Introduction ............................................................................................................................2 Organic Farming & the Tillage Dilemma .........................................................................3 Mulch Tillage .........................................................................................................................5 Ridge Ti...

A recently completed (Nov. 2009), Cornell University project that focused on controlling weeds in strawberries during the establishment year by transplanting dormant berry plants into a killed cover crop showed great promise, but revealed a barrier. Most growers had difficulty planting through the cover crop. This resulted in slower establishment during the first month and possibly caused skips...

The effects of an autumn-planted, spring-killed, grass cover crop (Elymus trachycaulus [Link] Gould ex Shinners) on populations of Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte and its predator community were evaluated in South Dakota maize fields over two seasons. Abundance and size of D. virgifera larvae and adults and sex ratio of adults were measured in maize produced under two treatments (i.e., a...

Introduction ............................................................................................................................2 Organic Farming & the Tillage Dilemma .........................................................................3 Mulch Tillage .........................................................................................................................5 Ridge Ti...

In the framework of Geoland, Infoterra France has mapped with MERIS the distribution of annual crops surfaces in Belgium, Poland and Russia (Rostov oblast). The maps provided are the acreages of main groups of crops per administrative or agricultural circumscriptions unit. The groups are winter, spring and root crops (sugar beet, potatoes). The method for mapping exploits the MERIS capability t...

Effect of cover crops intercropped with pineapple (Ananas comosus) on Rotylenchulus reniformis population densities and activity of nematode-trapping fungi (NTF) were evaluated in two cycles of cover crop and pineapple. Sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea), rapeseed (Brassica napus), African marigold (Tagetes erecta), or weeds were intercropped with pineapples. Beds planted with sunn hemp or rapeseed ...

The abundant and widespread Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) is currently declining across much of Europe due to landscape changes caused by agricultural intensification. The proximate mechanisms causing adverse effects to breeding Starlings are unclear, hampering our ability to implement cost-efficient agri-environmental schemes to restore populations to former levels. This study aimed to sh...

Previous research has shown that fires burn certain land cover types disproportionally to their abundance. We used quantile regression to study land cover proneness to fire as a function of fire size, under the hypothesis that they are inversely related, for all land cover types. Using five years of fire perimeters, we estimated conditional quantile functions for lower (avoidance) and upper (pr...

Our increasing dependence on a small number of agricultural crops, such as corn, is leading to reductions in agricultural biodiversity. Reductions in the number of crops in rotation or the replacement of rotations by monocultures are responsible for this loss of biodiversity. The belowground implications of simplifying agricultural plant communities remain unresolved; however, agroecosystem sus...