Crops, horticulture, and forestry

Crumpet

The crumpet, or English crumpet, is a small, thick, round British griddle cake made from yeast-leavened batter, characterized by a holey top, and eaten toasted with butter.

Cultivator: a farm implement with tines or discs for secondary tillage and row-crop weed control; also called scuffler, scarifier, or grubber; disturbs linear trails unlike harrows, works shallower than plows.

Cutting (plant)

Cutting (plant propagation): a severed stem, leaf, or root piece grown into a clone of the parent via adventitious root formation; types include softwood, semi-hardwood, hardwood, herbaceous, leaf, and root cuttings, aided by auxin.

Deficit irrigation

Deficit irrigation is an agricultural water management strategy that deliberately gives crops less water than they need, accepting mild stress to maximize yield per unit of water.

Desert locust

Desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria), FAO's most destructive migratory pest; swarming grasshopper of Africa, Near East, and South-West Asia; swarms of 40-80 million per km2 eat their own weight daily and plagues can cover 29 million km2.

Doubled haploidy

Doubled haploidy, or the doubled haploid technique, is a plant breeding method that creates completely homozygous lines in two generations, widely used in maize, wheat, barley, and rice.

Dried fruit

Dried fruit: fruit dehydrated by sun, dehydrator, freeze-drying, or osmotic methods for shelf stability. Raisins, prunes, dates; concentrated fiber (3.7–9.8 g/100 g), low-to-moderate GI, and ½ cup equals one cup of fruit.

Dryland farming

Dryland farming, also called dry farming, is rain-fed semiarid agriculture conserving soil moisture without irrigation, practiced where rainfall is often under 10-12 inches; known for Great Plains history, fallowing, and conservation tillage.

DSSAT (Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer)

DSSAT (Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer) is a Windows-based software suite of crop simulation models that predicts growth, development, and yield of more than 45 crops.

Durian

Durian (榴莲), fruit of Durio zibethinus, the spiny Southeast Asian 'King of Fruits' native to Sumatra and Borneo; bat-pollinated tree up to 25 m; aroma from esters and sulfur compounds; major export crop to China.

Early blight

Early blight, a fungal disease of tomato and potato caused by Alternaria solani and A. linariae (formerly A. tomatophila), marked by bull's-eye leaf lesions, defoliation, and yield losses managed mainly with fungicides.

Oct 10, 2026

Ernst Laur

Ernst Laur (1871–1964) was a Swiss agronomist, professor at ETH Zurich, and longtime director of the Swiss Farmers' Association, called the Father of Swiss agriculture.

Etrog (אֶתְרוֹג)

Etrog (אֶתְרוֹג), Hebrew for citron (Citrus medica), the yellow thick-rinded citrus used as one of the Four Species with the lulav on Sukkot; ungrafted, blemish-free fruits can sell for $100 or more.

Faba bean rust

Faba bean rust, caused by Uromyces viciae-fabae, is a major fungal disease of Vicia faba, causing 5-20% typical yield losses and up to 70% in early epidemics; managed with resistant varieties, fungicides, and wheat intercropping.

Fallow land

Fallow land: arable land left unsown and unharvested for one or more growing seasons to recover fertility, store moisture, or control weeds; also called summerfallow in dryland farming.

Fallow systems

Fallow systems: agricultural land-use systems alternating multi-year cropping with fallow periods, cultivated 33–66% of years (Ruthenberg). Include tropical shifting cultivation's 10–20 year rests and Mediterranean semiarid cereal–fallow rotations that restore soil fertility.

Farm

Farm: an agricultural holding of land, labor, capital, and management producing crops or livestock. Also called family farm when household-operated; FAO definitions, farm systems, and the farm size-productivity relationship distinguish it from agribusiness.

Farm price

Farm price (farm-gate price): the price a farmer receives at the farm or first point of sale, before transport, processing, and retail margins; typically 15–40% of retail for commodity crops, tracked by FAO, USDA, and Defra indices.

Farmer

Farmer: a person who operates a farm, also called a farm operator. Covers family farms and smallholders (570 million farms, 90% family-run), US producer demographics, income, and technology adoption.

Oct 15, 2026

Farmer field school

A farmer field school (FFS) is a field-based adult education approach, developed by FAO in Indonesia in 1989, in which farmers experiment and make their own crop decisions.

Oct 22, 2026

Farmer-managed natural regeneration

Farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) is an agroforestry practice in which farmers protect and prune trees regrowing from living stumps, pioneered in Niger in 1983 by Tony Rinaudo.

Farming systems

A farming system is a group of broadly similar farms, or the combination of crops, livestock, and trees a household manages, forming the standard framework for agricultural development agencies.

Farming systems in India

Farming systems in India: mixed crop-livestock farming predominates; small and marginal holdings are 86% of farms on 47% of land; integrated farming systems (IFS) and climate-resilient practices drive recent 4.45% decadal growth.

Fermentation and curing of olives

Fermentation and curing of olives: processing methods (Spanish lye, Greek natural brine, Californian oxidation, dry salt) that remove bitter oleuropein and preserve table olives via lactic acid bacteria and yeasts.

Fertigation

Fertigation is the application of dissolved fertilizers through irrigation water, so nutrient supply is controlled together with watering, most common in high-value horticultural and fruit crops.

Fertilizer

Fertilizer: material supplying plant nutrients, chiefly N, P, and K. Synthetic nitrogen comes from the Haber-Bosch process (1913), about 450 million tonnes yearly, feeding roughly half the world population but tied to natural gas and eutrophication.

First Fruits

First fruits (Hebrew reshit, bikkurim; Greek aparchai): earliest harvest portions offered to a deity. Israelite barley sheaf waved Nisan 16, wheat loaves at Pentecost; rabbinic one-sixtieth rule; Temple ritual ended 70 CE.

Flailing

Flailing: threshing grain by beating sheaves with a flail, a two-stick hinged hand tool (handstaff and swingle), historically yielding 20–40 kg/hour; also mechanical flailing with powered flail mowers and heads for cover crops and vegetation control.

Floriculture

Floriculture, a branch of horticulture, covers cultivation and marketing of flowers and ornamental plants: bedding plants, houseplants, potted plants, cut greens, and cut flowers. A USD 31-39 billion global industry led by the Netherlands and Colombia.