Wheat, a member of family Poaceae is one of the major food crops in the world. Globally, it occupies about 17% of the cropped land and contributes 35% of the staple food (Pingali 1999).Wheat constitutes one of the most abundant sources of energy and protein for the world population and its increased production is essential for food security (Chhokar et al. 2006). Severe competition from weeds i...

Feeding behavior in Aplysia fasciata and A. oculifera is modified by pairing the behavior with reinforcing consequences. Successful and unsuccessful attempts to transfer food from the buccal cavity to the crop act as positive and negative reinforcers, respectively. A number of changes in feeding behavior occur as a result of pairing of feeding with the negative reinforcer: feeding responses bec...

Traditional smallholder farming systems are characterized by low yields and high risks of crop failure and food insecurity. Through a biophysical model, PARCHED-THIRST and a socio-economic farming systems simulation model, OLYMPE, we evaluated the performance of farming practices based on maize yield, gross margin and total family balance over a 10-year period in semi-arid Olifants River Basin ...

Agriculture is the mainstay of Malawi's economy and maize is the most important crop for food security. As a Least Developed Country (LDC), adverse effects of climate change (CC) on agriculture in Malawi are expected to be significant. We examined the impacts of CC on maize production and food security in Malawi's dominant cereal producing region, Lilongwe District. We used five Global Circulat...

In the testing of food quality and safety, we contrast the contents of the newly proposed food (genetically modified food) against those of conventional foods. Because the contents vary largely between crop varieties and production environments, we propose a two-sample test of substantial equivalence that examines the inclusion of the tolerance intervals of the two populations, the population o...

This study tried to understand the mountainous households’ perception of climate change and its impacts on food security in the Lamjung district of Nepal. The study attempted to find out changes in households food security and daily activities in the face of climate change for the last twenty years. The study started with the 150 household surveys along with participatory rural appraisal to und...

The projected growth in global food demand until mid-century will challenge our ability to continue recent increases in crop yield and will have a significant impact on natural resources. The water and land requirements of current agriculture are significantly less than global reserves but local shortages are common and have serious impacts on food security. Recent increases in global trade hav...

Since the 1980s cowpea has become an alternative cash crop in northern Senegal. However, in 1997, surveys showed that farmers often sold their crop at unprofi table prices. The hypothesis was that farmers could improve selling prices if they produced cowpea with the characteristics demanded by consumers. To identify those characteristics, data were collected in six markets from January 1998 to ...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Directorate of Economics is undertaking collaborative research on food security with Michigan State University's Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics. We wish to acknowledge the financial and substantive support of the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG) of Mozambique and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Maputo to complete foo...