360 articles
Grow light
Grow light: electric lighting designed to promote plant growth, spanning incandescent, fluorescent, HPS, and LED types. Defined by PAR (400–700 nm), PPFD, and DLI; LEDs exceed 2.5 μmol/J versus HPS 0.9–1.7.
Guano
Guano: accumulated seabird or bat excrement rich in phosphates and nitrogen, used as fertilizer. Peru's 1840s–1880s Chincha Islands boom exported ~12 million tons for ~US$500 million; modern Peru harvests it under a rotating conservation system.
Gurdev Khush
Gurdev Singh Khush, born in 1935, is an Indian-born plant geneticist and rice breeder who spent 35 years at the International Rice Research Institute, developing IR36 and IR64.
Hall Wines of Napa, L.P.
Hall Wines of Napa, L.P. is a Delaware limited partnership serving as the private-offering vehicle for the Hall family's Napa Valley wine business in St. Helena, California.
Hand-pollination
Hand-pollination is the manual transfer of pollen to a receptive stigma, used worldwide on 20 crops including vanilla, date palm, cocoa, and apple, and practiced for over 4000 years.
Hardiness zone
Hardiness zone: geographic zones based on average annual extreme minimum winter temperature; USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map zones 1–13 in 10°F bands with 5°F a/b half zones, 2023 edition using 1991–2020 data.
Harvest
Harvest (harvesting) is the gathering of agricultural crops, the hinge between production and post-harvest handling. Covers maturity timing, hand versus machine methods, combine harvesters from the 1886 Holt machine onward, and post-harvest losses.
Harvest festival
A harvest festival, also called a Harvest Thanksgiving, is a celebration giving thanks for gathered crops, marked by food offerings, communal meals, and rituals at the end of the agricultural year.
Hedge
Hedge (hedgerow): a line of planted or remnant shrubs and trees forming living field or garden boundaries. Key facts: Enclosure Acts planting 1760–1820, Hooper dating formula, Devon's 33,000 miles, England's 2024 cutting-ban and 2 m buffer rules.
Hemp
Hemp is low-THC Cannabis sativa L. (under 0.3 percent delta-9 THC in US law) grown for fiber, seed, and CBD. Key facts: ancient European cultivation from 4280 BCE, yields up to 25 t/ha dry matter, 2025 US value $739 million, lower environmental impacts than cotton.
Hemp seed protein
Hemp seed protein, protein from Cannabis sativa seeds sold as meal, concentrates (50-75%), and isolates (>85% protein); GRAS in the US via FDA GRN 771 (2018), complete protein high in arginine.
Hevea brasiliensis
Hevea brasiliensis, the Pará rubber tree, is an Amazonian Euphorbiaceae tree whose phloem latex is the sole commercial source of natural rubber, grown mainly in Southeast Asian plantations and limited in South America by South American leaf blight.
History of agriculture
History of agriculture: the independent development of plant cultivation and animal husbandry in perhaps 20 world regions from about 12,000 years ago, covering the Fertile Crescent, Yangtze rice, Indus Valley dating, Africa, and the Green Revolution.
History of agriculture in the Indian subcontinent
History of agriculture in the Indian subcontinent: from Mehrgarh's early farming (revised to 5200-4900 BCE), Indus irrigated surplus agriculture, Mughal dahsala revenue, colonial famines, to the 1960s Green Revolution in Punjab.
History of agriculture in the United States
History of agriculture in the United States: from Indigenous farming by 5000 B.C. and colonial tobacco through USDA, land-grant colleges, the New Deal, and a productivity revolution that cut farms from 6.8 million (1935) to 1.88 million (2024).
Hoe (tool)
Hoe (tool): an angled-blade hand tool on a long handle for digging and weeding; types include draw, Dutch, and scuffle/stirrup (hula, action, oscillating) hoes; used since the Bronze Age and still central to smallholder farming.
Home garden
Home garden, also called kitchen, backyard or homestead garden: small-scale household food production system near the dwelling, supplying over 50 percent of a family's vegetables and fruits and supplementary income.
Hongreung Arboretum
Hongreung Arboretum (홍릉수목원, Hongneung Experimental Forest) is Korea's first arboretum, created in 1922 in Seoul on the former site of Empress Myeongseong's tomb, holding 2,035 plant species over about 42 ha.
Horkey
Horkey is the name for the end-of-harvest customs and celebrations of England, especially the Eastern Counties feast marking the last load, which declined in the 19th century and was more or less extinct by the 20th.
Horticultural Hall, Boston
Horticultural Hall, Boston, was a granite exhibition hall at 100–102 Tremont Street built for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1864 and demolished in 1901, replaced by a Back Bay hall.
Horticultural Hall, Melbourne
Horticultural Hall, known as Horti Hall, is a two-storey brick exhibition and assembly hall at 31–33 Victoria Street, Melbourne, built in 1873 and now home to Victorian Opera.
Horticultural Hall, Toronto
Horticultural Hall, formally the Horticulture Building, is a 1907 Beaux-Arts exhibition pavilion on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds in Toronto, designed by George W. Gouinlock to replace the burned Crystal Palace.
Horticulture
Horticulture, or horticultural science, is the branch of agriculture devoted to intensively grown plants for food, medicine, and visual enjoyment, including fruits, vegetables, flowers, and ornamentals.
Hügelkultur
Hügelkultur (mound culture) is a German-origin gardening method of building raised mounds over buried woody debris, promoted by Sepp Holzer and permaculture; it lacks peer-reviewed evidence, with mixed unpublished trial results.
Hydroponics
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil, with roots in an aerated nutrient solution, first used on a large scale during World War II.
Illegal logging
Illegal logging: harvesting, transporting, buying, or selling timber in violation of national laws; no single legal definition. Costs $1–2 trillion yearly with fishing and wildlife trade; 50–90% of timber illegal in some countries; fought via EU FLEGT, EUTR, and EUDR.
Indian Agricultural Research Institute (भारतीय कृषि अनुसंधान संस्थान)
Indian Agricultural Research Institute (भारतीय कृषि अनुसंधान संस्थान), IARI or Pusa Institute, India's foremost agricultural research institute and a Deemed University under ICAR, founded 1905 at Pusa, Bihar, moved to New Delhi in 1936, key Green Revolution contributor.
Indian Council of Agricultural Research (भारतीय कृषि अनुसंधान परिषद)
The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (भारतीय कृषि अनुसंधान परिषद), formerly the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research, coordinates agricultural research, extension, and education across India.
Indian Forest Act, 1927
Indian Forest Act, 1927 (Act XVI of 1927): India's principal forest law, consolidating colonial forest legislation and replacing the 1878 Act. Defines reserved, village, protected, and non-government forests across 86 sections; still in force.
Indian Forest Service (भारतीय वन सेवा)
Indian Forest Service (भारतीय वन सेवा), IFS, India's third All India Service for forest management, constituted 1 July 1966 under the All India Services Act 1951; MoEF&CC-controlled, UPSC-recruited, trained at IGNFA Dehradun, authorized strength 3,193.