COMPETENCY ENHANCEMENT 1

DEFINITION OF TERMS

CROP SCIENCE

1) Abiotic – are non-living chemical and physical parts of the environment that affects living
organisms and the functioning of ecosystems.
2) Angiosperm – plants whose seeds develop within a surrounding layer of plant tissue,
called the carpel, with seeds attached to the margins.
3) Annuals – plants that completes its life cycle, from germination to the production of
seed, within one year and dies.
4) Asexual reproduction – a type of reproduction by which offspring arise from a single
organism, and inherent genes of that parent only.
5) Autotrophy – organisms capable of synthesizing its own food from inorganic substances,
using light or chemical energy.
6) Broadcast – is one of the oldest most common methods of seed sowing, where the
seeds are just spread on the soil, the seeds may or may not be covered with soil.
7) Tillage – the act of tilling land. Its purpose is to mix organic matter to soil, controls
weeds, break up crusted soil or loosen up soil.
8) Chlorophyll – a green pigment, present in all green plants responsible for the absorption
of light to provide energy for photosynthesis.
9) Cloning – the process of creating exact copy of a biological unit.
10) Complete flower – a flower having all four floral parts, sepals, petals, stamens, and
carpels.
11) Compost – a decayed organic material used a plant fertilizer.
12) Cuttings – is a piece or a part of the plant that is used in horticulture for vegetative
propagation.
13) Erosion – refers to wearing a way of a fields topsoil by natural physical forces or through
forces associated with farming activities such as tillage.
14) Embryo – a part of a seed, consisting of precurs or tissues for the leaves, stem, and
roots as well as one or more cotyledons.
15) Dicot – short for dicotyledon, an angiosperm that is not monocotyledon, having two
cotyledons in the seed.
16) Herbicide – a substance that is toxic to plants and is used to destroy unwanted plants.
Also commonly known as weed killer.
17) Leeching – refers to the loss of water-soluble plant nutrients from the soil, due to rain
and irrigation.
18) Lodging – is the collapse or bending of the stem when it can no longer support its own
weight.
19) Media – often also referred to as “substrate” or “potting soil”, a growing medium is a
material, other that soil on the spot in which plant are grown.
 20) Olericulture – is the science of vegetable growing, dealing with the culture of non-woody
plants for food.
21) Organ – a collection of tissues joined in a structural unit to serve a common function.
22) Organic matter – plant or animal materials/waste, or green manure with soil will
increase the amount of humus in the soil.
23) Day neutral – developing and maturing regardless of relative length of alternating
exposure to light and dark periods, corn, tomato, cucumber.
24) Drupe – a fruit consisting of an outer skin, a usually pulpy and succulent middle layer,
and a hard woody inner shell usually enclosing a single seed.
25) Ethylene – a plant hormone synthesizes by most tissues in response to stress.
26) El nino – is an abnormal weather pattern that is caused by warming of the Pacific Ocean
near the equator.
27) La nina – a cooling of the water in the equatorial pacific that occurs at irregular intervals
and is associated with widespread changes in weather patterns complementary to those
of el nino , but less extensive and damaging in their effects.
28) Water logging – occurs when the soil is so wet that there is insufficient oxygen in the
pore space for plant roots to be able to adequately respire.
29) Acid rain – rainfall made sufficiently acidic by atmospheric pollution that it causes
environmental harm, typically to forest and lakes.
30) Seasons – a period associated with some phase or activity of agriculture, a period of the
year characterized with or associated with a particular activity or phenomenon.

ANIMAL SCIENCE

1) Cattle – domesticated bovine animals

2) Cow – matured female ox, one that has given birth.
3) Caracow – mature female carabao, one that has given birth.
4) Heifer – young female ox under the age of three years, usually one that has not yet
given birth.
5) Stag – male ox castrated after sexual maturity.
6) Steer – male ox castrated before sexual maturity.
7) Ox – ruminant member of the bovine family, or sometime the male is used for draft
purposes.
8) Broodmare – a female horse used for breeding purpose.
9) Colt – a young male horse usually up to the age of three years.
10) Filly – young female horse usually up to the age of three years.
11) Foal – young horse either age below one year of age.
12) Mare – mature female horse.
13) Gelding – horse which was castrated while young.
14) Boar – male pig of any age.
15) Barrow – male pig which was castrated while young.
16) Shote – young pig of either sex, weighing approximately 60kg.
17) Weanling – young pigs separated from the sow, about 5 weeks old.
18) Suckling – young pigs from birth up to weaning.
19) Litter size- the number of young pigs born in one farrowing.
 20) Farrowing – the act of giving birth in sows.
21) Chick – young chicken while in down stage.
22) Plumage – the feathers of a fowl.
23) Cockerel – a male fowl less than one-year-old.
24) Poultry – a collective term for all domestic birds rendering economic service to man, can
also refer to dressed carcass of fowls.
25) Gestation – pregnancy time to conception to birth.
26) Fertility – ability to produce fertilizable ova and to provide proper environment for and
initiating cell division and embryonic development.
27) Sterility – inability to produce normal young.
28) Sire – male parent.
29) Dam – female parent.
30) Buck – male goat of any age.

CROP PROTECTION

1) Acaricide – toxicant for mites

2) Acid equivalent – content of active ingredient in herbicide concentrate expressed as free
acid.
3) Activator – material added to pesticide to increase its toxicity.
4) Active ingredient – toxic component of a formulated product.
5) Adherence – ability of a pesticide to stick to a given surface.
6) Algicide – toxicant to algae
7) Adjuvant – material added to improve some chemical or physical property.
8) Agitator – mechanical device to ensure uniform distribution of toxicant during dilution
and to prevent sedimentation in spray container.
9) Plant pathology – study of the organisms and the environmental factors that cause
disease in plants, of which the mechanisms by which these factors induce disease in
plants, and of the methods of preventing or controlling disease and reducing the
damage it causes.
10) Pathogen – any agent (biotic or abiotic) that causes disease.
11) Parasite – an organism which depends wholly or partly on another living organism for its
food.
12) Obligate parasite – an organism that is restricted to subsist on living organisms and
attacks only living tissues.
13) Facultative parasite – an organism which has the ability to become a parasite although it
is a saprophyte.
14) Saprophyte – an organism that lives on dead organic or inorganic matter.
15) Facultative saprophytes – an organism that has the ability to become a saprophyte but
is ordinarily a parasite.
16) Host – a plant being attacked by a parasite.
17) Suscept – a plant that is susceptible to a disease whether or not the pathogen is
parasitic.
18) Pathogenicity – the capacity of a pathogen to cause disease.
19) Pathogenesis – disease development in plant.
20) Virulence – refers to the quantitative amount of the disease that can isolate of a given
pathogen can cause in a given group of plants in terms of size of lesion or number of
lesion.
21) Aggressiveness – measures the rate at which the virulence is expressed by a given
pathogenic isolate.
22) Disease resistance – inherent ability of an organism to overcome in any degree the
effect of pathogen.
23) Susceptibility – opposite of resistance, the inability to overcome the effects of a
pathogen.
24) Tolerance – ability of a plant to withstand the severe effects of the pathogen without
experiencing a severe reduction in yield.
25) Masked symptoms – symptoms not expressed due to unfavorable conditions.
26) Symptomless carrier – a host that do not show symptom irrespective of environment.
27) Epidemiology – study of epidemics or study of the increase of disease in a population
and the factors that influence them.
28) Epidemic – any increase of disease in a population.
29) Endemic disease – one that is native or indigenous to a particular place.
30) Exotic disease – none which had been introduced from some other area.9