Intensive crop farming HYVs is that they were developed as F1 hybrids, meaning they need to be purchased by a farmer every season rather than saved from previous seasons, thus increasing a farmer’s cost of production. Wheat is a grass that is cultivated worldwide. Globally, it is the most important human food grain and ranks second in total production as a cereal crop behind maize; the third being rice. Wheat and barley were the first cereals known to have been domesticated. Cultivation and repeated harvesting and sowing of the grains of wild grasses led to the domestication of wheat through selection of mutant
Cereal leaf beetle Cereal leaf beetle The cereal leaf beetle ("Oulema melanopus") is a significant crop pest, described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. One generation of this beetle is produced a year. Adults feed before winter and spend most of their overwintering time in protected areas such as wind rows, crop stubble, and tree bark crevices. Adults mate once the temperature warms to above 9–10 degrees Celsius (or 44.6 degrees F) and females have a relatively long laying period (about 45–60 days), when they deposit eggs on the undersides of leaves. The larvae hatch in 7–15 days, and start the most damaging eating