Crop diversification is becoming increasingly important for preserving soil and ecosystems’ health and, subsequently, crop productivity sustainability. Intercropping practices adopted in monocultural woody crops, with herbaceous crops covering the otherwise bare alleyways, foster ecological interactions can provide both environmental economic advantages. In this study, intercropping were implem...

In a 1989 study, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) determined that organophosphate pesticides used in orchard dormant spraying were being deposited on non-target row crops grown at distances less than and greater than 0.4 km from the site of pesticide application. The residues found on non-targeted crops may have been the result of drift during pesticide application or tr...

Regulation of agricultural pests managing their natural enemies represents an alternative to chemical pesticides. We assessed the potential of insectivorous birds as pest regulators in woody crops located in central Spain. A total of 417 nest boxes installed in five field study sites (one vineyard, two fruit orchards, and two olive groves) were monitored for use and breeding of insectivorous bi...

Information gathering and processing in horticulture helps optimise control processes and can enable more precise farm management. Robotics and automation are helping make high resolution, timely, farm wide measurements for tasks such as yield estimation, crop health and soil analysis. An efficient means of storing and processing such information is to discretise it to individual trees. To auto...

The blue orchard bee, Osmia lignaria (Say), is a solitary bee that is an excellent pollinator of tree fruit orchards. Due to the annual rising costs of honey bee hive rentals, many orchardists are eager to develop management tools and practices to support O. lignaria as an alternative pollinator. Establishing O. lignaria pollination as a sustainable industry requires careful consideration of bo...

Soil-water characteristic curves were determined for Krome calcareous very gravelly loam soil in the laboratory and in situ in an orchard. In the laboratory, soil-water retention was determined with a pressure plate and pressure Tempe cells for soil collected from vegetable fields. In the orchard, soil-water suction measured with tensiometers was compared to volumetric soil-water content (E) de...

Many food crops depend on animal pollination to set fruit. In light of pollinator declines there is growing recognition the need for agro-ecosystems that can sustain wild populations, ensuring fruit production and conservation into future. One method supporting resident populations within agricultural landscapes encourage maintain floral diversity. However, visitation crop plants be affected ei...

Agricultural intensification, or the increase in crop production per unit of input land area to meet needs a growing population, has resulted landscape dominated by large scale monoculture cropping. Pollinators, specifically, are impacted lack diverse floral and habitat resources associated with this type farming. Agriculture must develop practices that diversify availability flowering support ...

Abstract The soils of Mediterranean semiarid environments are commonly characterized by low levels organic matter and mineral elements, as well severe weed infestations, which, taken together, cause an intensive use auxiliary inputs (tillage, fertilizers, herbicides). Although cover crops recognized to sustainably improve soil health, the impact Trifolium subterraneum L. cropping needs specific...