Cereal species

Cereals are members of the grass family Gramineae, being monocotyledonous angiosperm.  Based on botanists’ approximation, there are about 350,000 plant species, of which about 195,000 species are economically important flowering plants.

Cereals can be defined as grasses of which the grain is used for food; they may be cultivated or the grain is collected from wild plants.

Nearly 50 species are cultivated worldwide and as few as 17 species provide 90% of human food supply and occupy about 75% of the total tilled land on earth.

The cereal grains such as wheat, rice, corn, barley, oat, rye, sorghum and millet provide 50% of the food energy and 50% of the protein consumed on earth. Cereals are comparatively easy to grown and harvest, to store and to process into versatile and popular foods.

Wheat, rice and corn together make up three-fourths of the world’s grain production. The cereal species used in the greatest volume by the food industry is wheat. The types cultivated include hard (H) and soft (S) grained, red ® and white (W) grained and winter (W) and spring (S) sown variants.
Cereal species