Chia

Chia

Scientific name: Salvia hispanica Common name: chia Family: Lamiaceae Category: small seeded / specialty seed crop

Chia is the first and primary research subject of DIY Agriculture. It serves as the complete case study for testing the repository methodology end to end: germination through storage, at human scale (PRD §8.1).

⚠️ Status: This is a documentation outline, not research. All substantive values are Unknown until evidence is collected. Do not treat anything here as growing advice.

Why chia first

Chia is the original motivating crop (PRD §4). It is a small-seeded specialty crop with real human-scale production questions: how the tiny seeds are separated from the plant, cleaned, dried, and stored by hand. It is an excellent stress test of the “small-scale relevance” principle because most published work assumes industrial threshing and cleaning.

Documentation map

Topic	Page	Scope
Overview	index.md	This page — identity and reading order
Biology	biology.md	Taxonomy, growth habit, lifecycle, flowering, photoperiod, seed development
Climate	climate.md	Temperatures, frost/heat tolerance, rainfall, photoperiod
Soil	soil.md	Soil type, texture, drainage, pH, salinity, preparation
Planting	planting.md	Seed, germination, direct sowing, density, dates
Irrigation	irrigation.md	Water needs by growth stage, water stress
Fertilization	fertilization.md	N, P, K, micronutrients, compost/manure
Pests & diseases	pests-diseases.md	Insects, fungi, birds, weeds
Harvesting	harvesting.md	Maturity, harvest window, manual harvesting
Processing	processing.md	Threshing, winnowing, cleaning, sorting
Storage	storage.md	Drying, moisture, containers, shelf life, seed viability
Yield	yield.md	Yield across scales (g/plant → kg/ha)
Economics	economics.md	Inputs, labor, cost per kg, market equivalent
Open questions	open-questions.md	What is not yet known
Sources	sources.md	Sources cited for chia

High-level identity (to be confirmed by evidence)

• Growth habit: warm-season, short-day annual herb. Evidence: Unknown.
• Key human-scale challenge: separating and cleaning very small seeds from the dry inflorescences. Evidence: Unknown.
• The five-crop comparison (chia, amaranth, sesame, sunflower, dry beans) is designed around contrasting seed sizes and processing difficulty (PRD §8).

How to extend this page set

Follow the standard crop documentation structure (PRD.md §12) and the crop template in templates/crop/. Research method and evidence rules are in docs/methodology/.

Suggested reading order for a newcomer

1. This index → 2. biology.md → 3. climate.md → 4. soil.md → 5. yield.md → 6. processing.md (the hardest human-scale step) → 7. open-questions.md.