Rye (Secale cereale)

Secale cereale, commonly called rye, is a cereal, cover crop and forage grass of the wheat tribe, closely related to both wheat and barley. It is grown principally across a belt running from Eastern and Northern Europe into Russia, where its unusual cold tolerance and ability to thrive in poor soils suit it to conditions that other cereals cannot tolerate. The grain appears to have entered cultivation as an unintentional weedy contaminant of wheat fields before becoming a deliberate crop, with domesticated remains found at Neolithic sites in Anatolia and firmer evidence of established cultivation appearing during Europe Bronze Age. Rye grain today is milled into bread, especially the dark rye breads still popular across Northern and Eastern Europe, and it is also used to brew beer, distill rye whiskey, feed livestock and improve soil as a cover crop, with Europe producing roughly half the world supply.