Agriculture

• Agriculture comes from the Latin words ager, meaning field, and colere, meaning growing or cultivation, thus it means "growing and cultivating of the field"
• Agriculture is the science or practice of farming, including the cultivation of the soil for crops and fruit-bearing trees, as well as raising animals for food and raw materials
• Agriculture plays a vital role in the economy by sustaining food and raw material production, providing employment opportunities, and being a source of livelihood and economic development
• Branches of Agriculture:

  I. Livestock Production or Animal Husbandry:

  • Concerned with animals raised for meat, fiber, milk, eggs, or other products
  • Includes Nomadic Pastoralism, Poultry Farming, Swine Farming, and Apiculture (beekeeping)

  II. Crop Production or Agronomy:

  • Cultivation of crops and vegetables on a field scale under rain-fed or irrigation conditions
  • Includes Horticulture, Floreculture, Oleculture, and Pomology

  III. Agricultural Economics:

  • Study of the allocation, distribution, and utilization of resources in food production and consumption

  IV. Agricultural Engineering:

  • Design, construction, and improvement of farming equipment and machinery, integrating technology with farming
• Types of crops:

  • Food crops:
  • Field crops: wheat, rice, corn, sugarcane, forage crops
  • Root crops: cassava, potato, ginger, peanut, onion, carrot
  • Feed crops: primarily raised for livestock consumption like oats
  • Fiber crops: raised for fibers used as raw material like abaca, silk, pineapple
  • Oil crops: raised for biodiesel production like palm, coconut, soybean
  • Ornamental crops: for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design
  • Industrial crops: used in industrial processes into nonedible products like tobacco

  
• Sexual plants develop from a seed or spore after the union of male and female gametes
• Pollination is the transfer of pollen from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma, essential for plant reproduction
• Parts of a flower:

  • Stamen: male part with anther and filament
  • Pistil: female part with stigma, style, ovary, ovule
  • Petals: colored part with perfume and nectar glands
  • Sepals: green structures protecting the flower bud
  • Pedicel: stem of the flower
  • Receptacle: where floral organs are attached
• Asexual plants reproduce vegetatively without the union of sexual gametes through methods like grafting, budding, and cutting
• Natural and self-pollinated crops predominantly self-pollinate, while natural cross-pollinated crops transfer pollen from one flower to another
• Herbs are succulent plants with self-supporting stems like basil, rosemary, and oregano
• Growth habits of plants:

  • Vines: herbaceous climbing plants without self-supporting stems
  • Lianas: woody climbing plants depending on other plants for support
  • Shrubs: small tree-like plants under 5 meters in height
  • Trees: plants with continuous growth and a distinct trunk
  • Evergreen plants maintain leaves throughout the year
  • Deciduous plants shed leaves annually
• Annual crops complete their life cycle within one growing season and then die, like rice and corn
• Biennial crops take two years to complete their lifecycle, examples include cabbage and parsley
• Perennial crops live more than two years with little or no woody growth, technically including trees and shrubs
• Land preparation is the foundation of all farming activities, increasing the probability of successful cultivation if done diligently
• Types of tillage methods:

  • Conventional Tillage: leaves the soil surface bare and reduces soil particles, exposing it to erosive forces
  • Conservation Tillage: disturbs the soil as little as possible, with reduced tillage of at least 30% of residue in the soil
  • Zero Tillage: preserves and conserves soil without disturbing it, sown directly into untilled soil since the previous crop's harvest
• Mulch involves spreading various covering materials on the soil surface to minimize moisture losses and weed population
• Land clearing can be done manually (by hand) or mechanically (by machine), involving steps like removing native surfaces and breaking the land to produce a workable bed for crops
• Grafting is a technique used to join parts of two different plants together to grow as one plant, with methods like spliced, whip-and-tongue, cleft, bark, side-tongue, bridge, inarching, four-flap, topworking, approach, chip budding, patch budding, and T or shield budding
• Food Crop: a crop primarily raised and cultured for human consumption
• In the Philippines, the 5 major categories of common commercial crops are:

  • Cereal crops
  • Root and tuber crops
  • Sugar crops
  • Vegetable crops
  • Fruit crops
• Cereal Crops: members of the grass family with seeds to eat
• Root and Tuber Crops: root vegetables and thick underground parts of the stem that are edible for human consumption
• Sugar Crops: several species of tall perennial grass grown for the extraction of sugar products
• Vegetable Crops: edible parts of the plant
• Fruit Crops: groups of different types of fruits that are edible for human consumption