Maize and Related Topics

Wheat

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Grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain which is a worldwide staple food.

Woman harvesting wheat, Raise district, Madhya Pradesh, India

The smaller grain of wheat on the left, larger kernels of rye next, and triticale on the right – triticale grain is significantly larger than wheat.

Wheat harvest on the Palouse, Idaho, United States

Left: Naked wheat, Bread wheat Triticum aestivum; Right: Hulled wheat, Einkorn, Triticum monococcum. Note how the einkorn ear breaks down into intact spikelets.

Model of a wheat grain, Botanical Museum Greifswald

Wheat is used in a wide variety of foods.

Wheat spikelet with the three anthers sticking out

Young wheat crop in a field near Solapur, Maharashtra, India

alt=Wheat Farm in Behbahan, Iran|Wheat farm in Behbahan, Iran

A combine harvester threshes the wheat, crushes the chaff, then blows chaff across the field. The combine loads the threshed wheat onto a truck or trailer while moving

Two tractors deploying a sealed storage method for newly harvested wheat.

Map depicting acreage devoted to wheat in Ohio, 1923

Annual agricultural production of wheat, measured in tonnes in 2014.<ref>{{cite web|title=Wheat production|url=https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wheat-production|website=Our World in Data|access-date=5 March 2020}}</ref>

Average wheat yields, measured in tonnes per hectare in 2014.<ref>{{cite web|title=Wheat yields|url=https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wheat-yields|website=Our World in Data|access-date=5 March 2020}}</ref>

In 2020, world production of wheat was 761 e6t, making it the second most-produced cereal after maize.

Rice

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Seed of the grass species Oryza sativa or less commonly Oryza glaberrima (African rice).

Oryza sativa with small wind-pollinated flowers

Rice can come in many shapes, colors and sizes.

Single grain of rice under handmade microscope

Oryza sativa, commonly known as Asian rice

Unmilled to milled Japanese rice, from left to right, brown rice, rice with germ, white rice

-Rice processing- A: Rice with chaff B: Brown rice C: Rice with germ D: White rice with bran residue E: Musenmai (Japanese: 無洗米), "Polished and ready to boil rice", literally, non-wash rice (1): Chaff (2): Bran (3): Bran residue (4): Cereal germ (5): Endosperm

Burning of rice residues after harvest, to quickly prepare the land for wheat planting, around Sangrur, Punjab, India.

Rice combine harvester Katori-city, Chiba Prefecture, Japan

After the harvest, rice straw is gathered in the traditional way from small paddy fields in Mae Wang District, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand

Work by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture to measure the greenhouse gas emissions of rice production.

Chinese rice grasshopper (Oxya chinensis) Borneo, Malaysia

Chloroxylon is used for pest management in organic rice cultivation in Chhattisgarh, India.

Ancient statue of Dewi Sri from Java (c. 9th century)

It is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest worldwide production, after sugarcane and maize.

Starch

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Polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds.

Starch mill at Ballydugan (Northern Ireland), built in 1792

West Philadelphia Starch works at Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), 1850

potato starch granules in cells of the potato

starch in endosperm in embryonic phase of maize seed

Corn starch, 800x magnified, under polarized light, showing characteristic extinction cross

Rice starch seen on light microscope. Characteristic for the rice starch is that starch granules have an angular outline and some of them are attached to each other and form larger granules

Granules of wheat starch, stained with iodine, photographed through a light microscope

Pacific Laundry and Cooking Starch advert 1904

Kingsford Oswego Starch advertising, 1885

Worldwide, it is the most common carbohydrate in human diets, and is contained in large amounts in staple foods such as wheat, potatoes, maize (corn), rice, and cassava (manioc).

Cornmeal

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Southern Africa's Nshima cornmeal (top right corner), served with three relishes.

Grindstones inside Mingus Mill, in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Corn is placed in a hopper (top right) which slowly feeds it into the grindstone (center). The grindstone grinds the corn into cornmeal, and empties it into a bucket (lower left). The grindstones are turned by the mill's water-powered turbine.

Cornmeal is a meal (coarse flour) ground from dried corn.

An 1836 lithograph of tortilla production in rural Mexico

Nixtamalization is a process for the preparation of corn, or other grain, in which the grain is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, usually limewater (but sometimes aqueous alkali metal carbonates ), washed, and then hulled.

Cereal

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Any grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran.

Cereal grain seeds from left to right, top to bottom: wheat, spelt, barley, oat.

Threshing; Tacuinum Sanitatis, 14th century

In some developing countries, grain in the form of rice, wheat, millet, or maize constitutes a majority of daily sustenance.

Staple food

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Food that is eaten often and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a standard diet for a given person or group of people, supplying a large fraction of energy needs and generally forming a significant proportion of the intake of other nutrients as well.

Amaranth (left) and common wheat berries

Staple foods are derived either from vegetables or animal products, and common staples include cereals (such as rice, wheat, maize, millet, and sorghum), starchy tubers or root vegetables (such as potatoes, cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, or taro), meat, fish, eggs, milk, and cheese, and dried legumes such as lentils and other beans.