Talk:Sorghum (genus)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Cultivation data source

Conflict: Barley is the fifth largest cultivated cereal crop in the world (530,000 km² or 132 million acres). Sorghum is the fifth major cereal crop grown in the world (47 million hectares harvested in 1996). Where does this data come from? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.203.222.65 (talk) 02:25, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Good question. Such statistics are not easy to track down and it would be much easier if the original contributors cited sources. Liblamb 14:09, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I removed, "47 million hectares harvested in 1996" because it was old data and out of place. If somebody can find a good place for it, great. I added citations for a few things. World crop stats (outside of rice, wheat, and corn) are hard to find on the Internet it seems but US stats for Sorghum are not hard to find. NASS stats Liblamb 15:35, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

This page at the FAO website looks promising for this and other articles. Their 2004 worldwide figures are:

	area harvested (ha)	amount harvested (Mt)
Sorghum	43,727,353	58,884,425
Barley	57,313,167	153,624,393

Of course, these presumably include crops grown for beer and fodder, which may or may not be what is intended or understood when we say "largest" or "most important" cereal crop. Pekinensis 18:37, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

large edit cleanup

There was a large edit that needs a lot of cleanup. It is oriented toward the US too much. I'll try to do some cleanup but it probably will need more. Liblamb 17:43, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Plant Population

In Austrailia we plant as low as 50,000 plants/seeds per Ha, on very fertile soil. Yeild goal is 5-8 tonnes / hect. (Liverpool plains NSW) The Range could be changed to reflect this ?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.135.109.145 (talk) 10:37, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Water Requirement

Under "Growing Grain Sorghum", a phrase reads "The plants require up to 70–100 mm of moisture every 10 days [...]". This is clearly nonsensical, but which is true? Should the amount be "70–100 mm" or "up to 100 mm"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephan Leeds (talk • contribs) 20:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Production

"slaves introduced sorghum into the U.S. in the early 17th century, where most of the world's sorghum is now produced", yet later: "Little research has been done to improve sorghum cultivars because the vast majority of sorghum production is done by subsistence farmers."

I suspect that the first quotae should read: "...most of the world's commercially grown sorghum..." but I leave this to someone who knows the topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Snori (talk • contribs) 18:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Production

I agree that the word "commercially" should be included. Also the sentence "Little research has been done to improve sorghum cultivars" is very subjective. It depends on where you come from, or what your comparing it to. eg. In Australia there are more hectares of Sorghum grown than Maize(Corn). Therfor there has been more research on impoving sorghum cultivars. If it stated "Compaired to Maize worldwide, there has been little research on sorghum cultivars etc." it would be better. Also, the sentence "vast majority of sorghum production is done by subsistence farmers" is this a fact??? Does it relate to hectares or tonnes???

--Yendor72 01:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Question: Does anybody know what types of alcohol are produced by this plant? Where? etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.131.211.55 (talk) 02:26, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Consolidation of "origins"

The history of sorghum appears in two different sections of the article. I have consolidated them, with apologies to the authors. Landroo 13:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Introduction of sorghum to the United States

Conflict: The article states: "A United States patent officer introduced sweet sorghum to America in 1853." and just a few sentences later states: "African slaves introduced sorghum into the U.S. in the early 17th century."

Which is correct? at the verry least this is confusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.7.111.244 (talk) 11:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorghum names

In the article is stated that sorghum is also called "kaffircorn". It is the name used for it by the European settlers in Southern Africa. Firstly, it is known as "kaffirkoring" and not "kaffircorn" as stated in the article. I think the last part is derived from either Dutch or German. Secondly, the term "kaffirkoring" has become illegal and carries a US$10,700 fine if used in public. It is because "kaffir" is the term used by European settlers to classify some of the indigenous inhabitants of Southern Africa. I will corrected the spelling and if anyone thinks it will be more apropriet to remove it, please do so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piet Retief (talk • contribs) 17:56, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I feel the name should be removed. Above the fact that the word "kaffir" is illegal, it carries the history of racist atrocities committed during South Africa's apartheid regime. The word is a deep insult to a black person and should no longer be used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.30.204.162 (talk) 07:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The words used in the past for sorghum in South Africa were "kafferkoring" in Afrikaans and "kaffir corn" in English, not as stated above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.25.255.250 (talk) 18:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Cultural Signicance

The article totally lacks any information on the cultural and literary significance of the plant. As such it is incomplete and for my current purposes useless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Steven Forth (talk • contribs) 13:46, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Split

I've split this article. The majority of the text has now been moved to "commercial sorghum". The reason for this is quite simple: the article is not accurate when referring to the genus Sorghum. It concentrates exclusively on the few commercially cultivated species and hybrids while ignoring the vast majority of species within the genus. As such the comments made become inaccurate. eg most Sorghum species don't have growth habit similar to maize, many, probably most, are less than 30cm tall, Sorghum species are native to warm temperate and tropical areas worldwide, most sorghum species aren't high nitrogen fodder and so on and so forth. By ignoring the vast majority of Sorgum species the article make snuemrous statemnst that are factually incorrect.

However it is an extremely good article on commercial sorghum, which is why I've moved most of it there. Attempting to re-write the article to make all the statements true of the genus SOrghum generally woudl be a massive undertaking. Almost none of the statments are true of the genus as a whole. Even if such a re-rwite was done we would end up with an unbalanced and bastardised article. There would be masses of information on the tiny minority of commercially cultivated sorghums with no acknowledgement given to the vast majority of species, many of which are economicallly and environmentally important in their own right.Ethel Aardvark —Preceding undated comment added 00:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

aluminum-tolerance gene in sorghum

"This research also has environmental implications for badly needed increases in food production on marginal soils in developing countries," said Kochian. "For example, if we can increase food production on existing lands, it could limit encroachment into other areas for agriculture." [1] Brian Pearson 05:28, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Relevance of method of cell culture

As a plant geneticist, let me tell you that I find the section on South African scientists creating a system to culture sorghum cells in suspension highly irrelevant to proteomics or even general botany. I have never worked with sorghum, so the possibility exists that this is truely special for this plant, but somatic cell liquid culture is not something novel, new, especially useful for proteomics or otherwise even noteworthy. I suggest deletion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.219.235.253 (talk) 05:27, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Ethanol from Sorghum

Recently, a company named SwiftEnterprises made some announcements about bringing to market an aviation fuel derived from ethanol ( swiftfuel ). Among their claims is that sorghum produces 6 times as much ethanol per acre as corn. Is there any basis for this claim? Emteeoh (talk) 19:45, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Role of Sorghum in U.S. agriculture

Someone above mentioned that this article was too oriented to the U.S. and they had cleaned the article up. Well, now the article has no mention of U.S. agricultural production of sorghum. The editor (or his helpers) have gone too far. I don't know enough about this subject to fix the article, but I do know that Sorghum is in the top twenty crops in the U.S. There needs to be a little balance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.123.253.10 (talk) 14:23, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorhum leiocladen

Sorhum leiocladen isnt mentioned; or was this the old name of leiocladum? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.176.5.244 (talk) 07:04, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Deleted species specific content and move/merge discussion

I've deleted a large amount of material that referred only to commercially cultivated Sorghum bicolor while misleadingly claiming it was true of the Sorghum genus. This article is supposed to be about the genus Sorghum. There is already an article on S. bicolor and another on Commercial Sorghum. The material hardly needs to be repeated a third time int his article, producing a genus article where 99% of the information pertains to a single cultivar of a single species.Mark Marathon (talk) 11:39, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Per WP:TITLE guidelines, in particular WP:COMMONNAME, rather than a subject's "official" name as title, Wikipedia prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. In Sorghum bicolor, the lead sentence reads 'Sorghum bicolor, commonly called sorghum...[...]'. In addition, other reliable English-language secondary sources, such as by Wiersema and Dahlberg, FAO and the article itself frequently refers by the unqualified name Sorghum to mean commercially grown variety of Sorghum: http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/4229/PDF

The article Sorghum, per wiki policies, should therefore refer to this common, frequently used term Sorghum to mean Sorghum bicolor L.; The article on Sorghum genus is welcome, but better titled as 'Sorghum L.' or 'Sorghum genus'. I prefer the later because there are disagreements on Sorghum taxonomy and nomenclature (see Wiersema and Dahlberg article).

While we discuss this, await comments from other wiki contributors, reach consensus, and then proceed to collaboratively do what is agreed, I urge we revert the deletion of sections that were previously in this article but are not available in other two (e.g. nutrition comp table template). This will preserve the useful and WP:AGF contributions made by previous wiki contributors and continue to serve wiki reader with useful facts and information in the interim.

ApostleVonColorado (talk) 12:31, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

While it's true that cultivated sorghum is commonly referred to as sorghum, the genus is also commonly referred to as sorghum. As such [WP:TITLE]] and WP:COMMONNAME guidelines don't provide any guidance. The word "Sorghum" is the common name for both. However for every other genus I am aware of, the genus name is the article name, regardless of whether the cultivated varieties are also known by that name. For example, we have an article on Capsicum that refers to the genus, and separate articles on peppers to refer to the cultivated forms. We have an article on Citrus that refers to the genus and another on Citrus Production (though I note that Citrus is suffering the same problem as this article, with much of the supposedly genus-related claims only being true of cultivated forms.) We have an article on Cannabis the genus and others on Cannabis fibre and Cannabis the drug. And so on and so forth.

In all cases the cultivated form is commonly known by the genus name, but the genus name is reserved for the genus article. I can't see why Sorghum should break this trend by relegating the genus to the disambiguated page. This is particularly true since we already have the page names established, with Sorghum referring to the genus, and two other pages dealing with the cultivated forms.

As for as leaving the deleted material in this article, that I can't agree with. The article clearly states that it deals with the genus and that there are other pages for cultivated material. Leaving the material in here makes this article inaccurate, since the material is not true of the genus Sorghum, which this article is specifically about. There is no truth, for instance, in a claim that the genus sorghum originated in tropical Africa. Even in the event of a rename, this is the page that will continue to refer to the genus and one or both of the other two articles will refer to the cultivated grain, and so the material still won't belong in this article. IOW leaving the material here makes this article seriously inaccurate and misleading until the naming issue is resolved, and will continue to make the article misleading after the issue is resolved. There is simply no justification for leaving the material here since it is inaccurate and unverifiable when implied to refer to the genus.Mark Marathon (talk) 13:20, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Per WP:VNT guidelines, the threshold for inclusion of any content in Wikipedia as "verifiability, not truth." For the claim, Sorghum originated in tropical Africa... please see the reference that was cited and which I include here for convenience; see at page 3, first paragraph: http://www.agmrc.org/media/cms/Sorghum_Handbook_B5FE1C2B5DBCF.pdf; US Grains Council is a reliable secondary source and Sorghum Handbook meets the WP:VNT threshold. Please clarify, with a verifiable citation, where Sorghum originated, if it wasn't tropical regions of Africa?

Other content that you deleted, such as the nutrition comparison table, is similarly fully supported and absent in the other sorghum-related articles.

I share your concern that the term Sorghum refers both to cultivated as well as genus Sorghum. The question that follows then is why we must favor the term Sorghum to refer to genus in a wiki article, rather than the cultivated form? Or vice versa? You point to Citrus, which I note includes information on genus and cultivated form. Examples nevertheless are unpersuasive, because an error does not justify another.

One approach to resolve this issue may be to merge the two articles. There is little need or purpose to have two articles - one on genus, and another on cultivated sorghum. The genus article is small, and could be a section on a complete article on Sorghum. From wiki reader perspective, particularly a general audience, a merged article may offer easier encyclopedic access to information. I await comments on this proposal.

I welcome comments from you and other wiki contributors. Sorghum is one the top 10 staple foods of our world - therefore, a notable and important article. All good faith input helps.

ApostleVonColorado (talk) 15:03, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Your reference that Sorghum originated in Africa pertains only to domesticated sorghum. The reference does not claim that the genus Sorghum, which this article is about, originated in Africa. As such the statement is not verified. This is precisely the sort of inaccuracy that must inevitably result if we merge the articles, but more on that below.

The question is not why we should favour the term Sorghum to refer to the genus. The articles are already named and this article already refers to the genus. The question is why we should change the existing names. I can't see any good reason to do so. My examples weren't intended to demonstrate that the articles should be renamed. They were intended to demonstrate that there is no reason why they should be. If your are arguing that the naming of the Cannbis, Citrus and many other articles are errors and need to be changed, that's fine. My point is that if they are not in error, then this article is not in error either. IOW the use of the genus name as the title of the genus article when the cultivated product has the same name is not, by itself, reason for a rename. There has to be some other reason, and so far I haven't seen one.

I oppose merging the articles, for two reasons.

The first has already been highlighted both here and in the Citrus article: it will inevitably lead to the article being erroneous. Because editors with limited knowledge will conflate the two terms, we will inevitably get statements that sorghum originated in Africa and similar. "Sorghum originated in Africa" is a perfectly accurate claim when referring to the crop known as sorghum.. It is utterly incorrect when referring to the genus Sorghum. But we know, and have a demonstrable history in this article, that the terms will become conflated. As a result this article will be both incorrect and highly misleading for anyone seeking information on the genus Sorghum.

The other reason I oppose a merger it is that the genus Sorghum is a diverse and, at the least, a moderately important pasture, ecological and weed genus excluding S. bicolor. But once the two articles are merged the article will be utterly swamped by information of cultivated S. bicolor. A comparison might be is the "Tomato" article were merged with the "Solanum" article. Because tomatoes are by far the best known species within the genus, the article would be utterly swamped by the tomato information, to the detriment of a perfectly good article on the genus. The same thing will inevitably happen if we merge all the sorghum articles. Yes, this article is just a stub, but that does not mean that the genus does not warrant its own article. It just means that nobody has bothered to write the article. There is extensive information about the sorghum genus and species other than bicolor, more than enough to justify the genus article. Because Sorghum is a primarily tropical genus with little importance to North America or Europe aside from as a grain, any merger of articles will simply reinforce the bias that Wikipedia is trying to minimise. The subjects justify separate articles every bit as much as any other genus with a single cultivated member justifies separate articles. Unless we are going to merge Tomato and Solanum or Sunflower and Helianthus, I can't see why we should merge these articles just because the genus name happens to have been adopted as the name of the crop.

Further on this point, if we merge cultivated sorghum and the genus sorghum, doesn't that mean that we then have to merge every single article of a sorghum species? Does that mean that it then becomes impossible to write an article on, say, Sorghum halepense? Because if we merge S. bicolor and the genus sorghum, why do we not also merge S. halepense with the genus? And every other article on a species of sorghum that will ever be written? I have never seen this done for any other genus. Every other genus allows separate species to have separate articles no matter how small some of the stubs may be or how significant the species. So I can't imagine why we would do it for Sorghum, but at the same time, I can't see any reason to justify merging S. bicolor with the genus, and not S. halepense.

I can't see how merging the articles can achieve anything. It won't decrease confusion, it will increase it. It won't make the article more accurate, it will inevitably make it less accurate. It won't encourage an expansion of information about the genus Sorghum or other species therein, it will lead to most potential contributors of that information giving up because the article is already umpteen pages long. It won't help people looking for information on the genus Sorghum, it will just reinforce the developed, temperate-world bias by ignoring or minimising the importance of the rest of the Genus outside of Europe and North America. In short, "Sorghum the genus" and "Sorghum the crop" are distinct subjects, every bit as much as "Solanum the genus" and "Tomato the crop". Very little information will be true of both subjects and a merger will not serve any of the aims of Wikipedia as far as I can tell. If you can think of a single aim that a merger would further, then please let us know.Mark Marathon (talk) 03:23, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Your comments and explanations are appreciated.

Sorghum as a genus and as a commercial crop is an unusual and confusing case. There is no need to generalize this to 'Tomato' and 'Solanum' for example - because the terms are distinct. Similarly, there is no need to merge Johnson Grass article into this article - because the term is distinct.

I like your arguments on why Sorghum (genus) and Commercial sorghum should be different articles. I agree that this current Sorghum (genus) article is a stub and could be expanded and greatly improved. Therefore, I am persuaded to leave them as two separate articles.

I am still unpersuaded on the other aspect of our discussion - which is whether we should rename the two articles. Renaming is easy. But is it justified? Per WP:COMMONNAME, a wiki article titled Sorghum should refer to this term's prevalence in reliable English-language sources. From average wiki reader perspective, particularly from regions where Sorghum is a staple food, the prevalent meaning of this term Sorghum isn't Sorghum (genus), it is what is in the wiki article Commercial sorghum.

Across the world, where Sorghum is cultivated for food or fodder, people do not refer to Sorghum as 'Commercial sorghum,' nor does English literature or references such as the Sorghum Handbook (see my comment above). For 100s of millions of people where Sorghum is a staple, the term Sorghum means food variety of Sorghum, and not the genus Sorghum. To this broader wiki readers, the article titled Sorghum should mean the consumed variety, per WP:COMMONNAME guidelines.

Yes, there are wiki readers, well versed in botanical terms, for whom Sorghum is the common name for the genus. Such wiki readers are more sophisticated, and fewer.

Our choice then is [1] to leave things as they are. Or, [2] rename this article as Sorghum (genus) and rename 'Commercial Sorghum' article as Sorghum. Which is better? and why?

I favor the title Sorghum in a wiki article to refer to what is prevalent in the literature for the larger, common audience.

I await comments. I will cross-post a link to this discussion on Commercial sorghum with hope for additional comments. ApostleVonColorado (talk) 18:30, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Once again, WP:COMMONNAME doesn't provide any indication that the article should be renamed. Paraphrasing, it simply says that the name of an article should be the name most commonly used for that subject. The name most commonly used for the Sorghum genus is "Sorghum", and as such that is the title that WP:COMMONNAME dictates should be used.

But really, I'm not all that invested in the issue of renaming, while remaining vehemently opposed to a merger. I disagree with the idea of a rename, but I'm not going to revert it if you feel passionately enough to do it. My preferred order of options are:

1) Leave the names alone. I can't see a good reason to change them.

2) Rename this article to [Sorghum (genus)] and the other article as [Sorghum (crop)], ideally merging the Sorghum bicolor and Commercial Sorghum articles. Direct {Sorghum] to a disambiguation page. I considered [Sorghum (grain)] as a possible title, but since the article will also deal with forage sorghum we should stick with [Sorghum (crop)].

3) Rename either the Sorghum bicolor or Commercial Sorghum article as Sorghum.Rename this article as [Sorghum (genus)] and place a hatnote on the Sorghum article. I really don't like this idea because it is likely to lead to confusion and because it has a temperate/devloped world bias.Mark Marathon (talk) 01:45, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Just as point of interest, according to the FAO source included in the references, "Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, is known under a variety of names: great millet and guinea corn in West Africa, kafir corn in South Africa, dura in Sudan, mtama in eastern Africa, jowar in India and kaoliang in China. In the United States it is usually referred to as milo or milo-maize". If this is correct, and I see no reason to doubt it, then the word sorghum is not used for the food variety by 100s of millions of people. Even within the US the most common term for the grain is not sorghum, it is milo. While I don't doubt that a lot of people use sorghum to refer to the grain, it seems that the majority of those 100s of millions of people do not. When we combine that with the fact that people exclusively refer to the genus as Sorghum, the rationale for renaming the Sorghum bicolor or Commercial Sorghum article to [[Sorghum] vanishes. It would seem that a better case could be made under WP:COMMONNAME for renaming the articles Milo or Jowar since these are presumably the two most commonly used by English speakers to refer to the crop. I'm not recommending such a rename, but this information strongly indicates that that option 2 above should be the one used if you feel you must rename the articles.Mark Marathon (talk) 02:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorghum bicolor, like most other staple foods, has names in local languages, names such as kaoliang, jowar, mtama etc. All these are not English-language words. Between Milo and Sorghum, The US Grains Council could have used either, but chose to call its publication The Sorghum Handbook (see: http://www.grains.org/images/stories/technical_publications/Sorghum_Handbook.pdf). Milo is a Spanish-language term. FWIW, Sorghum is the English-language term I have come across for Sorghum (crop) in English-language literature in Africa, Asia, Americas, Middle East and southern Europe. Let me research this a bit, get reliable sources on usage statistics to avoid any personal bias. I will then post my finding on this talk page before proceeding with one of the three options you suggest. ApostleVonColorado (talk) 02:51, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Hang on. Countries such as Nigeria and India are English speaking countries with English as an official language and with large English speaking populations. India has the second largest English speaking population on the planet. As such, whatever word English speakers in those countries use for crop sorghum are, by definition, English-language words. You don't get to tell billions of people that the nouns they apply to an object when they are speaking English are not English words because they aren't being used by white people. That is incredibly racist. If three hundred million English speakers point at crop sorghum and say "jowar", then "jowar" is an English word for cultivated sorghum. White people don't get to decide what constitutes a "real" English word, any more than an Englishman gets to tell an American that "sidewalk" and "automobile" are not English-language words, just "names in a local language".Mark Marathon (talk) 04:45, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Per WP:TPG, I invite you to help keep our focus on ways to improve this article. As I wrote, "Mtama, Jowar and Kaolian are local language terms"; See this swahili article for example: http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mtama. These are not the words English speakers in Swahili-speaking regions of Africa, India or China use for crop sorghum when they publish articles in English language or discuss sorghum in English language. People who are fluent in two or more languages use multiple terms. The best way to resolve this for this article, is to get WP:RS sources on usage statistics for sorghum and other terms. Which is what I promised and I intend to do in good faith. If you have alternate suggestions for resolving this, I welcome your suggestions. ApostleVonColorado (talk) 12:32, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I would support this option:"Rename either the Sorghum bicolor or Commercial Sorghum article as Sorghum.Rename this article as [Sorghum (genus)] and place a hatnote on the Sorghum article." I think most readers will come to Sorgham looking for information about the crop. This conversation is convoluted, so maybe split/narrow the discussions.LaTeeDa (talk) 12:51, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

India, Nigeria and Mexico - three of the largest producers of Sorghum, use the term Sorghum in English-language literature when they are referring to Sorghum bicolor crop. The term in United States, the other major producer of Sorghum crop, is also simply Sorghum (see notes above about Sorghum Handbook). Here is a list of verifiable sources from India, Nigeria and Mexico. Some of these are bilingual; nevertheless, in English language part, the term is only Sorghum.

• 2010-2011 Annual Report, Directorate of Sorghum Research India
• Other Publications and Annual Reports, DSR India
• Book about the crop, and names, in Africa and India: Sorghum, H. Doggett (1988), ISBN 0-582-46345-9
• An English language scientific publication from Northern India on Sorghum forage
• An English language scientific publication from IAR-Samaru, Nigeria on Sorghum
• An article on the importance of Sorghum in Nigeria and other west African countries, published in Nigeria
• An article in South Africa that uses the term Sorghum to describe the crop's importance in Africa
• A bilingual article on Sorghum crop in Mexico; the English version exclusively uses the term Sorghum
• An article on Sorghum crop from Estación Experimental Aula (Zaragoza. ESPAÑA) which uses the term Sorghum in English language parts of the paper

Between various terms for Sorghum crop (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) in English language literature from Africa, India and other nations, the term Sorghum is predominant. ApostleVonColorado (talk) 20:36, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Besides the point that Apostle is making that Sorgham is the most common usage in English across different countries, there is also MOS:COMMONALITY. This is the idea that the term that is recognizable across different regional variations of English is usually preferred to a more common regional variant. "Universally used terms are often preferable to less widely distributed terms, especially in article titles." It appears to be that 'Sorghum' is not only the most common term, but by far is the most universal term for the crop, as shown by Apostle's references. I think we should go ahead with the move. I agree with Mark that the page for the genus Sorghum should be kept separate from the crop Sorghum.

Also, I suggest that the title of this talk page section be changed from "Removal of species specific material" to "Deleted content and move/merge discussion".LaTeeDa (talk) 04:36, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Per WP:RM/TR, because there has been 'any' past debate about the move, this must be treated as a controversial move, and cannot be done as a technical move. I will request the move using the controversial move process and referencing this discussion. I will also redirect the move notice templates to the new discussion.LaTeeDa (talk) 04:04, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorghum output in 2005 image

Per discussion above under Removal of species specific material, this article is about Sorghum (genus). The image 'Sorghum output in 2005' is not representative of Sorghum (genus). Why does it belong in this article? ApostleVonColorado (talk) 00:07, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I inadvertently reverted it along with the text, Mark Marathon (talk) 01:07, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Original area of cultivation, species shown in photo

1. Could someone add what the original area of cultivation was? I heard that millet was the only grain native to Africa and checked this article to confirm it but couldn't.

2. What is the species shown in the (first) photo? It doesn't look like sorghum bicolor. DBlomgren (talk) 13:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus. However, there seems to be a liking for the idea of a disambiguation page so I would encourage further discussion of this if desired. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 21:30, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

---

• Sorghum → Sorghum (genus)
• Commercial sorghum → Sorghum

– Currently, Sorghum is an article about the genus of a number of grasses, only some of which are used for crops. The article Commercial sorghum is about the cultivation of sorghum, an important crop worldwide, and usually the species Sorghum bicolor. It is unusual for a crop name to be the same as the genus name, and this has created some confusion. Recently there has been some discussion about whether the crop or the genus is the common name 'sorghum'. One editor argued (without providing references) that in non-western English speaking countries where sorghum is grown, different terms besides sorghum are widely used in different varieties of English, and that sorghum is not a common name for the crop, and therefore that the genus should be the primary article with the title 'sorghum'. Another editor provided a number of references attempting to show that sorghum is widely used for the crop in English in many countries, and also because this is an important crop and more widely known than the genus, therefore the crop is the common name, not the genus (per WP:COMMONNAME). Another editor (myself) noted that even if various regional varieties of English use different terms and therefore sorghum might not be the most commonly used term for the crop (something for which no evidence has been provided), 'sorghum' is clearly the most widely distributed term around the world, and per MOS:COMMONALITY should be the common name. This is important because some of the English speaking countries that may sometimes use alternative terms are also very large (esp. India and Nigeria).

In that recent discussion, there is one paragraph that includes references, and that I quote below:

"India, Nigeria and Mexico - three of the largest producers of Sorghum, use the term Sorghum in English-language literature when they are referring to Sorghum bicolor crop. The term in United States, the other major producer of Sorghum crop, is also simply Sorghum (see notes above about Sorghum Handbook). Here is a list of verifiable sources from India, Nigeria and Mexico. Some of these are bilingual; nevertheless, in English language part, the term is only Sorghum.

• 2010-2011 Annual Report, Directorate of Sorghum Research India
• Other Publications and Annual Reports, DSR India
• Book about the crop, and names, in Africa and India: Sorghum, H. Doggett (1988), ISBN 0-582-46345-9
• An English language scientific publication from Northern India on Sorghum forage
• An English language scientific publication from IAR-Samaru, Nigeria on Sorghum
• An article on the importance of Sorghum in Nigeria and other west African countries, published in Nigeria
• An article in South Africa that uses the term Sorghum to describe the crop's importance in Africa
• A bilingual article on Sorghum crop in Mexico; the English version exclusively uses the term Sorghum
• An article on Sorghum crop from Estación Experimental Aula (Zaragoza. ESPAÑA) which uses the term Sorghum in English language parts of the paper" LaTeeDa (talk) 05:25, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

"One editor argued (without providing references) that in non-western English speaking countries where sorghum is grown, different terms besides sorghum are widely used." That editor would be me, and I not only provided a reference, I provided a quote: "Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, is known under a variety of names: great millet and guinea corn in West Africa, kafir corn in South Africa, dura in Sudan, mtama in eastern Africa, jowar in India and kaoliang in China. In the United States it is usually referred to as milo or milo-maize". Now you may argue that someone's original Google research about what the crop is usually called outranks the research publications of the FAO, but I disagree. And lest you think this is just the FAO making this claim, try doing a Scholar search with the phrase "known as jowar in india" or "known as milo". You will get multiple journal references all stating "sorghum (Sorghum vulgare), commonly known as jowar in India", "Sorghum, known as jowar in India", "Sorghum is popularly known as “Jowar” in India" and so forth. This is the published, usually peer-reviewed, position of experts in the field. Unless we have some equally credible source that states that Sorghum is not most commonly known as Jowar in India, milo in the US etc, then the issue would seem to be settled, Unless Wikipedia editors are going to to start crediting original research over published works by experts. If the FAO researchers say that it is usually called by those names, then I am inclined to believe them over a Wikipedia editor's Google research.

On the topic of the original research you quoted, of course one can find technical material written in English that uses the term sorghum. That misses the point, which is what the crop is commonly called. IOW it's not case of whether technical papers intended for an international audience refer to the crop as sorghum. By that standard people in the USA don't commonly refer to "bison" as "buffalo" because I can find technical articles from the US that use only "bison". Just as bison is preferred in US-written technical publications because it is more precise and widely understood by an international audience, so we should expect Sorghum to be used in Indian or Nigerian technical publications. And just as buffalo is the more common term in the US despite this, so milo, jowar etc are the usual common names of the crop, at least according to the experts. In fact the "Buffalo" article is a good example of how this issue should be handled. Despite the fact that buffalo refers to animals of the genus Bubalus, the article of that name is a disambiguation page.

But as I pointed out at length above, the issue isn't, as you suggest, whether the crop sorghum is widely known as sorghum. That's not open to dispute. The issue is that the genus Sorghum is not just widely known as Sorghum, it is universally known throughout the English speaking world as Sorghum. So the question becomes which of these topics gets the article named "Sorghum". I'll simply repeat my earlier position. I don't care enough to oppose this move whatever anyone decides to do, but I would prefer that the article titled "Sorghum" be made into a disambiguation page linking to the three articles about subjects commonly called "Sorghum". I still haven't seen anyone present any compelling reason why the crop, a subject that is sometimes referred to as "sorghum", gets dibs on the article title. Meanwhile the genus, a subject that is universally referred to as "sorghum" and also the source of the crop's name, gets relegated to an alternative title. That makes little sense. Mark Marathon (talk) 06:18, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Regarding whether the primary topic should be the crop, see WP:PRIMARYTOPIC: A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. Scanning the 800+ wikilinks to Sorghum, almost all appear to be for the crop. That the crop has alternative names is a result of it being an important topic, and is not a reason for it to not be the primary topic. -LaTeeDa (talk) 07:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Support. As I mentioned earlier, I support this move.

I understand Mark Marathon's concern, and appreciate his clarification, 'he doesn't care enough to oppose the move.' On FAO and peer reviewed journals, I am a regular user of google scholar and such resources, including for past contributions to wiki's sorghum and other staple food articles. Here are a few FAO articles, from southeast Asia to Africa, some in multiple languages, where the authors use Sorghum in the English language title/summary to mean commercial/crop.

Training manual for sweet sorghum

A catalogue of passport and characterization data of sorghum, pearl millet and finger millet germplasm from Zimbabwe

Cultural practices for maize, sorghum and millets

Sorghum and millets in human nutrition - This FAO source supports Mark's comment that Sorghum crop is known by many names, etc. in chapter 1; the authors, nevertheless, use sorghum, and not the other names, in the title and various chapters to mean commercial/crop sorghum.

ApostleVonColorado (talk) 13:56, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, and support Sorghum being a disambiguation page. Where I grew up in Oklahoma, the grain crop was milo, and sorghum was the syrup. Now I understand that, despite all the talk about common names in English, no one cares what it's called in Oklahoma (and I'm sure there's a reference somewhere that suggests I'm "misremembering"), but I think Wikipedia readers are best served by a disambiguation page that mentions the genus, the crop, and the syrup. But I'm not convinced that commercial sorghum is the best name (it only gets 18,700 ghits vs. 577,000 for "grain sorghum" and 69,000 for "sorghum syrup"); I'd prefer sorghum (crop).--Curtis Clark (talk) 22:39, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

'grain sorghum' getting 577K hits, and 'sorghum syrup' getting 69K hits seems to clearly meet the definition in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for a primary topic. BTW, 'genus sorghum' gets only 39K hits. To meet the policy threshold of being 'more likely than all other topics combined' to be the topic sought, we would expect the syrup and genus to get about 9x as many hits as they actually get. It doesn't seem like this is a shade of gray. I wish you would reconsider, and base your opposition or support based on the community's policies. -LaTeeDa (talk) 17:54, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

"genus sorghum" is of little probative value. eschscholzia, 401,000 hits; "genus eschscholzia", 13,500 hits. cucurbita, 1,640,000 hits; "genus cucurbita", 125,000 hits. No one writes "genus ____" when referring to _____, and the word "genus" does not often appear in non-taxonomic texts. I can't think of an effective way to search for the genus (rather than its species) in contrast to the common name. I should note that "sorghum halepense", a weedy species of the genus, gets 145,000 hits, and "sorghum bicolor" gets 1,750,000 hits. In both of these it's clear that the genus is being referred to, and in the former it's not even the crop species.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:27, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

You are right that this is not a simple topic. Your point is well taken that it is possible that folks would search for the genus without using the genus name. My gut feeling is that because the crop name is so common, that pages for the genus would likely disambiguate with the word 'genus', and genus pages are uncommon. This is backed up by scanning titles and descriptions of the top hits using google and google scholar - a quick look >90% appear to be for the crop. Probably a better metric, recommended by WP:PTOPIC, is to look at the incoming wikilinks[2]. I spent some time looking through the first 200, trying in good faith to find links to the genus or the syrup. Most wikilinks are geography, food, or agriculture articles that intend to link to the crop. Of the 200, I found one definite and a few possible links that were intended to link to the genus, and none to the syrup (and I may have missed a few, and there was one link to this discussion). The wikilnks appear to be overwhelmingly (>95% in the sample I looked at) to the crop, even though they actually link to a page about the genus. The policy threshold is a majority, and we're nowhere near it. I'll stop arguing this point now, and thanks for putting up with all this. Good night, all. -LaTeeDa (talk) 05:19, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

More peer reviewed sources, from the US and from Oklahoma, where the term sorghum is used to refer to sorghum (crop)

Sorghum Entomology - Annual Review of Entomology

A Sorghum variety highly tolerant to the greenbug

Sorghum in Dairy Cattle Production

Crop Profile for Oklahoma Sorghum - Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry]

I like the disamb idea, in addition to renaming/move. ApostleVonColorado (talk) 18:24, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

I still have no idea what listing peer reviewed sources using the term sorghum is supposed to be achieving. I think you believe that it tells us something about common usage, when clearly it does not. As I pointed out at length above, I can readily compile a list of peer reviewed sources, from the US and from Oklahoma, where the term "bison" is used to refer to buffalo. That does not mean that "bison" most common name used for for buffalo in the US and Oklahoma.Mark Marathon (talk) 22:32, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

They are supposed to be means to verify that the term sorghum is commonly used to refer to sorghum (crop). Sorghum is indeed a syrup, and a genus too. Between the three usage - crop/commercial, syrup and genus, which is by far the most common usage of the term sorghum in English language literature around the world? I submit, with WP:RS sources, that it is sorghum (crop).

While the Sorghum (genus) is indeed universally known as sorghum, our challenge is to find which of these three pages sorghum be the primary topic: Sorghum (crop), Sorghum (genus) and Sorghum (syrup). When people are looking for information on sorghum around the world, both regular and technically sophisticated readers, which page is it that they are most likely to be looking for? Wikipedia would be more useful to wiki readers, if vast majority of the readers, across the world, get the information they likely are looking for, with least effort, and with least confusion. From that perspective, I submit wiki page on Sorghum (crop) should be titled Sorghum.

I do not understand you. My confusion with your example is perhaps because neither Buffalo is the genus for Bison, nor is the term Buffalo commonly used in English language literature across Asia/Africa/etc to mean Bison. Please do list "peer reviewed sources, from the US and from Oklahoma, where the term bison is used to refer to buffalo." Perhaps that will help me understand you better. ApostleVonColorado (talk) 01:07, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Removal of picture of a plastic bag

I've removed the image of a plastic bag that apparently held Sorghum bicolor seed because it's not illustrative of the genus Sorghum. It's about as relevant as placing an image of a can of tomato soup into the Solanum article, or an image of a pair of rubber gloves into the Ficus article.Mark Marathon (talk) 21:23, 21 December 2012 (UTC)