Farming activities practiced on many Australian soils have resulted in substantial losses of soil organic matter (SOM), nutrient loss, soil structural degradation and declines in cereal yield and quality. Field trials, consisting of a legume or fallow phase followed by three wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) crops, were established on a degraded Ferric Luvisol (Red Earth) soil in New South Wales to ...

Cover crops are essential in agricultural management and especially in organic farming for protecting the soil from erosion, competing with weeds, preventing evaporative losses and improving soil quality and fertility. The choice of cover crop species is crucial in achieving the highest level of weed suppression and soil fertility enhancement. Cover crop systems with rye or mixtures of legumes ...

Effects of climate change on productivity of agricultural crops in relation to diseases that attack them are difficult to predict because they are complex and nonlinear. To investigate these crop-disease-climate interactions, UKCIP02 scenarios predicting UK temperature and rainfall under high- and low-CO(2) emission scenarios for the 2020s and 2050s were combined with a crop-simulation model pr...

Recent flooding and heavy precipitation events in the US and worldwide have caused great damage to crop production. If the frequency of these weather extremes were to increase in the near future, as recent trends for the US indicate and as projected by global climate models (e.g., US National Assessment, Overview Report, 2001, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, Nation...

Human population is increasing at exponential growth in all parts of the world. Based on the recent report on food security released in 2010 [1]. Requirement of food will increase due to continuous increase in the human population leading to 70% more food requirement by 2050 [1]. Vegetarian population of the world is estimated to be 1.5 billion in 2010 [2]. Apart from the humans all the feedsto...

Cole crops (Brassica vegetables) can pose a significant risk for N losses during the post-harvest period due to substantial amounts of readily mineralizable N in crop residues. Amending the soil with organic C has the potential to immobilize N and thereby reduce the risk for N losses. Four field trials were conducted to determine the effects of organic C amendments (OCA) on N dynamics and sprin...

This paper focuses on the US Billion-dollar Weather/Climate Disaster report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. The current methodology for the production of this loss dataset is described, highlighting its strengths and limitations including sources of uncertainty and bias. The Insurance Services Office/Property Claims Service, the US Federal...