Water shortages are threatening the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in dry environments such as the Southern High Plains (SHP) of the U.S. Corn has been a staple silage crop grown to supply the enormous forage demand associated with dairy and beef feeding industries. The relatively high water use of corn, however, is limiting the extent to which corn can be grown. Although irrigated, co...

This study is aimed at a better understanding of how upstream runoff formation affected the cropping intensity (CI: number of harvests) in the Aral Sea Basin (ASB) between 2000 and 2012. MODIS 250 m NDVI time series and knowledge-based pixel masking that included settlement layers and topography features enabled to map the irrigated cropland extent (iCE). Random forest models supported the clas...

In north China, double cropping of winter wheat and summer maize is a widely adopted agricultural practice, and irrigation is required to obtain a high yield from winter wheat, which results in rapid aquifer depletion. In this experiment conducted in 2001-2002, 2002-2003, and 2004-2005, we studied the effects of irrigation regimes during specific winter wheat growing stage with winter wheat and...

performance, aid with weed and pest management, better utilize soil and water resources, and, in the case of Brassica oilseeds, provide benefits for pollinators. Growers have relatively few economically viable cool season crop options in California (USDA NASS 2012), but diversifying winter crop options may become more valuable if summer production of irrigated annual or short-term perennial spe...

Olympe is a software developed by INRA, IAMM and CIRAD to model and simulate cropping and farming systems functioning. As it is based on economic analysis that considers contextual components, it enables to identify and model one or several farmers " strategies and trajectories. Prospective analysis is also possible, including prices volatility or climatic events and their impacts. This tool wa...

This paper addresses the prospects for technical change in the irrigated rice sector of Senegal, and measures ex-ante the economic returns to recent research efforts. In 1994, three new rice varieties were released to farmers in the Senegal River Valley (SRV), the major irrigated rice region in Senegal. The productivity advantage of the new varieties is based primarily on early maturity, which ...

Crop residues such as corn (Zea mays L.) stover are viewed as an abundant and inexpensive source of biomass that can be removed from fields to produce bioenergy. Assumptions include that with minimum or no-tillage farming methods, there will be no deleterious production or environmental effects. A long-term field study was established in eastern Nebraska, USA, to compare the switchgrass managed...

Questions as to whether public investment in international agricultural research is a ‘Good Thing’ or not may best be addressed using two arguments: (1) justifications based on whether or not past investments have yielded substantial benefits to societies and the resource-poor; and (2) that future investments need to be made as effectively and efficiently as possible, which means they must be t...

The Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM) is a mature and stable modelling framework used widely in Australia and elsewhere in the domain of farming systems research and extension. It is capable of simulating a diverse range of farming systems including broadacre dryland and irrigated cropping, small holder farming and on-farm agroforestry systems. This includes the interaction of t...

Previous research has shown that long-term intensive cropping of irrigated lowland rice has led to significant grain-yield declines in field trials. The yield decline was attributed to decreased availability of soil nitrogen, which is held mostly in the soil organic matter. By advanced solid-state NMR spectroscopy, we have detected significant amounts of amide nitrogen directly bonded to aromat...