Year: 2010
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Maize is an important staple food in developing countries, in particular in Latin America and Africa, and a basic ingredient for local drinks and food products.It is also an outstanding feed for livestock, high in energy, low in fiber and easily digestible.As a source of starch, it is a major ingredient in industrialized food products. GlossaryAmylose: Any of a group of complex carbohydrates, as cellulose or starch, which are converted by hydrolysis into two or more sugars.Amylopectin: A substance that is nearly insoluble and that is obtained from the outer part of starch granules.Anemophilous: Dispersed by wind.Anthesis: The time the flower is expanded, or the process of dehiscence (spontaneous opening when ripe) of the anthers.Axil: Upper angle between the leaf and stem.Bract: A reduced leaf subtending a flower or flower stalk.Caryopsis: Small one-celled dry indehiscent fruit with thin membranous pericarp adhering closely to the seed, as found in grasses.Cation exchange capacity : An expression of the amount of nutrients that can be held by the soil (mainly the clay and humus fraction) and later be made available for uptake by the roots.Ear:Female inflorescence.Glumes: The lower two sterile bracts at the base of grass spikelets.Heterozygous: Having unlike alleles (= alternative genes located on corresponding loci) at corresponding loci of homologous chromosomes; an organism can be heterozygous for one or several genes.Inflorescence: The arrangement and mode of development of the flowers on the floral axis.Meiosis: Nuclear divisions in which the diploid chromosome number is reduced to half that of the parent cell to give the haploid number as in gametes (= sexual protoplasmatic body, egg or sperm, which unites with another for reproduction).Monoecious: When the male and female flowers are separate, but borne on the same plant.Pedicel: Stalk of each individual flower of an inflorescence.Pericarp: The wall of the ripened ovary or fruit wall of which the layers may be fused into one, or be more or less divisable into exocarp, mesocarp and endocarp.Plumule: The primary bud of an embryo or germinating seed.Protandry: Situation whereby the stamens shedding pollen before the stigma is receptive.Radicle: The first root of an embryo or germinating seed.
Author: Willy Verheye
Language: English
Subfield: Agronomy and Crop Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2410218186