360 articles
Cashew
Cashew (Anacardium occidentale), tropical Anacardiaceae tree from northeastern Brazil; grown for kidney-shaped nut kernels and cashew apple; shell contains caustic CNSL; West Africa leads raw production, Vietnam leads processing.
Catherine FitzGerald
Catherine FitzGerald, Irish landscape designer and horticulturist, daughter of the last Knight of Glin; partner in Lutyens & FitzGerald with Mark Lutyens; known for Hillsborough Castle, Glenarm Castle, and Glin Castle gardens; married to actor Dominic West.
Ceres (mythology)
Ceres, ancient Italo-Roman goddess of agriculture and growth (root of 'cereal'), identified with Greek Demeter; Aventine triad with Liber and Libera, plebeian cult, Cerealia games April 12–19, August women's fast festival, and Jejunium Cereris fast from 191 BC.
Charlie Dimmock
Charlie Dimmock (Charlotte Dimmock, b. August 1966, Hampshire) is an English gardening expert and TV presenter, Ground Force's water-feature specialist (1997–2005) and host of BBC One's Garden Rescue since 2016, author of the Ground Force water garden workbook.
Chelsea Flower Show
RHS Chelsea Flower Show, also called the Great Spring Show, is the Royal Horticultural Society's annual May flower show at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, held since 1913 except wartime years and 2020, with about 157,000 visitors.
Chlorophyll fluorescence imaging
Chlorophyll fluorescence imaging is an imaging technique that maps chlorophyll fluorescence parameters across leaves, whole plants, or canopies to assess photosynthetic performance, revealing heterogeneity and detecting stress responses.
Citrus canker
Citrus canker, caused by Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri, is a bacterial citrus disease causing lesions and fruit drop; no cure exists, managed by quarantine, copper sprays, and windbreaks.
Cocoa in Ghana
Cocoa in Ghana is the country's leading agricultural export and a state-managed industry: with Côte d'Ivoire it supplies roughly 70 percent of world cocoa, priced by government.
Cocoa solids
Cocoa solids are the non-fat, defatted material of the cocoa bean, separated from cocoa butter by Van Houten's 1828 hydraulic press and sold as cocoa powder; distinct from total cacao percentage and from alkalized (Dutched) powder.
Coconut milk
Coconut milk, the aqueous oil-in-water emulsion extracted from grated mature coconut kernel (Cocos nucifera), a Southeast Asian staple and dairy alternative; Codex grades by fat content (milk ≥10%, cream ≥20%), preserved by canning, UHT, spray-drying, or freezing.
Coconut oil
Coconut oil, an edible oil from the kernel of Cocos nucifera, is about 90-94% saturated fat rich in lauric acid; produced from copra or as virgin oil, used in cooking, cosmetics, and soap, and shown to raise LDL cholesterol versus other vegetable oils.
Combine harvester
Combine harvester: farm machine that cuts, threshes, separates, and cleans grain in one pass. Key milestones: Moore and Hascall 1834, McKay Sunshine 1884, Massey-Harris No 20 self-propelled 1938, axial-flow rotors 1975, modern AI automation.
Combining ability analysis
Combining ability analysis is a quantitative genetics method estimating, from designed crosses, how much of a hybrid's performance comes from each parent's average value versus particular parent combinations.
Commercial thinning
Commercial thinning is a forestry treatment that fells and sells merchantable trees from an over-dense stand, paying for the operation while remaining trees gain growing space.
Companion planting
Companion planting is growing different crop species together so one benefits another, a polyculture practiced since corn and beans were co-planted in Mexico about 6000 years ago.
Compost
Compost: decomposed organic matter (food scraps, yard trimmings, manure) used as a soil amendment; EPA reports 78% lower greenhouse gas emissions versus landfilling food waste, up to 97% erosion reduction, and 45% higher crop yields.
Controlled burn
Controlled burn, also called prescribed fire or prescribed burn: planned ignition by fire specialists under set weather conditions to cut fuels and wildfire severity; reduces severity 62–72% but weakens under extreme fire weather.
Controlled traffic farming
Controlled traffic farming (CTF) is a crop production system that restricts all machinery to permanent wheel tracks, keeping about 70–80% of farmland free of soil compaction.
Coppicing
Coppicing: traditional European woodland management cutting broadleaf trees to stools for repeated regrowth on 3–30 year rotations; Neolithic origins, 10–14% of EU forests, now reintroduced for biodiversity.
Coriander
Coriander (Coriandrum sativum, cilantro, Chinese parsley, dhaniya) is an annual Apiaceae herb grown for fresh leaves and dried fruits; seed oil is linalool-rich, leaf oil aldehyde-rich, and OR6A2 variants make the leaf taste soapy to some.
Corn Belt
Corn Belt (Zona de maíz): Midwestern U.S. region of large-scale maize farming, core states Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio. Named by USDA in 1906; dominates U.S. corn, soybean, ethanol production.
Corn dolly
Corn dolly: decorative figure plaited from cereal straw, a modern craft based on European last-sheaf harvest customs; term coined in the 1940s, earliest record about 1598, revived in the 1960s and 1970s.
Cornucopia
Cornucopia (horn of plenty), from Latin cornu and copia, a horn-shaped symbol of abundance from Greek myth of Zeus and Amalthea and Heracles and Achelous; attribute of Fortuna, Ceres, Abundantia; modern Thanksgiving centerpiece.
Cotton plant diseases
Cotton plant diseases are fungal, bacterial, and viral disorders of cotton that reduce fiber yield and quality, managed through resistant cultivars, crop rotation, and seed treatments.
Cottonseed oil
Cottonseed oil: cooking oil from cotton seeds, a ginning byproduct requiring refining to remove toxic gossypol. Fatty acid profile 70% unsaturated; once dominant U.S. food fat, now 2–3% of global vegetable oil.
Cover crop
A cover crop is a grass, legume, or forb planted to protect and improve soil between cash crops rather than to be harvested, reducing erosion and adding nutrients.
Crop
A crop is a plant grown deliberately by humans for food, feed, fiber, or energy, including annual staples like wheat, maize, and rice and perennials such as fruit trees.
Crop production
Crop production: growing crops from land preparation, seeding, and weeding to harvest. Key facts: water and nitrogen as limiting resources, green revolution doubling of grain output, organic yields about 80% of conventional, FAO 2026 cereal forecast 2,979 million tonnes.
Crop rotation
Crop rotation: planned sequence of different crops on the same field over a rotation cycle, also called rotational cropping. Distinguished from monoculture by legume pre-crop yield gains of 23%, 14–27% whole-system yield, nutrition, and revenue gains, and required in USDA organic rules.
Crown shyness
Crown shyness, also called canopy disengagement or inter-crown spacing, is the phenomenon where crowns of fully stocked trees avoid touching, leaving channel-like canopy gaps; wind-induced abrasion is the best-supported cause.