CerealCrops

Click here for a photo of rice growing.

Cereal Crops

Wheat

The main cultivated varieties :

Bread wheat, Durum wheat, Polish wheat, Rvet wheat, Spelt, Einkorn and Emmer.

Uses :

Wheat is the worlds single most important cereal and is grown as a human food crop, although the bran (seed cases) is used for animalfood. When the bran is not removed wholemeal flour is produced.

Bread wheat :

This has a high gluten content and hard grain. It is used to make flour from which bread is made. In the EEC much of the Bread wheat is imported from the USA (where hot summers ensure a uniform quality).

Other products of Bread wheat are semolina, kitchen flour and breakfast cereals.

Durum wheat :

This is unsuitable for bread making but is used to make pasta. This can be boiled fresh without dissolving or allowed to dry and harden, in which form it will keep almost indefinitely.

Barley

Main cultivated varieties :

6-rowed barley and 2-rowed barley.

Uses :

Barley was formerly used mainly as a human food, especially in areas unsuited to wheat, because barley is hardier. It has a low gluten content and so cannot be made into leavened bread. 'Pearled' barley, used in soups etc., has had the seed cases removed. Most European barley is grown for fodder, the whole green plant being used fresh or as silage, or the threased grains fed crushed or rolled. However the most valuable crops, nearly all 2-row barley, are used in making malt for beer and whisky.

Barley

Oats

Main cultivated varieties :

Common oat, Red oat and Bristle-pointed oat.

Uses :

Oats are grown as fodder for livestock. The plants may either be cut while green and processed or fed whole, or harvested and threased like other cereals and the grains fed (usually crushed). Oats are a high energy cereal particularly useful for working horses. Oats were and to a small extent still are used as a human food, in the form of oat cakes or porridge (one of the few remaining cereal gruels which were the staple peasant diets in medieval Europe).

Maize or Sweet Corn

Maize

Main cultivated varieties :

Flint maize, dent maize, Popcorn, Sweet corn and Waxy maize.

Uses :

The nutritional value of maize is lower than most other cereal crops but it is still the most important cereal in the world after wheat and rice.

Dent and Flint maizes are grown as human food, as fodder for live-stock, as an oil-seed crop and other industrial uses.

Examples of human food is the Italian polenta (medium-ground flour); North American grits (coarse ground flour), cornflakes and other breakfast cereals and corn-flour (very fine ground).

The bulk of the European crop is used for fodder, the smaller grains of Flint maize being used for poultry, the larger and starchier Dent maize in cattle and pig fodders.

Oil-seed crops are grown mainly in America.

Sweet corn is grown on a small scale as a vegetable.

Popcorn and Waxy maize are not European crops. Popcorn is almost exclusively American. Waxy maize is used in the far East to produce a tapioca-like starch.

Rice

Click here for a photo of rice growing.

Drawings of cereal crops

Nutritional information about products made from cereals.