The most frequently overlooked aspect of conservation of natural resources and economic development is human cultural diversity. However, conservation and development of natural resources are basically human-oriented endeavors and all conservation and developmental efforts ought to start with a clear understanding of the varied needs of the people. In addition, cultural diversity is a natural r...

In this paper the variations across China of climate, other natural growing conditions and anthropogenic farm inputs are used as a natural experiment to identify the contributions of each to the production of corn, potatoes, rice, soybeans and wheat. Crop production functions are estimated across prefectures using land, labor, fertilizer, machinery and irrigation inputs, as well as estimates of...

Published in Agron. J. 104:158–164 (2012) Posted online 12 Dec 2011 doi:10.2134/agronj2011.0213 Copyright © 2012 by the American Society of Agronomy, 5585 Guilford Road, Madison, WI 53711. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrie...

The deleterious changes in environmental conditions such as water stress bring physiological and biochemical changes in plants, which results in crop loss. Thus, combating water stress is important for crop improvement to manage the needs of growing population. Utilization of hydroponics system in growing plants is questionable to some researchers, as it does not represent an actual field condi...

BACKGROUND Insect pollinator abundance, in particular that of bees, has been shown to be high where there is a super-abundance of floral resources; for example in association with mass-flowering crops and also in gardens where flowering plants are often densely planted. Since land management affects pollinator numbers, it is also likely to affect the resultant pollination of plants growing in t...

tion in temperatures. Accumulated temperature (growing degree days, GDD) is related to crop growth and develPersistence and productivity of pastures containing mixtures of opment in cereals and grasses (Moore and Moser, 1995; warm and cool-season forages may be compromised by interspecific competition when growing periods overlap. An ability to predict the Mitchell et al., 1997) and to the inte...

abstract drought is one the most complicated and unknown natural disasters and rainfed agriculture is often the first sector to be affected by drought. in this research, we consider the drought monitoring from both meteorological and agricultural points of view. we have selected standardized precipitation index (spi) among the meteorological indices, with a one month time scale for the synoptic...