This paper investigates the dynamic impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm output in rural Zambia. Following liberalization and the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board, the sector developed an outgrower scheme whereby cotton firms provided credit, access to inputs and output markets, and technical assistance to the farmers. There are two distinctive phases of the reforms: a f...

Acton el al. (1932) used a vegetable medium from a green variety of mung dal (Phaseolus mungo) for cultivation of the intestinal bacteria. Brewer (1943) suggested a mixture of soyabean and cotton seed or peanut meal for the preparation of a general purpose media using sodium sulphide as an activator; the sodium sulphide would readily generate sulphuretted hydrogen which by lowering the pH of th...

Bt cotton is a GM crop into which a gene of the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis has been transferred to make it resistant to major lepidopteran insect pests. It was developed by the US company Monsanto and, as one of the first GM crop technologies, it became commercially available in the mid1990s. Since then, the technology has spread rapidly in the US, Australia, as well as in several de...

Search for methods of control or eUmination of the cotton root rot fungus (Phymatotrichum omnivorum (Shear) Dug.) in the alkahne soils of the Southwest has already continued for half a century. The literature involved has recently been reviewed by Rea (16)^ and by Streets (17). Nearly all of these discussions have been from the viewpoint of plant pathology or agronomy. Garrett (7) included this...

The first-generation transgenic cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.), Bollgard, which contains a single toxin protein gene cry1Ac from Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki Berliner, was approved by the National Biosafety Committee (NBC) for commercial growing in Pakistan in 2011 and the yield enhancement is promising, with an increase in cotton bales up to 150 millionthe record productivity of the co...

Low potassium (K)-induced premature senescence in cotton has been observed worldwide, but how it affects cotton fiber properties remain unclear. We hypothesized that K deficiency affects cotton fiber properties by causing disordered fiber development, which may in turn be caused by the induction of a carbohydrate acquisition difficulty. To investigate this issue, we employed a low-K-sensitive c...

This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an outgrower scheme, whereby firms provided extension services to farmers and sold inputs on loans that ...

The Mid-eastern Inner Mongolia of China, a typical agro-pastoral transitional zone, has undergone rapid agricultural land use changes including land reclamation and cropland abandonment in past decades due to growing population and food demand, climatic variability, and land use policy such as the "Grain for Green" Project (GFG Project). It is significant to the regional ecology and sustainabil...

the present research aims to apply several approaches for suitability evaluation of lands under cultivation ofalfalfa and barley in chaharmil mechanized farming center, ardestan town, isfahan province, iran. climatic andsoil maps of the climate and soil data were provided in raster format. land evaluation carried out using maximumlimitation, parametric and multi-criteria (analytical hierarchy p...