Cereal | EPFL Graph Search

A cereal is any grass cultivated for its edible grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), which is composed of an endosperm, a germ, and a bran. Cereal grain crops are grown in greater quantities and provide more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop and are therefore staple crops. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize. Edible grains from other plant families, such as buckwheat, quinoa, and chia, are referred to as pseudocereals. In their unprocessed whole grain form, cereals are a rich source of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, oils, and protein. When processed by the removal of the bran and germ, the remaining endosperm is mostly carbohydrate. In some developing countries, cereals constitute a majority of daily sustenance. In developed countries, cereal consumption is moderate and varied but still substantial, primarily in the form of refined and processed grains. Because of the dietary importance of cereals, the cereal trade is often at the heart of the food trade, with many cereals sold as commodities. Agriculture allowed for the support of an increased population, leading to larger societies and eventually the development of cities. It also created the need for greater organization of political power (and the creation of social stratification), as decisions had to be made regarding labor and harvest allocation and access rights to water and land. Agriculture bred immobility, as populations settled down for long periods of time, which led to the accumulation of material goods. Early Neolithic villages show evidence of the development of processing grain. The Levant is the ancient home of the ancestors of wheat, barley and peas, in which many of these villages were based. There is evidence of the cultivation of cereals in Syria approximately 9,000 years ago. Wheat, barley, rye, oats and flaxseeds were all domesticated in the Fertile Crescent during the early Neolithic. During the same period, farmers in China began to farm rice and millet, using human-made floods and fires as part of their cultivation regimen.

Legacy effect of green manure crops fertilized with calcium phosphite on maize production and soil properties

Alexandre Buttler, Luca Bragazza, Thomas Guillaume, Mathieu Raymond Santonja, Mario Fontana

Recycling phosphorus (P) is crucial to meet future P demand for crop production. We investigated the possibility to use calcium phosphite (Ca-Phi) waste, an industrial by-product, as P fertilizer following the oxidation of phosphite (Phi) to phosphate (Pi) ...

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2021

Species identity, rather than species mixtures, drives cover crop effects on nutrient partitioning in unfertilized agricultural soil

Alexandre Buttler, Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Mathieu Raymond Santonja, Lucas Georges Jean-Paul Freund

Aims Previous cover crop studies mainly focused on the links between plant uptake and soil fertility, and there is a clear knowledge gap regarding the role of microbes in these processes. Our aim was then to better understand the effects of plant mixtures ...

SPRINGER2020

Intergranular Strain Evolution During Biaxial Loading: A Multiscale FE-FFT Approach

Helena Van Swygenhoven, Steven Van Petegem

Predicting the macroscopic and microscopic mechanical response of metals and alloys subjected to complex loading conditions necessarily requires a synergistic combination of multiscale material models and characterization techniques. This article focuses o ...

Springer2017