brown mustard
- Also called:
- Indian mustard or Chinese mustard
brown mustard, (Brassica juncea), herbaceous plant of the family Brassicaceae grown primarily for its pungent seeds, which are a source of the condiment known as mustard, and as a leafy vegetable. Stronger in flavour than white mustard (Sinapsis alba), brown mustard seeds are characteristic of many French-type paste mustards. The plant is native to the Himalayas and is cultivated in temperate regions of the world. The leaves and swollen leaf stems of brown mustard plants are edible and used as greens or potherbs; they are especially important as a vegetable in much of Asia and Africa, and numerous varieties and cultivars have been developed. The plant is also grown as a source of vegetable oil and is an important crop for this purpose in northern India, Pakistan, China, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan. The oil is used for food or for industrial purposes, with the residual cake used for animal feed.
Physical description
The leaves of brown mustard are highly variable in appearance, depending on the variety. Those grown as a leafy vegetable range in appearance from the curly “Southern mustard” popular in parts of the southern United States to the compact head mustards of eastern Asia. Some popular Japanese and Korean varieties have large kale-like leaves that can be purple-green in colour. The leaves are typically harvested before the plant “bolts,” or goes to flower. The bisexual flowers have four yellow petals arranged in a cross. Each fruit pod contains up to 20 seeds, which are nearly globular in shape, finely pitted, and odourless when whole. Brown mustard seeds are dark yellow in colour and about 2.5 mm (0.1 inch) in diameter.
Cultivation
For the production of mustard, brown mustard has almost entirely replaced the formerly used black mustard (Brassica nigra), which was unsuitable for mechanized cropping and which now occurs mainly as an introduced weed. Indeed, the production of brown mustard for its seeds is fully mechanized in the main producing countries. The plant is grown as a spring-sown annual crop whose dry seeds are harvested in early autumn. From very small seedlings the plants grow rapidly and enter a phase of dense flowering; the blooms have an intense yellow colour. The plants reach their full height of 1.5 to 2 metres (5 to 6.5 feet) as their flowers fade and after numerous green seedpods appear on their branches. Brown mustard plants are easy and inexpensive to grow; they flourish on many different types of soil, suffer from unusually few insect pests or plant diseases, and tolerate extremes of weather without serious harm.
