Rye

Appearance

Physical properties of rye affect attributes of the final food product such as seed size and surface area, and porosity. The surface area of the seed directly correlates to the drying and heat transfer time. Smaller seeds have increased heat transfer, which leads to lower drying time. Seeds with lower amounts of porosity also have lower tendencies to lose water during the process of drying.

Defense

The harvesting of rye is similar to that of wheat. It is usually done with combine harvesters, which cut the plants, thresh and winnow the grain, and either gather the straw onto wagons or release it to the field as soil amendment. The resultant grain is stored in local silos or transported to regional grain elevators and combined with other lots for storage and distant shipment. Before the era of mechanised agriculture, rye harvesting was a manual task performed with scythes or sickles. The cut rye was often shocked for drying or storage, and the threshing was done by manually beating the seed heads against a floor or other object.

Evolution

Rye is one of a number of species that grow wild in central and eastern Turkey and in adjacent areas. Domesticated rye occurs in small quantities at a number of Neolithic sites in Turkey, such as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Can Hasan III near Çatalhöyük, but is otherwise absent from the archaeological record until the Bronze Age of central Europe, c. 1800–1500 BCE. It is possible that rye traveled west from Turkey as a minor admixture in wheat, and was only later cultivated in its own right. Although archeological evidence of this grain has been found in Roman contexts along the Rhine, Danube, and in Ireland and Britain, Pliny the Elder was dismissive of rye, writing that it "is a very poor food and only serves to avert starvation" and spelt is mixed into it "to mitigate its bitter taste, and even then is most unpleasant to the stomach".

Since the Middle Ages people have cultivated rye widely in Central and Eastern Europe. It serves as the main bread cereal in most areas east of the French-German border and north of Hungary. In Southern Europe, it was cultivated on marginal lands.

Claims of much earlier cultivation of rye, at the Epipalaeolithic site of Tell Abu Hureyra in the Euphrates valley of northern Syria remain controversial. Critics point to inconsistencies in the radiocarbon dates, and identifications based solely on grain, rather than on chaff.

Uses

Rye grain is refined into a flour. Rye flour is high in gliadin but low in glutenin. It therefore has a lower gluten content than wheat flour. It also contains a higher proportion of soluble fiber. Alkylresorcinols are phenolic lipids present in high amounts in the bran layer of wheat and rye. Rye bread, including pumpernickel, is made using rye flour and is a widely eaten food in Northern and Eastern Europe. Rye is also used to make crisp bread.

Rye grain is used to make alcoholic drinks, like rye whiskey and rye beer. Other uses of rye grain include kvass and an herbal medicine known as rye extract. Rye straw is used as livestock bedding, as a cover crop and green manure for soil amendment, and to make crafts such as corn dollies.Along with "Secale cereale's" relationship and impact on the environment, it is also a valuable species because of its expansive diversity and uses. In northern Portugal, fourteen different populations of "S. cereale" were analyzed in order to better understand their differences. It was discovered that the storage proteins are very diverse and possess a lot of overall genetic variation as well, which is useful information to know because scientists can use its diversity in breeding to produce the most efficient cultivar of "S. cereale," or rye. Moreover, the beneficial characteristics of "S. cereale" can also be used to improve certain characteristics of other useful plants, like wheat. The pollination abilities of wheat were vastly improved when there was cross-pollination with "S. cereale". The addition of the rye chromosome 4R increased the size of the wheat anther along with increasing the number of pollen grains present. Along with improved wheat, the optimal characteristics of "S. cereale" can also be combined with another perennial rye, specifically "S. montanum Guss", in order to produce "S. cereanum", which has the beneficial characteristics of each. The hybrid rye can be grown in all environments, even with less than favorable soil and protects some soils from erosion. In addition, the plant mixture has improved forage and is known to contain digestible fiber and protein. Information about the diversity, the genome and "S. cereanum’s" ability to cross fertilize with other species is useful information for scientists to know as they attempt to come up with various plant species that will be able to feed humanity in the future without leaving a negative footprint on the environment.