Mustard (redirected from mustard oil glucosinolates)

mustard, common name for the Cruciferae, a large family chiefly of herbs of north temperate regions. The easily distinguished flowers of the Cruciferae have four petals arranged diagonally ("cruciform") and alternating with the four sepals. Most of the nearly 50 genera indigenous to the United States are found in the West. The family includes numerous weeds and wildflowers, e.g., peppergrass, toothwort, and shepherd's-purse. The Cruciferae, often rich in sulfur compounds and in vitamin C, include important food and condiment plants, many cultivated from ancient times. Especially important are the herbs of the genus Brassica, e.g., rape, rutabaga, turnip, mustard, and numerous varieties of the cabbage species. Cress, watercress, horse-radish, and radish are also of this family. A few species are cultivated as ornamentals, e.g., candytuft, rose of Jericho, wallflower, and types of stock, rocket, and alyssum. Woad was formerly an important dye source. The herbs of the family that are called mustard are species of Brassica native to Europe and W Asia. Most important commercially are the black mustard (B. nigra) and white mustard (B. alba). These are yellow-flowered annuals naturalized in the United States; the black mustard is often a weed infesting grainfields, as is also the charlock, or wild mustard (B. arvensis). The black and the white mustard resemble each other and are used more or less similarly. They are cultivated for the seeds, which are ground and used as a condiment, usually mixed to a paste with vinegar or oil, sometimes with spices or with an admixture of starch to reduce the pungency. (The pungency of mustard does not develop until it is moistened.) Mustards are also grown as salad plants and for greens, as are the Indian, or leaf, mustard (B. juncea) and the Chinese mustard, or bok-choi (B. chinensis). The white mustard is used in some places as forage for sheep and as green manure. Black mustard seeds are more pungent than the white and yield a yellowish, biting oil (mustard oil) that has also been useful in medicine. Mustard is classified in the divison Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Capparales, family Cruciferae.

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mustard

a. a brownish-yellow colour

b. (as adjective): a mustard carpet

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mustard

any of several Eurasian plants of the genus Brassica, esp black mustard and white mustard, having yellow or white flowers and slender pods and cultivated for their pungent seeds: family Brassicaceae (crucifers)

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mustard [′məs·tərd]

(botany)

Any of several annual crucifers belonging to the genusBrassicaof the order Capparales; leaves are lyrately lobed, flowers are yellow, and pods have linear beaks; the mustards are cultivated for their pungent seed and edible foliage, and the seeds ofB. nigerare used as a condiment, prepared as a powder, paste, or oil.

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Mustard 

plant species of Sinapis, family Cruciferae, and also several species of the genus Brassica. The genus Sinapis numbers seven to ten annual, or more rarely perennial, species, distributed in Europe, North Africa, and Asia. They are predominantly weeds with leaves ranging from entire to notched (with lyrate lobes) or dissected and yellow (rarely yellow-white) blossoms. The fruit is a bivalvular pod with from three to seven noticeable ribs and a long rostellum. In the USSR there are two or three species.

When it is cultivated, white, or English, mustard (S. alba) is an annual branching plant 25–100 cm high. The blossom cluster is multiflorous. The pod, with its flattened (ensiform) rostellum, is on a pedicel that slants sharply from the stem. The seeds are pale yellow or light brown; 1,000 seeds weigh 4–7 g. In its uncultivated state it is a weed. Wild mustard, or charlock (5. arvensis), grows almost everywhere in the USSR. The pods have a conical sharp-edged rostellum; the pedicels with fruit reach obliquely upward. The seeds, which produce weeds in cultivated crops, are reddish brown or black and retain their germinating power for ten years. Mustards of the genus Brassica include three cultivated annual species. Indian mustard (B. juncea) is a branching plant up to 1.5 m tall. The lower leaves are notched (with lyrate lobes), and the upper ones are entire. The blossom cluster is usually corymbiform. The pod is tuberculate, with a noticeable middle rib and a subulate rostellum, slanting away from the stem at a sharp angle. The seeds are yellow, cinnamon-brown, or chestnut-brown; 1,000 seeds weigh 1.8–4.5 g. It is grown in Europe and Asia (including the USSR). Black mustard (B. nigra), which has pods tightly pressed to the stem, is cultivated in Europe, Asia Minor, and America. In the USSR it is a weed. Abyssinian mustard (B. carinata) is cultivated in Ethiopia and the mountains of East Africa. Also included among the mustards is sea rocket (Cakile maritima), a wild annual species of the family Cruciferae.

Mustard is grown to obtain a fatty oil from its seeds (35—45 percent in Indian mustard seeds; 20–34 percent in white mustard seeds), which is used in the bread-baking, confectionery, canning, and perfume industries; also obtained is a volatile (allyl) oil, used in medicine in the form of spirit of mustard (a 2 percent solution of the oil in alcohol) as an external stimulant and revulsant. The mustard powder obtained from mustard cakes is used to prepare mustard plasters and table mustard. Root-crop and leafy varieties of Indian mustard are eaten as vegetables. White mustard may be fed to livestock until the beginning of pod formation. All mustards are good nectar bearers. Indian mustard was first cultivated in Southwest Asia, and white and black mustard in the Mediterranean countries.

In Russia, mustard (predominantly Indian mustard) began to be cultivated in the 18th century. In 1970 the area under mustard cultivation in the USSR (Lower Volga, Kazakhstan, Stavropol’ Krai, Novosibirsk Oblast, etc.) consisted of 221,000 hectares (ha). Mustard yields 3.9 centners/ha. Regionalized varieties grown include VNIIMK 162, Neo-sypaiushchaiasia (nonshedding) 2, and Volgograd 189/191. Mustard is planted after winter crops, legumes, or intertilled crops. Approximate norms for mineral fertilizers (in kg/ha) are: 30 N, 45–60 P₂0₅, and 30–45 K₂0. It is sown in rows 15 cm apart, the seeding rate is 6–8 kg/ha, and the depth of sowing is 4–5 cm. Care of plantings includes harrowing until germination (if a crust forms), weeding, and controlling pests (the cress flea beetle, turnip sawfly, and others) and diseases (powdery mildew). Indian mustard is harvested at the beginning of wax ripeness of the seeds. White mustard is grown in the USSR in the nonchernozem zone (up to 62° N lat.) in negligible quantities.

REFERENCES

Velichko, V. V. Belaia gorchitsaν nechernozemnoi polose. Moscow, 1951.
Minkevich, I. A., and V. E. Borkovskii. Maslichnye kul’tury, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1955.
Sazanova, L. V. Kul’tura sareptskoi gorchitsy. Moscow, 1955.

M. E. KIRPICHNIKOV