SpringerBriefs in Agriculture – serie

This book, focusing on the agriculture sector, provides useful analysis of the green economy implementation context and a practical framework for implementing vegetable crop production green economy projects. The book addresses a distinct gap, as there are currently no guidelines available for planning and implementing green economy projects in the agriculture sector. The book combines information from desktop reviews and field research on vegetable production in a green economy context in South Africa in order to bridge the gap between the theoretical green economy concept and practical implementation issues that would be encountered at the project level. It includes a step-by-step process for translating abstract green economy principles into tangible projects on the ground, so that the potential benefits of a green economy are realizable.

This book focuses on the ways to utilize the allelopathic potential of weeds or crops for controlling weeds in the agroecosystems. Moreover, it highlights how the allelopathic potential of these weeds and crops can be employed effectively to suppress weeds under field conditions.

While suggestions are abundant on how crop science can help to resolve these issues, many of the suggestions come from people who are not actually familiar with the challenges and requirements to modify crop plants grown under field conditions to achieve the necessary improvements.

We believe that with the provided details of enabling technologies and their usage in digital agriculture systems, agriculture students will find it easier to comprehend the designing of small-/large-scale IoT-based digital agriculture systems.

Cereal breeding programs aim at evaluating candidate lines/cultivars for agronomic, disease and quality traits in a weed free environment that makes it impossible to identify traits conferring competitive ability against weeds.

This brief will provide a bridge in succinct form between the geostatistics textbooks and the computer manuals for `push-button' practice. It is becoming increasingly important for practitioners, especially neophytes, to understand what underlies modern geostatistics and the currently available software so that they can choose sensibly and draw correct conclusions from their analysis and mapping. The brief will contain some theory, but only that needed for practitioners to understand the essential steps in analyses. It will guide readers sequentially through the stages of properly designed sampling, exploratory data analysis, variography (computing the variogram and modelling it), followed by ordinary kriging and finally mapping kriged estimates and their errors. There will be short section on trend and universal kriging. Other types of kriging will be mentioned so that readers can delve further in the substantive literature to tackle more complex tasks.

A new perspective on the global food security situation and highlights the need for seeking a common vision and implementing global planning to define the manner in which the human species will manage its food security. The basic question of ‘is there enough food’ is examined in general and then in some detail. The history of food production is reviewed in the hope that lessons can be learned from the past. But even after ten thousand years of experience we are not able to feed adequately about a third of our total population, despite what statistics can be made to tell us. Intensive agriculture has stripped out the nutrients that support plant growth and marginalised extensive tracts of land. The global solution to feed the growing population has been and continues to be – produce more food. Even during the last 30 years, about 95 percent of global research investments have focused mainly on increasing productivity. However about a third of the food produced, sufficient to feed over two billion hungry people, is lost or wasted in the food value chain. Climate change is another confounding factor that impinges on our discussions. Pests of all kinds continue to destroy food before and after it is harvested, even though the technology to protect it is available. A huge amount of food is wasted in value chains, particularly at the domestic level. Global food production systems are exposed to unprecedented biosecurity risks posed by invasive harmful organisms and this trend is likely to further exacerbate as current approach to biosecurity is based on the notional premise that lines on maps and the legislation that goes with them is sufficient to halt epidemics. Solutions include extending the number of cultivated plant and animal species to include those that can prosper in what are currently considered to be extreme environments.

The most common biological strategies for improving drought stress resistance include screening available maize germplasm for drought tolerance, conventional breeding strategies, and marker-assisted and genomic-assisted breeding and development of transgenic maize.

This work gives a multidisciplinary approach to assess and provide solutions to improve food security in Egypt. It has specific chapters on projection of climate change using IPCC AR5 models and regional climate model, and a chapter on population projection in 2030.

This work is to compile our current knowledge on GY phytoplasma biology at the genomic, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics level, as well as to summarize the approaches for their detection.Phytoplasma are the most poorly characterized plant pathogenic bacteria from the Mollicutes class.

This Serves as an exclusive source of information BSR caused by G. boninense. It is a valuable and a must reference and guide for planters, agricultural students, agronomists and all those working in the oil palm industry. The authors believe this book will complementing the existing books on different approaches in the similar field as this book will discuss in-depth details and guidance on controlling the BSR disease using biological means, which is the unique features of the book itself.This book compiles precise and detail information on current detection methods. Infection of Ganoderma only appear at the very late stage of infection where more than 70% of the internal tissues have decayed, leaving no chance to cure the infected palms. Therefore, early detection of infected palms in advance of terminal symptoms is crucial. New approaches which has been proven possible to be conducted in field will be also provided. The key advantages of the reviewed detection methods are to help the readers to determine the best measure they could apply that suit their availability and accessibility.Oil palm is an international commodity used for food, household and industrial purposes. It is the world highest oil producer crop with potential yield capacity of 10 to 15 times higher compares to other oil crops planted on the same size of land. Increases in global demand for edible oil and biofuel, driven by the increasing population remains the main factor driving up the expansion of oil palm cultivation in South East Asia (SEA) countries and other region of the world. Currently, Malaysia and Indonesia are the two countries which contributed to 90% of the world’s palm oil export. Unfortunately, the oil palm industry in SEA is under threat of a devastating disease. This disease is known as Basal Stem Rot (BSR) which caused by a fungus, Ganoderma boninense. In Malaysia alone, the economic loss caused by this disease was estimated between RM 225 million to RM 1.5 billion (up to 500 million USD) a year. With no known remedy at present, BSR disease continues to erode the profitability of the oil palm industry, and created a significant concern globally.This book is a joint effort by the authors whom are currently working actively on finding control methods of BSR disease in oil palm. With immense experience in the field, this book provides information with data backup covering both detection and control strategies of Ganoderma. Many researchers have agreed that most of the failures to control this pathogen are due to the lack of knowledge about this pathogen. Hence, this book provides information on the pathogenic nature of G. boninense. Prior understanding of the pathogen biology and their mode of infection provides the audience a new insight into BSR epidemiology that enables the implementation of appropriate management strategies.This book presents a detailed review on the control measures on BSR disease that is currently taken. These include cultural control that is practised most of the time, chemical control using formulated fungicidal and development of disease resistance variety. Focusing on a specific issue which need urgent attention with good supporting data, this book gives a more in depth information on the use of biological approaches in controlling G. boninense to meet the current oil palm-environmental dilemmas and demand of more eco-friendly practices in the field. Biological agents have been proven to be successful in many different models. In this book, the proposed methods address combinations of biological control agents (BCA) to improve the limitations of single BCA application. The results presented are based on trials conducted all the ways from in vitro to nursery and finally in the field (under the most commonly practiced agronomic practices).The 6 chapters in this book address many current issues in tacklingthe pathogen and development of sustainable disease managment programmes. There are, an introduction to the oil palm industry in global prespective and its future potential (Chapter 1), The pathogenic nature of Ganoderma (Chapter 2), Current detection methods of G. boninense which are sub-divided into Lab-based and Field detection methods (Chapter 3), Control methods of the pathogen, which covers cultural practices, chemical control, development of disease resistance and biological control (Chapter 4), Integrated control of G. boninense using combination of biocontrol agents (Chapter 5) and finally an overview of the book content which summarize the discussed matters as well as suggest several recommendations for future research or improvement attempts (Chapter 6).

The objective of this study is to analyze several dimensions of the agricultural economics reality for the representative farms of the European Union countries by using microeconomic data available in the Farm Accountancy Data Network from 1989-2009. To support this research, several ratios and efficiency indicators were calculated across several variables relative, namely, to the agricultural output and the utilized agricultural area. These ratios and indicators were analyzed further through econometric models associated with the convergence approaches, presenting with more detail the Portuguese case. Furthermore, it is important to design a set of strategies that are more suited to the European Union realities.

This brief reviews the pollination aspects of both wild and domesticated fruit tree species in a global climate change context. It explores cross-pollination mediated by insects, vertebrates and abiotic factors, self-pollination and their global warming implications. The authors identify the link between abiotic factors such as precipitation and severe droughts in the context of tree pollination and climate change. Furthermore, pollination and conservation implications in agriculture as well as wild tree populations are explored. Emphasis has been given to fruit trees growing in tropical, subtropical and temperate environments.

The book is based on the author's life time experience in exploring and researching the genus Avena. It describes some great events in oat research and minor stories along the way. It will be of interest and value to all those working with oats and to students and scientists of crop evolution, including those dealing with collecting and conserving wild genetic resources.A first part deals with the morphology and taxonomy of the genus and a classification based on the biological species concept is presented. A further part is devoted to the author’s research accomplishments in this genus. It describes morphological characters distinguishing between diploids and tetraploids of series Eubarbatae, the genetic relationships between them, and the mode of origin of the tetraploid form. The section Denticulatae, to which the common oat belongs, is extensively treated. Further, oat domestication and the newly domesticated protein rich A. magna are described. A third part dealswith wild genetic resources of oat.

A number of driving forces, including the soaring global crude oil prices and environmental concerns in both developed and developing nations has triggered a renewed interest in the recent years on the R&D of biofuel crops. In this regard, many countries across the globe are investing heavily in the bioenergy sector for R&D to increase their energy security and reduce their dependence on imported fossil fuels. Currently, most of the biofuel requirement is met by sugarcane in Brazil and corn in the United States, while biodiesel from rapeseed oil in Europe. Sweet sorghum has been identified as a unique biofuel feedstock in India since it is well adapted to Indian agro-climatic conditions and more importantly it does not jeopardize food security at the cost of fuel. Sweet sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is considered as a SMART new generation energy crop as it can accumulate sugars in its stalks similar to sugarcane, but without food¬¬-fuel trade-offs and can be cultivated in almost all temperate and tropical climatic conditions and has many other advantages. The grain can be harvested from the panicles at maturity. There is no single publication detailing the agronomic and biochemical traits of tropical sweet sorghum cultivars and hybrid parents. Hence, an attempt is made in this publication- “Characterization of improved sweet sorghum cultivars” to detail the complete description of cultivars. This book serves as a ready reference on the detailed characterization of different improved sweet sorghum genotypes following the PPVFRA guidelines for the researchers, entrepreneurs, farmers and other stakeholders to identify the available sweet sorghum cultivars and understand their yield potential in tropics.

Weed scientists are confident of increasing production through agricultural technology, including herbicides, but do not must ask if the moral obligation to feed people is sufficient justification for the benefits and harms achieved. A continuing, rigorous examination of the science’s goals that leads to appropriate change is advocated. Weed scientists have a research consensus - a paradigm - Weeds must be controlled. Herbicides are the best control technology. Agriculture's practitoners should discuss the necessity and risks of their technology. Discussion must include scientific evidence and value-laden arguments.