Sugarcane is an important cash crop grown in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. India is the second largest producer of sugar after Brazil and accounts for 16 per cent of world production (GOI, 2015). In Andhra Pradesh, sugarcane is grown in 1.39 lakh hectares with a production of 99.8 lakh tones. However, the sugarcane productivity (71 tonnes/ha) is very low compared to states lik...

This paper presents the results of an analysis that predicts the scale efficiency of individual farms and analyses the differences in scale efficiency over time and between farms. Representative farm account data for 1985–2006 are used, and the study applies stochastic frontier analysis using an input distance–function approach. The results show that pig farms have improved their input scale ef...

[1] This study examines the relationship between the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and vegetation productivity in Asia inferred from both provincial crop yields data in China and satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data. Our finding suggests that vegetation productivity in northern Asia during the main growing season correlates significantly to NAO, with a surprising lon...

Rice, being a major staple crop in South Asia carries its importance in ensuring food security of the region, including in India and Bangladesh. Both the countries have agriculture-based economies where more than 50 percent of the active working population is engaged in agricultural activities. As per UN data, agriculture contributed 17.1 and 18.3 percent, in 2011, in the gross domestic product...

This study aimed at investigative decision support systems for assisting strategic and tactical decision making of smallholder farmers to reduce climate risks and increase crop productivity of semi-arid areas. Specifically, the study assessed farm-level decisions used by the farmers for reducing climate risks; examined information communication and knowledge sharing strategies for enhancing dec...

Higher plants have evolved intimate, complex, subtle, and relatively constant relationships with a suite of microbes, the phytomicrobiome. Over the last few decades we have learned that plants and microbes can use molecular signals to communicate. This is well-established for the legume-rhizobia nitrogen-fixing symbiosis, and reasonably elucidated for mycorrhizal associations. Bacteria within t...

Both the Vogel Spindle and Spanish Bush systems will allow for the development of a “pedestrian orchard”. A pedestrian orchard is defined as an orchard where two-thirds of the crop can be harvested from the ground, without the use of tall ladders (Fig. 1). Harvesting fruit from the ground greatly enhances worker productivity. In a study that I conducted in The Dalles, Oregon pickers were able t...

Climate trends over the past few decades have been fairly rapid in many agricultural regions around the world, and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and ozone (O3) levels have also been ubiquitous. The virtual certainty that climate and CO2 will continue to trend in the future raises many questions related to food security, one of which is whether the aggregate productivity of globa...

Mycorrhizal fungi greatly enhanced the ability of plants to take up phosphorus and other nutrients those are relatively immobile and exist in low concentration in the soil solution. Fungi can be important in the uptake of other nutrients by the host plant. Zinc nutrition is most commonly reported as being influenced by the association, although uptake of copper (Cu) , iron, N, K, Ca and Mg has ...