Crop

For other uses, see Crop (disambiguation).

Domesticated plants

Crops drying in a home in Punjab, India.

A crop is any cultivated plant, fungus, or alga that is harvested for food, clothing, livestock, fodder, biofuel, medicine, or other uses. In contrast, animals that are raised by humans are called livestock, except those that are kept as pets. Microbes, such as bacteria or viruses, are referred to as cultures. Microbes are not typically grown for food, but are rather used to alter food. For example, bacteria are used to ferment milk to produce yogurt.

Major crops include sugarcane, pumpkin, maize (corn), wheat, rice, cassava, soybeans, hay, potatoes, and cotton.

can see also

• Agriculture
• Bumper crop
• Cash crop
• Catch crop
• Cover crop
• Crop destruction
• Crop diversity
• Crop residue
• Crop rotation
• Crop weed
• Crop wild relative
• Crop yield
• Crop-lien system
• Energy crop
• Farming
• Fiber crop
• Industrial crop
• Inter-cropping
• Kharif crops
• Multiple cropping
• Neolithic founder crops – eight plant species that were domesticated by early Holocene farming communities in the Fertile Crescent region of southwest Asia, and which formed the basis of systematic agriculture in the Middle East, North Africa, India, Persia and (later) Europe
• Nurse crop
• Permanent crop
• Rabi crops
• Sharecropping
• Underutilized crop

Further reading

• Sleper, David A.; Poehlman, John M. (2006). Breeding Field Crops. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 9780813824284. Retrieved December 5, 2011.