13 Crops – CerealsKent

Cereal grains, such as corn, wheat, rice, and sorghum, are grown and processed into a wide variety of ingredients for animal and human food uses. The focus of this chapter will be on corn and wheat, but other cereals have significance in global processing and human nutrition. For example, rice is grown throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim and is primarily consumed with the endosperm intact. Rice production requires large amounts of water during a relatively long growing season and therefore is grown in warm, moist climates. In contrast, grain sorghum (ormilo) is processed to recover its endospermwith reduced particle size to be used in many foods throughout Africa and arid regions. Relative to other cereal crops, sorghum species are more frugal with water utilization at higher temperatures (above approximately 30 C), making them better suited to hot and dry growing conditions such as the western plains of the US and sub-Saharan Africa. Many processing techniques used with grain sorghum have strong similarities to those used for processing corn. In this chapter, however, we chose to focus on corn and wheat processing technologies, especially wet processing of these two cereals for food, feed, and industrial purposes.