Interesting Facts About Sunflowers

What ineteresting do we know about sunflower?

1. Sunflower originates from the steppe zone of North America. The plant was brought to Europe by the Spaniards around 1500, and to Ukraine by Hetman Razumovsky more than 250 years ago, along with the pyramidal poplar as ornamental plants.
2. The scientific name of the sunflower is Helianthus annuus, which means sunflower. From a scientific point of view, the seeds are not actually seeds, they belong to the class of achenes - edible fruits of flowers in the form of seeds, where the fruit inside does not stick to the outer coating.
3. Ukraine is a leader in sunflower production and the largest exporter of sunflower oil in the world (5.6 million tons = 57% of total exports).  The special value of sunflower oil as a food product is due to its high content of unsaturated fatty acids - up to 90%, mainly linoleic 55-60% and oleic 30-40%. Linoleic acid is the most useful biologically (in new hybrids, its content reaches 75-80%), which normalizes cholesterol metabolism, which has a positive effect on human health. 
4. The sunflower basket consists of up to 2000 miniature flowers (called florets), which turn into seeds after pollination. The sunflower genus Helianthus L. includes more than 50 species, most of which are perennial. Of the annual species, only one is widespread in culture - Helianthus annuus L. According to the modern classification, it is divided into two independent species: cultivated sunflower (H. cultus Wenz.) and wild sunflower (H. ruderalis Wenz.).
5. Sunflowers always turn toward the sun, a phenomenon called heliotropism. Even in cloudy weather, the sunflower's hat shows where the sun is now relative to the horizon.
   The world's tallest sunflower was grown in Germany in 2009, with a height of 8.03 meters. In Ukraine, the largest sunflower, 4 meters 17 cm tall, was grown in 2011 in the village of Plesetske, Vasylkiv district, Kyiv region.
6. The true father of scientific sunflower breeding is the great breeder Vasily Stepanovich Pustovoit, who started breeding sunflowers in 1912 at the Kruglik research station in the Kuban. The oil content of sunflower was increased from 20 to 50% or more.
7. The first Ukrainian sunflower hybrids resistant to imidazolinone herbicides and herbicides containing tribenuron-methyl were created by breeders of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute of Breeding (VNIS).
8. The global sunflower acreage in 2018 amounted to 26 mln ha. Russia (7.5 mln ha), Ukraine (6.5 mln ha) and the EU (4.3 mln ha) account for 70% of the total planted areas.
9. High oleic sunflower is a sunflower with more than 82% of omega-9 oleic acid (monounsaturated fatty acid) and low content of omega-6 linoleic acid (polyunsaturated fatty acid) in its oil.
10. Sunflower is a valuable honey plant. The honey productivity of 1 hectare of sunflower is 47-75 kg. During the flowering period, the increase in the performance of the control hive can be 3-5 kg per day.
    The history of the sunflower dates back to the third millennium B.C. Studies show that the flower was cultivated by North American Indians at that time. The seeds of ancient sunflowers were very small, no more than 5 mm long. Despite this, the Indians used them for food.
11. The sunflower broomrape (Orobanche cumana) is a parasitic plant that is mostly related to sunflowers. The first race A appeared as early as 1882, B - 1925, C - 1960s, D - 1990s, E - 1990s, F - 1995, G - 2004, H - 2004.
12. One plant of sunflower broomrape produces up to 500 thousand seeds that remain in the soil for up to 20 years. It infects the root system of sunflower and causes significant damage to plant productivity, which can lead to complete crop loss in case of significant damage to the field