Agricultural intensification has increased crop yields, but at high economic and environmental cost. Harnessing ecosystem services of naturally occurring organisms is a cheaper but under-appreciated approach, because the functional roles of organisms are not linked to crop yields, especially outside the northern temperate zone. Ecosystem services in soil come from earthworms in these cooler and...

880 S cience and international politics play complicated roles in the global arena of whale conservation and the management of the resources of the world’s oceans. The International Whaling Commission (IWC), charged with the global conservation of whales and the management of whaling, introduced a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 because of the widespread depletion of whale species and ...

Crop improvement for yield and drought tolerance is challenging due to the complex genetic nature of these traits and environmental dependencies. This study reports that transgenic over-expression of Zea mays AR GOS1 (ZAR1) enhanced maize organ growth, grain yield, and drought-stress tolerance. The ZAR1 transgene exhibited environmental interactions, with yield increase under Temperate Dry and ...

In 2002 the Board of Game authorized Alaska’s first permit hunts specifically for calf moose (Alces alces). We promoted these calf hunts to help stabilize a high-density, food-stressed moose population and to compensate for declining harvests of bulls. Low harvest rates of cows (= 1% of the prehunt cow population, 1996–2001) were tightly controlled by the public. High harvest rates of bulls (21...

Temporal manipulation of the in vitro environment and growth factors can direct differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into organoids - aggregates with multiple tissue-specific cell types and three-dimensional structure mimicking native organs. A mechanistic understanding of early organoid formation is essential for improving the robustness of these methods, which is necessary prior to...

Long-term yield performance and yield stability of common cropping systems needs to be simultaneously assessed at various fertility regimes. Based on a consecutive 19-year field trial, including eight fertilization treatments with different combinations of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K) and recycled manure (RM), the effects of fertilization and crop rotation on corn (Zea mays L.) y...

Increasing demand for food, driven by unprecedented population growth and increasing consumption, will keep challenging food security in China. Although cereal yields have substantially improved during the last three decades, whether it will keep thriving to meet the increasing demand is not known yet. Thus, an integrated analysis on the trends of crop yield and cultivated area is essential to ...

The quantitative performance of wheat crop under 1-5 year old poplar plantations in irrigated agro-ecosystem was studied to ascertain the biological yield of tree and crop. Results revealed that growth and yield of wheat decreased significantly with the increase in poplar age. The per cent reduction in net grain yield was 17% under one year old poplar plantation, which increased to 52.15% under...

water deficit is one of the most important problems facing crop production in arid and semiarid regions in iran. application of super absorbent polymers may somehow control yield reduction in some crop plants under drought stress conditions. in this investigation, the effect of different levels of super absorbent polymer, superab a200 (0, 100, 200, 300 kg/h), and three irrigation intervals (7, ...