360 articles
Living mulch
A living mulch is a low-growing cover crop planted before or with a main crop and kept alive all season, suppressing weeds while protecting the soil.
Locust
Locust: grasshoppers (Acrididae) that transform via density-triggered phase change into swarming gregarious bands; Desert Locust (Schistocerca gregaria) is the most destructive migratory pest, monitored and controlled by FAO's DLIS.
Logging
Logging is the felling and extraction of timber from forests, distinct from broader timber harvesting. Key methods include clear-cutting and selective logging; reduced-impact logging (RIL) cuts residual stand damage by half or more.
Lohri (ਲੋਹੜੀ)
Lohri (ਲੋਹੜੀ) is a winter folk festival of the Punjab region, celebrated each year on 13 January with bonfires, folk songs, and dances, marking the rabi harvest.
Low-erucic Brassica juncea oil
Low-erucic Brassica juncea oil, also called canola-quality mustard or ZEM oil, is edible mustard oil bred below 2% erucic acid and 30 μmol/g glucosinolates; GRAS (GRN 33, 2000) and Health Canada approved.
Lughnasadh
Lughnasadh (Lúnasa) is the Gaelic harvest festival on 1 August, one of four Irish quarter days, named for the god Lugh and his foster-mother Tailtiu; its English counterpart is Lammas, and it survives in Reek Sunday and modern Wheel of the Year practice.
Lumberjack
Lumberjack (logger, faller): worker who fells trees and moves logs from stump to delivery. US fatality rate 100.7 per 100,000 FTE, median wage $49,660 (2025); mechanized by feller bunchers, harvesters, forwarders.
Luther Burbank
Luther Burbank (1849–1926), American horticulturist and 'plant wizard' of Santa Rosa, California; bred about 800 cultivars including the Burbank/Russet Burbank potato, Santa Rosa plum, and Shasta daisy; contested scientific reputation.
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, also called Macy's Christmas Parade in 1924-1927, is an annual Manhattan Thanksgiving parade begun November 27, 1924, famous for giant helium balloons, floats, and NBC's national telecast since 1953.
Malt
Malt is cereal grain, chiefly barley, germinated under controlled moisture, temperature, and air, then kiln-dried to arrest growth; its enzymes make grain soluble for brewing beer, whisky, and foods.
Manure
Manure: livestock feces and urine mixed with bedding, used since Neolithic times as fertilizer supplying nitrogen, phosphorus, and soil organic matter; matches synthetic fertilizer yields at equal plant-available N but risks phosphorus loading and greenhouse gas emissions.
Marmalade
Marmalade: a citrus fruit preserve with peel suspended in a gelled sugar-pectin matrix, classically made from Seville oranges. From Portuguese marmelada (quince jelly); Codex STAN 296 and EU Directive 2024/1438 govern its naming and composition.
Mechanical harvesting
Mechanical harvesting: collecting crops by machine using cutting, shaking, or picking mechanisms instead of hand labor. Covers grain combines, cotton pickers, tree shakers, economics, fruit damage trade-offs, and the shift toward robotic harvesting.
Michigan State University Horticulture Gardens
Michigan State University Horticulture Gardens (also MSU Horticultural Gardens), 14 acres of display and trial gardens in East Lansing, Michigan; dedicated 1993, free admission, includes the 4-H Children's Garden and Carter Trial Garden.
Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节)
Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, Zhongqiu Jie), also called Moon or Mooncake Festival, is the 15th day of the 8th lunar month festival of family reunion, mooncakes, and lanterns; Korea's Chuseok, Japan's Tsukimi, and Vietnam's Tết Trung Thu are counterparts.
Minimum tillage
Minimum tillage is a soil-management practice for crop production that disturbs soil as little as possible with non-inversion tillage, cutting passes by at least 40% versus conventional plowing.
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (पर्यावरण, वन और जलवायु परिवर्तन मंत्रालय)
MoEFCC (पर्यावरण, वन और जलवायु परिवर्तन मंत्रालय) is India's nodal ministry for environment, forest, wildlife, pollution control, and climate change policy, headquartered at Indira Paryavaran Bhawan, New Delhi, under Minister Bhupender Yadav, with a Rs 3,413 crore budget for 2025-26.
Molasses
Molasses (Portuguese melaço) is the thick dark syrup left after cane or beet sugar crystallization; grades run light, dark, and blackstrap from successive boilings, with 48-53% sugars, used in feed, fermentation, ethanol, rum, and baking.
Monoculture
Monoculture, also known as mono-cropping, is farming in which a single crop species, variety, or livestock breed is grown in a field, underlying most industrial crop production and timber forestry.
Monty Don
Monty Don (George Montague Don, born 1955) is a British organic gardener, writer and lead presenter of BBC Gardeners' World since 2003, filmed at his Herefordshire garden Longmeadow; OBE, RHS Victoria Medal of Honour, author of 21 books.
Moxie
Moxie names several unrelated things: UCD Moxie, a UC Davis day-neutral strawberry cultivar; Moxie!, a Syngenta interspecific geranium series; MOXIE, the Mars 2020 oxygen experiment; and a South African magazine.
Mulch
Mulch is any material spread on soil to retain moisture, suppress weeds, and moderate temperature; types include organic mulches, plastic film, and biodegradable mulch films, with quantified yield and soil effects.
Multiple cropping
Multiple cropping is the cultivation of two or more crops on the same field within one year, either sequentially or as intercropping, to raise land-use efficiency.
Muscovado
Muscovado (Barbados sugar, khandsari, khand) is unrefined non-centrifugal cane sugar retaining natural molasses; moist, dark, toffee-flavored; light and dark grades; India and the Philippines lead production; substitutes include jaggery, panela, Sucanat.
Mutation breeding
Mutation breeding is a plant breeding method that induces genetic mutations with gamma rays, X-rays, or chemicals like EMS, then selects improved individuals, yielding over 3,400 cultivars in 75+ countries.
National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation
National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation: annual White House ceremony, also called the turkey pardon, where the National Turkey Federation presents two turkeys; begun under Truman in 1947, formalized as a pardon by George H.W. Bush in 1989.
Natural farming
Natural farming is an ecological crop production method avoiding tillage, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, developed by Masanobu Fukuoka and extended in India as Zero Budget Natural Farming.
Nested association mapping
Nested association mapping (NAM) is a quantitative genetics design, introduced for maize in 2008, that crosses many founder lines to one common parent to map genes for complex traits.
Nitrogen deficiency
Nitrogen deficiency, a plant nutritional disorder from low nitrogen supply, causes stunted growth and yellowing of older leaves first because nitrogen is mobile in the plant; confirmed by tissue or soil analysis.
Nutrient film technique
The nutrient film technique (NFT) is a hydroponic method in which a thin film of nutrient solution flows past exposed plant roots in sloped channels, without any solid growing medium.