#sorghum — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sorghum, aggregated by home.social.
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New publication: Disentangling the importance of microbiological and physico-chemical properties of Ethiopian field soils for the #Striga seed bank and #sorghum infestation.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40793-026-00926-3 -
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Nixtamalization (/ˌnɪʃtəməlɪˈzeɪʃən, ˌnɪks-/ nish-tə-mə-lih-ZAY-shən) is a process for the preparation of maize (corn), or other grain, in which the grain is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, usually limewater (but sometimes aqueous alkali metal carbonates),washed, and then hulled. The term can also refer to the removal via an alkali process of the pericarp from other grains such as sorghum."#NixtamalizedCorn has several benefits over unprocessed grain: It is more easily ground, its nutritional value is increased, flavor and aroma are improved, and mycotoxins are reduced by up to 97–100% (for aflatoxins).
"Lime and #ash are highly alkaline: the alkalinity helps the dissolution of hemicellulose, the major glue-like component of the maize cell walls, and loosens the hulls from the kernels and softens the #maize. The tryptophan in corn proteins is made more available for human absorption, thus helping to prevent niacin deficiency (pellagra). Tryptophan is the metabolic precursor of endogenous niacin (Vitamin B3).
"Some of the corn oil is broken down into emulsifying agents (monoglycerides and diglycerides), while bonding of the maize proteins to each other is also facilitated. The divalent calcium in lime acts as a cross-linking agent for protein and polysaccharide acidic side chains.
"While cornmeal made from untreated ground maize is unable by itself to form a dough on addition of water, nixtamalized cornmeal will form a dough, called #masa. These benefits make nixtamalization a crucial preliminary step for further processing of maize into food products, and the process is employed using both traditional and industrial methods in the production of #tortillas and #TortillaChips (but not corn chips), #tamales, #hominy, and many other foodstuffs.
Etymology
"In the #Aztec language Nahuatl, the word for the product of this procedure is #nixtamalli or #nextamalli (pronounced [niʃtaˈmalːi] or [neʃtaˈmalːi]), which in turn has yielded Mexican Spanish #nixtamal ([nistaˈmal]). The Nahuatl word is a compound of nextli "lime ashes" and tamalli "unformed/cooked corn dough, tamal". The term #nixtamalization can also be used to describe the removal of the pericarp from any grain by an #alkali process, including maize, #sorghum, and others. When the unaltered Spanish spelling nixtamalización is used in written English, however, it almost exclusively refers to maize.
"The labels on packages of commercially sold tortillas prepared with nixtamalized maize usually list corn treated with #lime as an ingredient in English, while the Spanish versions list maíz nixtamalizado.
Impact on health
"The primary nutritional benefits of nixtamalization arise from the alkaline processing involved. The processing renders the protein more digestible, allowing tryptophan to be absorbed by humans. Humans can convert tryptophan into niacin, thus helping to prevent pellagra. Other measures of protein quality are also improved. It was originally thought that the anti-pellagra action stems from increased availability of niacin (compared to a hemicellulose-bound form called "niacytin"), but multiple experiments have disproven this theory.
"Secondary benefits can arise from the grain's absorption of minerals from the alkali used or from the vessels used in preparation. These effects can increase #calcium (by 750%, with 85% available for absorption), iron, copper, and zinc.[4]
"Nixtamalization significantly deactivates #mycotoxins which are putative carcinogens. #Aflatoxins are reduced by 90–94%. Fumonisins are reduced by 82%."
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization#SolarPunkSunday #NativeAmericanFoods #NativeAmericanHistory #Corn #BlueCorn #MesoAmerica #TraditionalFoods #CulinaryAsh #CalciumCarbonate #History #FoodHistory #Corn #PlantAshes
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🍪 Wholemeal cookies 🍪
- Whole wheat flour
- Wholemeal sorghum flour
- Wholemeal teff flour
- Mixed sunflower, pumpkin and flax seeds
- Chestnut honeyI love teff and sorghum.
I use them a lot in pastries, because they enrich flavour without adding spices like cinnamon or something.
Their natural flavor are so exotic that they make shortcrust pastry and biscuits taste way better. -
The #sorghum pangenome is a comprehensive, high-definition library of genetic blueprints that captures the full genomic diversity of the global sorghum crop. It replaces the traditional "one-size-fits-all" reference genome by integrating genetic variations from multiple varieties worldwide.
#Genomics #Biotechnology #AgriculturalScience #Botany #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/03/geno03312601.html -
A Month After #Trump Doubles Down on #Atrazine, #WHO Dubs It ‘Probably #Carcinogenic to Humans’
“It is outrageously irresponsible that we still allow use of this dangerous #poison in the United States,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health science director.
Jessica Corbett
Nov 21, 2025"Just a month after the Trump administration doubled down on the alleged safety of atrazine, a United Nations agency said on Friday that the pesticide—which is banned by dozens of countries but commonly used on #corn, #sugarcane, and #sorghum in the United States—probably causes #cancer.
" 'It is outrageously irresponsible that we still allow use of this dangerous poison in the United States,' said Nathan Donley, the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health science director, in a Friday statement. 'This finding is just the latest indictment of the industry-controlled US #pesticide oversight process that is failing to protect people and #wildlife from chemicals linked to numerous health harms.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/atrazine-herbicide
#CommonDreams #EPAFail #Bayer
#ToxicPesticides #Monocrops
#Monocrap #BigAg #BigChem #Poison #USPol #WorldPol #Pesticides #CenterForBiologlicalDiversity -
#Sorghum is a #climate-resilient #C4 #cereal and is vital for #FoodSecurity in arid and semi-arid regions worldwide.
Meng et al. review the past, present, and future of hybrid sorghum breeding in #China.
#OpenAccess ⬇️#free⬇️!
https://doi.org/10.1111/jipb.70047
@WileyEcology
#PlantSci #botany -
Today I brewed our #GlutenFree #KereruBrewing #Apex #APA - here's a slow motion video of #sorghum dripping into the hot wort. You can see a bag of millet which has been used for colour and flavour.
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Foliar application with sodium selenate is highly effective in increasing #Selenium accumulation in #sorghum, but environmental factors (e.g. #soil, #climate) and genotype × #environment interactions matter… (1/2) doi.org/10.1016/j.jf...
Redirecting -
Could This #Arizona Ranch Be a Model for #Southwest Farmers?
Oatman Flats has undergone a dramatic transformation, becoming the Southwest’s first #Regenerative #Organic Certified farm and a potential source of ideas for weathering #ClimateChange.
" 'We embraced the abundance of #heirloom and native crops in the #SonoranDesert,' Hansen said. 'We are looking at the land and asking it what we should grow, rather than asking the land to grow what we want.' " - Dax Hansen, owner of Oatman Flats Ranch.
By Samuel Gilbert
May 12, 2025Excerpt: "Regeneration Rooted in #Indigenous Practices
"Southern Arizona’s rich agricultural history stretches back more than 5,000 years. By 600 CE, the Hohokam people were constructing North America’s largest and most elaborate irrigation systems along the Salt and Gila Rivers. The descendants of the Hohokam—the Pima and Tohono O’odham—continued to farm the land up to and after the arrival of the Spanish, who began to colonize southern Arizona in the 1600s. They continue to farm in Arizona today.
"At the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, about two hours southeast of Oatman Flats, the San Xavier Co-op Farm uses historic land management practices and grows traditional crops that reflect their respect for the land, plants, animals, elders, and the sacredness of water.
"San Xavier Farm Manager Duran Andrews and his team plant #CoverCrops, rotate fields, and collect #rainwater.
" '[Regenerative agriculture] is nothing new to us,' Andrews said. 'We have been doing this for decades. Harmony between nature and people has been our approach all the time.' Rotating fields and cultivating multiple mutually beneficial species in the same fields improves water and soil quality and biodiversity in this harsh landscape.
" 'You’ve seen what the land looks like in five years; imagine it in 10. If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.'
"The co-op grows a variety of native crops that were developed in the region and cultivated for centuries or, in some cases, millennia, such as grains and beans, which they sell online. 'We irrigate them till they sprout, then cut them off till the monsoon shows up,' Andrews said. 'We try to keep crops in that hardy state through all the years and decades they have been here. We try not to get away from how things were done in the past.'
"They also grow White Sonora wheat, introduced to Arizona by Spanish Jesuit missionaries in the 1600s. 'It was a gift from Father Kino that we have taken as our own,' Andrews said. 'The [San Xavier] community was one of the first to grow this wheat.'
"Following the Mexican-American War in the mid-1800s, the United States claimed parts of modern-day Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada, and Utah. The Anglo ranchers who moved into the area dug canals to irrigate agricultural fields, transforming the landscape. An 1852 watercolor by surveyor Jon Russell Bartlett depicts a verdant valley with cottonwoods and mesquite trees lining a flowing Gila River as it passes through Oatman Flats Ranch.
"That landscape is unrecognizable today. The lower Gila has gone bone dry after years of upstream diversions, dams, water overuse, and climate change. In 2019, the Gila River earned the title of Most Endangered River by the nonprofit advocacy group American Rivers.
"Standing on the sandy Gila riverbed, which divides the north and south farms of Oatman Flats Ranch, Wang pointed to the nearby invasive salt cedars. Healing the land involves rebuilding the water, nutrient, and carbon cycles from the ground up, 'at the micro level,' he said. 'On the macro level, it’s broken.'
"The ranch team has poured resources into rebuilding soil health by planting #hedgerows and 30-plus species of cover crops, at a cost of approximately $100,000. The hedgerows, mostly native trees, were planted along the edges of the fields to reduce erosion and provide habitat for beneficial species, including #pollinators such as #bees and #hummingbirds.
"The cover crops — #millet, #chickpeas, #sunflowers, #sorghum, sudan grass, broadleaves, and #NativeGrasses among them—are planted immediately after harvesting wheat, to provide 'soil armor,' help conserve water, fix nitrogen in the soil, suppress weeds, attract beneficial insects, and sequester carbon. The once-barren land now supports life for more than 120 species of flora and fauna."
Read more:
https://civileats.com/2025/05/12/could-this-arizona-ranch-be-a-model-for-southwest-farmers/#SolarPunkSunday #RegenerativeAgriculture #RegenerativeFarming #RestorativeAgriculture #ClimateChangeFarming
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#Sorghum develops aerial roots and (like maize) produces abundant carb-rich mucilage after rain. @jeanmichelane &co show that diazotrophic #bacteria in the aerial roots can fix nitrogen, reducing need for synthetic fertilizers #plosbiology https://plos.io/3EYPZjK
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New batch of tempeh underway: black sorghum and white bean (Great Northern beans).
Details: https://leisureguy.ca/2025/02/27/sorghum-tempeh/
@vegancooking @wfpb
#food #recipe #WFPB #vegan #vegetarian #omnivore #health #tempeh #blackSorghum #sorghum -
#Sorghum's resistance to #Striga: Two key #genes fight against #crop #parasites.
#parasites #strigolactone #transporters #hormones #SbSLT1 #SbSLT2 #AI #crops #agriculture
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-sorghum-resistance-striga-key-genes.html
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The world seems on track to produce more #rice, #wheat & #soybeans than ever before, but production of #sorghum & #millet (key staples in Sub-Saharan #Africa) has barely grown. #Yields of most these crops are equal or slightly higher than previously: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/food-production-2024
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I've been seeing a few #transcriptome wide association studies (TWAS) papers lately. This is another example, from #sorghum, combining GWAS and TWAS to study flowering time. Bonus - I imagine that there's a lot more value that can be gained from the 822 #RNAseq samples made publicly available
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.12.628249v1.full.pdf
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(4/x) Vast areas of good US cropland are used to grow animal feed (#corn #alfalfa #hay #sorghum), not crops to directly nourish humans. Also globally a lot of prime #farmland no longer produces human food directly, raising #foodsecurity concerns: https://drawdown.org/insights/greenwashing-and-denial-wont-solve-beefs-enormous-climate-problems #landuse
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New publication: The role of #strigolactone structural diversity in the host specificity and control of #Striga, a major constraint to sub-Saharan #agriculture. #microbiome #fungi #parasiticplants #sorghum #sulfotransferase
https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10549 -
Black-sorghum salad
I made a good salad for lunch today.
https://leisureguy.ca/2024/08/01/sorghum-salad/
@vegancooking @wfpb
#food #recipe #WFPB #vegan #vegetarian #omnivore #health #blackSorghum #sorghum #salad -
Scientists test #agriculture and #SolarEnergy on #Illinois #farms
Two experiments in the state are measuring which crops could grow well under these panels.
By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Jul 18, 2024, 2:58pm EDT"Thousands of #wildflowers are blooming under rows of solar panels in eastern Illinois. #Milkweeds, #BlackEyedSusans and native #PrairieGrasses catch the sunlight that streams past solar panels on one end of this 54-acre property near Champaign.
"'Obviously, this setting is not perfect for the farming system,' D.K. Lee, a professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said about the narrow space between solar panel arrays.
"But this experimental station called #SolarFarm 2.0 could help UIUC scientists determine whether the marriage between Midwestern agriculture and solar power will be a happy one. Researchers are piloting how crops such as grains and #soybeans used primarily to feed livestock grow with solar panels obstructing their full view of the sun. The counterintuitive practice is called #agrivoltaics, a nascent industry that partners solar developers looking for large plots of land and farmers looking to make additional income.
"That’s why two parallel experiments are underway here to find out what can grow and thrive under solar panels. To hit the ambitious clean energy targets set by state and federal officials, solar power will have to increase close to seven times over current capacity by 2035. That will mean millions of acres devoted to solar power — many of which could be in America’s #farmlands. But to make sure that agricultural communities aren’t left behind by the clean energy transition, scientists want to know what it will take for life to persist beneath solar panels — potentially a first step for farmers and solar power to co-exist.
"'We can only farm about 70% of the land here,' said Bruce E. Branham, professor of horticulture at UIUC. 'So we’ve got 30% of the land that would be farmed in full sun that is just vacant.'
"But in just two years and despite physical constraints, initial findings suggest that the #sorghum grain could be a promising crop to grow alongside solar panels. Branham said that so far it appears that combining sorghum with solar panels has resulted in a 59% increase in efficiency. And wildlife, including #birds and #bees, are flocking to the improved habitat. It’s a good start, but there’s still ways to go before solar farms like these are generating serious energy.
"'This is a 54-acre site, and we’re getting 12 megawatts,' Banham said. 'A lot of power plants are much, much greater than that.'
"In all, Solar Farm 2.0 produces close to 1% of the generating power of the #ClintonPowerStation, a #NuclearPowerPlant just a 45 minute drive east. But for Banham and others, this presents an opportunity to combine Midwestern row crops with solar power to generate enough energy to compete with #FossilFuels and other clean energy alternatives."
#SolarPunkSunday #SolarFarms #RenewablesNow #RenewableEnergy #LocalEnergy #NoNewNukes #NoNukes #SolarFarm #SaveTheFarms #IllinoisFarms #MidwestFarms #SolarSundays #Agrivoltaic
