6. Answer the following questions to text A.
1. How can farm crops be classified?
2. What is an annual plant?
3. How long do biennial plants grow?
4. What are the most important botanical families?
5. What family does wheat belong to?
6. What other cereals belong to the grass family?
7. Do forage crops also belong to the grass family?
8. What roots have grasses (legumes)?
9. Why are legumes so important?
10. What large-seeded legumes do you know?
7. Read Text B without a dictionary. What examples of winter and spring crops, biennial and perennial crops are given by the author?
Text В
Life cycle
According to their life cycle plants are classified as annuals, biennials and perennials. The life cycle of a plant includes all the phases of plant growth starting with a seed. Many important crop plants complete their life cycle in one growing season. Such plants are known as annuals. Some annuals are spring annuals planted in spring and harvested in autumn. There are also winter annuals planted in autumn and harvested next summer. Winter wheat is an example of a winter annual and corn is a typical spring annual. Some plants complete their life cycle in two seasons. During the first season stems and roots are produced. Second-year plants produce flowers, fruit and seed and at the end of the second season they die. Beet is a good example of a biennial plant. People use roots of biennial plants and harvest root crops at the end of the first season. Many plants live for more than two seasons, such plants are known as perennials. They produce seed every year. After seeds have been produced, the plants do not die. They are not active during winter, but in spring they produce new growth. Many of our hay and pasture crops are perennials. The examples of perennial crops are alfalfa and clovers.
8. Read text B once again. Split it into four paragraphs and headline them in Russian or in English.
Listening and Speaking Focus
Classification of agricultural crops.
9. Watch the video and answer the following questions:
1. What classifications of crops are mentioned in the video?
2. What is agricultural classification?
3. Name the groups of crops classified according to their life span (cycle). What examples of these are given in the video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75WGtk03Npo&ab_channel=EverydayFarmer
Discussion. What crops are of most importance – annuals, biennials or perennials? Why?