Bücher der Reihe SpringerBriefs in Agriculture

Global food production and climate change among other concerns are societal issues that require major research input from crop science. 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. Efforts to alter a gene or even several genes have very rarely proven successful in having impact on crop production under realistic field conditions. This lack of success has not been addressed head on. This book serves as a reminder to crop scientists and others that open, clear-minded assessments of the entirety of evidence concerning a hypothesis is required before making claims of possible increases in crop performance. This attitude of skepticism is not a negative attitude but rather an employment of the cornerstone of scientific investigation based on formation and evaluation of hypotheses. Skeptical analyses are to be presented in the book on some of the common suggestions for improving crop plants. The six specific topics to be addressed are photosynthesis, seed number, nitrogen use efficiency, water use efficiency, crop water loss, and unconfirmed field observations. Each of the topics in this book, will first be reviewed to present the origins of the popular assumptions about how specific plant modification will result in improved crop performance. The review of the background information will be followed by an examination of the evidence, logic, and predicted outcomes for the assumed benefits of the modifications. Finally, each chapter will offer novel, alternate approaches to plant modification that have documented support for positively impacting crop performance. The book will not be written in specialized, detail language but offer access for those with a wide range of interests in options for increasing crop production in the future. Thegoal of the book is to provide information that is useful to those with interests ranging from climatologist to food-oriented sociologists. Of course, the topics covered will be of direct interest to those studying plant sciences, particularly crop scientists. The hope is to challenge a reader to re-examine some of her/his assumptions about crop improvement and approach the topic with a renewed practice of skepticism in formulating and evaluating hypotheses.

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.

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.

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.

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 tackling the 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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.