Common Name: Finger Millet
Description
Eleusine coracana is an annual plant widely grown as a cereal in the arid areas of Africa and Asia. Earliest records of its cultivation in India show that it was cultivated in the Hallur region of Karnataka in the later Iron Age. It remains one of the main ingredients of the staple diet in Karnataka.It is commonly known as finger millet, African finger millet, red millet,[citation needed] caracan millet, koracan. . . .Read more
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Meet the crops
Balanites aegyptiaca
Common Name:Balanites
Description
Balanites aegyptiaca is a multibranched, spiny shrub or tree up to l0 m high. Crown rounded, dense (but still seen through) with long stout branchlets. Trunk and bark grey, deeply fissured longitudinally.
Leaves compound and spirally arranged on the shoots, dark green with 2 firm coriaceous leaflets; dimensions and shapes varying widely. Petiole canaliculate, from 5 mm to 20 mm with a short rachis. Most accounts indicate a maximum length of 8 mm for Uganda. Margin of each leaflet entire; lamina generally up to 6 cm long, 4 cm broad, although apparently smaller (1-3 x 0.3-1.5 cm) in the Sahara and in Palestine..…Read more
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Opuntia monacantha
Common Name:Prickly pear
Description
Opuntia monacantha, commonly known as drooping prickly pear, cochineal prickly pear, or Barbary fig, is a species of plant in the Cactaceae family. It is native to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay and is naturalised in Australia and South Africa. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and sandy shores.
The species was first formally described in 1812 by botanist Adrian Haworth in Synopsis Plantarum Succulentarum. The name Opuntia vulgaris, which is a synonym of Opuntia ficus-indica, has been misapplied to this species in Australia.Read more
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Musa balbisiana
Common Name: Bananas
Description
Musa balbisiana is a species of wild banana native to eastern South Asia, northern Southeast Asia, and southern China. It is one of the ancestors of modern cultivated bananas, along with Musa acuminata. It was first scientifically described in 1820 by the Italian botanist Luigi Aloysius Colla. It grows lush leaves in clumps with a more upright habit than most cultivated bananas. Flowers grow in inflorescences coloured red to maroon. The fruit are between blue and green. They are considered inedible because of the seeds they contain. It may be assumed that wild bananas were cooked and eaten or agriculturalists would not have developed the cultivated banana. Seeded Musa balbisiana fruit are called butuhan (‘with seeds’) in the Philippines, and kluai tani in Thailand. Natural parthenocarpic clones occur through polyploidy and produce edible bananas, examples of which are wild saba bananas. . . . .Read more
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