The study compares gross revenues from modern rice varieties and landraces and valuates different useful traits of rice landraces to demonstrate an empirical methodology for biodiversity valuation. A sample of 200 rice growers in hills and plain area was surveyed for commercialization of agro-biodiversity project. For estimating the value put by the consumers on different rice traits a hedonic ...

Fungal pathogens pose a major challenge to global crop production. Crop varieties that resist disease present the best defence and offer an alternative to chemical fungicides. Exploiting durable nonhost resistance (NHR) for crop protection often requires identification and transfer of NHR-linked genes to the target crop. Here, we identify genes associated with NHR of Arabidopsis thaliana to Pha...

Plant breeding by researchers has become increasingly isolated from the plant breeding of farmers. Collaborative plant breeding (CPB) offers the possibility of bringing these two plant breeding traditions together to increase the usefulness of new crop varieties to farmers, especially small-scale farmers working in stress environments with limited external inputs. This paper presents a framewor...

*Correspondence: Martin Weih, Department of Crop Production Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), P.O. Box 7043, SE-750 07 Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] Today, we are undertaking great efforts to improve biomass production and quality traits of energy crops. Major motivation for developing those crops is based on environmental and ecological sustainability con...

Improvements in water productivity and yield arise from interactions between varieties (G) and their management (M). Most G×M interactions considered by breeders and physiologists focus on in-crop management (e.g. sowing time, plant density, N management). However, opportunities exist to capture more water and use it more effectively that involve judicious management of prior crops and fallows ...

Plant breeding is the “art and science” of the genetic improvement of crops to produce new varieties that had a large impact on crop yield and food production. Genetic variation is the engine that propels breeding to meet future challenges and this variation is due to intraand inter-specific recombination. The recombinant DNA technology marked the beginning of a new era, indeed conventional pla...

Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) is an important member of the Solanaceae family. It is mainly used as food and cash crop globally. Tomato also serves as an ornamental plant in some parts of the world. In urban areas, this crop is included in the foodscaping systems where it is grown in hanging baskets, growing pots and aquaponics for aesthetic and food purposes. Tomato production is m...

Given a family of Abelian varieties over a positive-dimensional base, we prove that for a sufficiently general curve in the base, every rational section of the family over the curve is contained in a unique rational section over the entire base. 1. Main results sec-intro The starting point for this article is the following theorem. Theorem 1.1. [GHMS05, Theorem 6.2] Let B be a smooth, quasi-pro...

Oilseed rape (OSR; Brassica napus L.) is a major crop in temperate regions and provides an important source of nutrition to many of the yield-enhancing insect flower visitors that consume floral nectar. The manipulation of mechanisms that control various crop plant traits for the benefit of pollinators has been suggested in the bid to increase food security, but little is known about inherent f...

The rising concentration of carbon dioxide [CO2] in the atmosphere represents an increase in a growthlimiting resource for C3 crop species. Identification of lines or characteristics of lines which have superior yield at elevated [CO2] could aid in adaptation to this global change. While intraspecific variation in responses to elevated [CO2] has been found in several species, intraspecific diff...