Andrographis paniculata Nees. (AP) is a self-pollinated medicinal herb with a wide range of pharmaceutical properties, facing a low diversity in Malaysia. Cross-pollination of AP accessions leads to considerable rates of heterosis in the agro-morphological characteristics and anticancer phytochemicals of this eminent medicinal herb. However, the poor crossability of the plant at the interpopula...

It is sometimes argued that women play a more important role in seed and diversity management than men,and that women have greater abilities in managing crop diversity. In The Gambia, men and women also havethe belief that women are better in managing and identifying varieties than men. This article focuses on therole of gender in farmer management of crop diversity in two crops...

Infectious disease is a major causal factor in the demography of human, plant and animal populations. While it is generally accepted in medical, veterinary and agricultural contexts that variation in host resistance and pathogen virulence and aggressiveness is of central importance to understanding patterns of infection, there has been remarkably little effort to directly investigate causal lin...

Agro-environmental measures promoted by the European Union focus mainly on environmental protection by maintaining sustainable levels of productivity that are adequate to the agro-ecological conditions of each region on different Member States. Among these European Union promoted measures the one known as “Extensive Forage Systems” is particularly relevant for the Mediterranean Region. In order...

Underutilised crops represent an important component of agro-biodiversity with potential to contribute to climate change adaptation, food security and sovereignty in poor rural areas. However, despite emerging research interest, they continue to occupy the peripheries of mainstream agriculture. There is a need to consolidate the gains made and propose a coherent strategy for translating underut...

Ever since the arrival of the tomato to Spain in the 16th century, great diversification of the crop has taken place, giving rise to a rich collection of varietal types. The ‘Comunidad Valenciana’, with its deep-rooted agricultural tradition, is one of the Spanish regions with the greatest diversity in traditional tomato varieties, characterised by their local adaptation and high fruit quality....

"> The present study described the diversity of wheat and barley varieties andlandraces available in farmer’s fields in Syria using different indicators. Analysisof spatial and temporal diversity and coefficient of parentage along withmeasurements of agronomic and morphological traits were employed to explain thediversity of wheat and barley varieties or landraces grown by farmers in Syria.Farm...

We assessed the total nitrogen (N) concentrations of 28 still surface water (lake and pond), and 42 flowing surface water (river), monitoring sites under 29 typical terrestrial ecosystems of the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN) using monitoring data collected between 2004 and 2009. The results showed that the median total N concentrations of still surface water were significantly highe...