User:Resandro/sandbox

Description
The fonio is an annual, erect herbaceous plant which reaches stature heights from 30 to 80 centimeters. The ears consist of two to five narrow part ears, which are up to 15 centimeters long. The spikelets comprise a sterile flower and a fertile flower, the latter of which gives rise to the fonio grain. The grain is a caryopsis, which remains surrounded by glumes and husks. Its size is very small, only 1.5 mm (around 2000 seeds to 1 gram).The colour ranges from white, yellow and purple. Fonio mature faster than all other cereals. Some varieties can already be harvested 42-56 days after sowing. Other ripen more slowly, usually in 165-180 days.

Origin and regions cultivation
Fonio is one of the ancient African crops, possibly the oldest West African crop as its cultivation seems to have started about 7,000 years ago. The first references to Fonio as food are reported from the mid-14th century.

Significant cultivation is only in West Africa from Chad to Cape Verde, South Mali, in western Burkina Faso, eastern Senegal, northern Guinea, in north-eastern Nigeria as well as in the south of Niger, where the plant supplies the staple food for several million people. In some regions of Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Nigeria, Fonio is the most important or one of the main cereals. The White Fonio has its main growing region in the highland plateaus of Nigeria, where it is called Acha. The second Fonio-species Iburu or Black Fonio is limited on the Jos-Bauchi Plateau in Nigeria and the northern regions of Togo and Benin.

Fonio is grown in parts of the Dominican Republic, where it has already brought in 1500 from West Africa, firstly only grew as a weed, but it is also cultivated again lately.

source:

Yield
More than 550 000 ha of fonio are grown each year in West Africa and the production runs at 587 000 t. Yields are relatively stable, the yield average is currently 1t/ha. In the peripheral regions the yields are less than 500 kilograms and drop when in very poor soils down to 150 to 200 kilograms.