Yield losses occurring at the field level, whether due to plant diseases or abiotic stresses, reveal reduced stability of the crop yield potential. The paper argues that the stability of crop yield potential is a trait with a clear genetic component, which can be successfully selected for at the single-plant level and incorporated into high-yielding cultivars. Two novel selection equations with...

Farmers’ decisions about how much crop insurance to buy are not generally consistent with either expected profit or utility maximization. They do not pick coverage levels that maximize expected subsidy nor do they demand full insurance coverage. In addition, the absolute size ...

Insects-pest is animal populations, which occurred in every possible environment with a varied number of species. The several insects are vectors of different diseases, and cause damages to crop plants. These have been affecting economy and the yield of crop plant and at national and international market. The crop yield losses caused by insects in agriculture, several chemicals have been applie...

World wide crop losses without the use of pesticides and other non-chemical control strategies is estimated to be about 70% of crop production, amounting to U.S. $ 400 billion. Many insect pest families are known which cause serious damage to agriculture crops. Insect pest menace is one of the major factors that destabilize crop productivity in agricultural ecosystems. They are responsible for ...

Laboratory, growth chamber and multiyear field studies were conducted with prominent cropping systems of the subtropical northwestern states of India including rice–wheat, rice–mustard, rice–rapeseed, soybean– wheat, soybean–rapeseed, groundnut–wheat, and groundnut–sunflower by including legumes (moongbean, cowpea, sesbania, pigeon pea) to investigate the role of integrated nutrient management ...

Nitrogen application often dramatically increases crop yields, but N needs vary spatially across fields and landscapes. Remote sensing collects spatially dense information that may contribute to, or provide feedback about, N management decisions. There is potential to accurately predict N fertilizer need at each point in the field. This would reduce surplus N in the crop production system witho...

Crop damage by wildlife is a very prevalent form of human-wildlife conflict adjacent to protected areas, and great economic losses from crop raiding impede efforts to protect wildlife. Management plans are needed to decrease damage by raiding wildlife, yet conservation biologists typically lack the basic information needed for informed conservation strategies. Red-tailed monkeys (Cercopithecus ...

Overview Each year the commercial carrot crop in Wisconsin suffers losses from alternaria leaf blight, cercospora leaf spot, and aster yellows. The first two are diseases caused by fungi (Alternaria dauci and Cercospora carotae). The third is a disease caused by the aster yellows phytoplasma, a parasitic bacterium of carrot phloem tissue and also of the aster leafhopper (Macrosteles quadrilinea...

The objectives were to promote farmer adoption of reduced and modified tillage (RT) systems and to investigate the efficacy of deep zone tillage systems to reduce the disease severity in crops affected by Phytophthora capcisi. It was our intent to evaluate the ability of reduced tillage (RT) systems to ameliorate large fluctuations in water supply, which may result from climate change and, in p...

Grasshoppers are divided into two major subgroups: the short-horned grasshoppers (Figure 1) and the long-horned grasshoppers, Mormon crickets and katydids (Figure 2). Short-horned grasshoppers are responsible for most of the reported crop losses. As a result, individuals of this subgroup are popularly referred to as “grasshoppers.” Figure 1. A mature two-striped female grasshopper (Melanoplus b...