Sorghum, a coarse grain, has become a life-saving food for Chinese farmers in disaster relief because of its characteristics of cold resistance, flood resistance and strong adaptability.
It can grow in large areas of barren land and can be used as a staple food or as a raw material for winemaking, and has many uses.
With the continuous progress of agriculture, sorghum has gradually disappeared from people's tables and visions due to taste deviation and indigestibility.
However, scientists continued to study sorghum until 2022, after the unremitting efforts of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, they finally succeeded in developing a maximum length of 6A 5-meter giant sorghum that is twice as tall as ordinary sorghum.
Why does the Chinese Academy of Sciences still attach great importance to sorghum when it is little-known?What role can these super-sized sorghum play?
Sorghum has a long history, dating back thousands of years.
As the earliest cereal crop cultivated by humans, sorghum has a relationship with humans dating back to 5,000 years ago.
Looking through the ancient books of our country, we can see that the earliest appearance of the word sorghum can be traced back to 800 years ago. However, traces of the existence of sorghum have also been excavated at sites such as the New Era Site in East Ash Mountain in Gansu Province and the Shangzhou Village in Dazuizi in Liaoning.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the Chinese began to cultivate sorghum in the Stone Age.
Despite its long history, sorghum has long been in a supporting role, while wheat has been the dominant crop in China's grain history. It was not until the Ming and Qing dynasties that sorghum gradually gained the recognition of the imperial court and the people, and its status began to rise rapidly, even on a par with wheat.
At that time, sorghum growers could be found everywhere in the Henan region, and farmers had already studied a complete land cultivation cycle, which included the rotation of sorghum, millet and soybeans. This rotation of the three crops allows for the best use of land resources to maximize food production.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, North China has suffered from drought weather, resulting in no grass, and farmers have worked hard for a year but have not been able to obtain a bumper harvest.
*Two. Sorghum was then re-planted as an overkill against severe disaster years.
However, in modern China, with the rapid development of social economy and the continuous improvement of people's living standards, sorghum has been abandoned by the people due to a variety of problems, resulting in its status plummeting.
Anyone who has tasted sorghum will realize that it has a slightly bland taste, which is due to the high amount of tannins and anthocyanins in sorghum, which bring a strong astringency. For those who are accustomed to enjoying the sweet taste of rice, they will completely abandon the idea of making it a staple food after only one try.
All those who know about sorghum know that it is less nutritious than rice and wheat. The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has released the "2015 Chinese Food Composition List".
Sorghum has a lower protein, energy, and fat content than crops such as wheat and rice. Even more unacceptable, sorghum is also rich in oxalic acid and phytic acid, which can hinder the body's absorption of iron and calcium, causing adverse effects.
In ancient times, sorghum was used to make good wine, but today people can use a variety of ingredients such as rice, wheat and buckwheat to make better tasting wine.
The area of sorghum cultivation in China reached 9.33 million hectares at the end of the sixties of the last century, and now it has decreased sharply to about 400,000 hectares, mainly used for silage and winemaking processing.
Tall sorghum plants.
China's meat consumption has been promoted year after year, which has promoted the rapid development of animal husbandry, while the status of the grain industry in food is declining day by day. This trend has become even more pronounced in recent years.
Its place in human society remains very important. After all, about half of China's grain is processed into feed, and the huge domestic demand of animal husbandry even needs to constantly rely on imports to meet it.
China imported more than 100 million tonnes of soybeans in 2020, nearly ninety percent of which was used for feed production. This situation is somewhat wasteful, so people are starting to shift their feed needs to sorghum.
Although sorghum is no longer favored due to its poor taste, it is not important to livestock. Sorghum grains can be used to feed chickens and pigs, while straw and leaves can be fed to cattle and sheep, maximizing the use of resources.
There are about 1.7 billion tons of agricultural waste straw in China every year, and if it is burned at will, it will release a large amount of carbon dioxide and seriously pollute the environmentAfter stacking, it may become moldy and rotten, causing adverse effects on the ecological environment.
The use of sorghum as feed can not only meet the food needs of livestock, but also help solve the problem of environmental pollution and achieve a win-win situation.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has been carrying out innovative research and development of sorghum for a long time, and this year it successfully cultivated giant sorghum, which has become a proud masterpiece.
There are two types of new sorghum, one is the multi-harvest type, codenamed Zhongketian No. 1 (C438), and the other is the one-time harvesting type, codenamed Zhongketian No. 2 (C968).
Zhongke No. 1 has a high sugar content, rich energy, and the leaves are rich in high protein, and its protein content is about 168%, and the proportion of digestible reaches 93%, the total nutrient digestion is 70%, which is much higher than the general grass grain.
In areas with superior irrigation conditions, Zhongke No. 1 can be harvested about three times during the whole growth period, and the yield is about 10-15 tons each time.
The growth of Zhongke No. 2 is taller than that of No. 1, and its experimental field has a record of 65 meters, the growth period is 4 months, the average yield per mu is 6-8 tons, suitable for sowing in arid areas.
Compared with traditional cross breeding, it takes five or six years, which is costly and inefficient. Zhongke Tian No. 1 and No. 2 have obvious advantages.
Scientists conducted a follow-up study on the performance of sweet sorghum in practical applications and found that cows that ate sweet sorghum were more productive than when they used to eat silage164 kg of milk, and its gas emissions have been reduced by 44%, which greatly reduces the level of air pollution.
Scientists have also cultivated sorghum seeds in an exposed state so that the seeds can shed their own husks as they grow, reducing the labor cost of hulling farmers.
Sweet sorghum is rich in protein, so that farmers do not need to buy additional soybeans and other feed, which fundamentally reduces the economic burden of farmers. At the same time, sweet sorghum can also reduce irrigation water, further saving costs.
What are the shortcomings of this sorghum?
Figure 6 has two drawbacks, one is the difficulty of harvesting and the other is genetic imbalance.
An imbalance in the ratio of lysine and tryptophan in sweet sorghum can lead to digestive problems in livestock. At the same time, the sorghum quinone produced during the growth process can limit the reproduction and growth of sorghum offspring.
Due to the tall size of the sweet sorghum plant, it may become entangled in the gears of the harvester during the harvesting process, significantly reducing the harvesting efficiency.
We only need to continue to improve and perfect in the follow-up process, and we will be able to continue to carry forward China's sorghum, because everything is relative!