Wheat crop. Wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain which is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus Triticum; the most widely grown is common wheat ("T. aestivum"). The archaeological record suggests that wheat was first cultivated in the regions of the Fertile Crescent around 9600 BCE. Botanically, the wheat kernel is a type of fruit called a caryopsis. Wheat is grown on more land area than any other food crop (220.4 million hectares, 2014). World trade in wheat is greater than for all other crops combined. In
Cover crop recycle soil nitrogen already present. The catch crops take up surplus nitrogen remaining from fertilization of the previous crop, preventing it from being lost through leaching (Morgan et al. 1942), or gaseous denitrification or volatilization (Thorup-Kristensen et al. 2003). Catch crops are typically fast-growing annual cereal species adapted to scavenge available nitrogen efficiently from the soil (Ditsch and Alley 1991). The nitrogen tied up in catch crop biomass is released back into the soil once the catch crop is incorporated as a green manure or otherwise begins to decompose. An example of green manure use comes from Nigeria, where the