds of nitrogen per acre. If they are using a fertilizer with an analysis of 30-0-0 (meaning it contains 30% nitrogen), how many pounds of this fertilizer will they need to apply to meet the nitrogen requirement for the entire field?
4000 pounds
Anacardium offinale – Cultivated for its kidney-shaped drupe, native to South America and grown throughout the tropics, this edible nut grows out of the distal end of an ______ apple, an accessory fruit. The shell of the nut yields derivatives used in many applications including lubricants, waterproofing, paints, and, starting in World War II, arms production.
Cashew