2. History of theSunflowers European explorers saw their first sunflower in South America. The Incas grew a tall, single stemmed sunflower from years of selecting and breeding plants from a smaller, native wild flower. Spanish botanists were among the first to receive batches of seeds brought back by the explorers, and by 1580 the sunflower was a common sight in Spanish villages. From Spain, the sunflower spread to Italy, Egypt, India, China, and Russia where it was first grown commercially as an important oilseed crop. The American Indians grew the sunflower as a food crop and ate the calcium-rich seeds As with most plants cultivated by indigenous people who lived close to the earth, the sunflower had more than one use. A yellow dye was extracted from the petals, oil was extracted and used for ceremonial body painting, the stalks produced an exceptionally light fibre - still said to be one of the lightest fibres known - and the blooming times of the plant indicated dates in the hunting calendar. Geographic Distribution The common sunflowers is an annual, broadleaf plant with a tall hirsute stem, often un-branched, growing to 3m at a fast rate and bearing a single yellow, circular, large flower with a black centre. The leaves are hairy, oval-shaped, 10 to 30 cm long and 5 to 20 cm wide.
4. it is used as a garden ornamental, but its chief importance is as seed producer two forms of the common sunflower are cultivated as crop plants the non-oil type, grown for its edible, gray or white, dark striped seeds; and the oil type, grown for the oil content of its small black seeds the larger seeds of the non-oil type are marketed for human consumption; the smaller, for poultry and wild bird feed sip .ponsela its seeds are crushed to extract the oil, and the fragmented seed residue is made into a high- protein livestock feed. Sunflower oil extracted from the seeds, is used for cooking, as a carrier oil and to produce margarine and biodiesel, as it is cheaper than olive oil. Uses of the sunflowers
