Mixed cropping (including agroforestry) often gives yield advantages as opposed to monocropping. Many criteria have been used to assess yield advantage in crop mixtures. Some of these are presented. In addition, the relative merits of replacement, additive and bivariate factorial designs are discussed. The concepts of analysis of mixed cropping are applied to an example of an alley cropping (a ...

Europe's agriculture is highly specialized, dependent on external inputs and responsible for negative environmental impacts. Legume crops are grown on less than 2% of the arable land and more than 70% of the demand for protein feed supplement is imported from overseas. The integration of legumes into cropping systems has the potential to contribute to the transition to a more resource-efficient...

Most digital watermarking techniques are susceptible to damage by data cropping. Although the effects of cropping might not be perceptible, watermark recovery may be rendered difficult or impossible due to the desynchronization of the recovery process. The transform encryption coding (TEC) based watermarking algorithm was presented at ICASSP 2000 [2]. The present paper investigates the performa...

The multiple cropping is the main agricultural production pattern, including double cropping of rice in south China and double cropping of wheat and corn in north China. Household investigation, typical farmland survey and county statistics inspection were performed to analyze the status and countermeasure of nitrate pollution in China. The result showed that the nitrate rate of underground wat...

The objective of this paper is to report the cumulative effects of cropping system intensification on the near surface soil physical properties (surface one inch of soil) within the Colorado dryland agroecoystem project, which has been in existence since 1986. Intensifying cropping systems from wheat-fallow to wheat-com-fallow to continuous cropping, increased crop residue return to the soil. R...

This study was conducted to explore the changes in soil microbial populations, enzyme activity, and tuber yield under the rotation sequences of Potato-Common vetch (P-C), Potato-Black medic (P-B) and Potato-Longdong alfalfa (P-L) in a semi-arid area of China. The study also determined the effects of continuous potato cropping (without legumes) on the above mentioned soil properties and yield. T...

The Brazilian agro-industrial frontier in Mato Grosso rapidly expanded in total area of mechanized production and in total value of production in the last decade. This article shows the spatial pattern of that expansion from 2000 to 2010, based on novel analyses of satellite imagery. It then explores quantitatively and qualitatively the antecedents and correlates of intensification, the expansi...

The common phenomenon of sublethal predation in soft-bottom bivalves usually involves nipping of siphons. Here we show that foot cropping, hitherto documented only in Donax spp., is widespread in the New Zealand cockle Austrovenus stutchburyi (Veneridae). Depending on the locality, cropping frequency ranged between 14 and 34% of cockles, and the average proportion of the foot area cropped range...

Rates of soil erosion in the dryland cropping region of Saskatchewan are investigated under alternative cropping strategies. Chemical fallow is examined as an alternative to tillage fallow for moisture and soil conservation. Conclusions include: (a) flexible cropping increases net discounted returns and substantially reduces soil erosion compared to the predominant crop rotation; (b) chemical f...

crops every 3 yr) and even continuous (annual) cropping in some instances. For example, annualized grain yields Water is the principle limiting factor in dryland cropping systems. for WCF are 75 to 100% greater than WF (Peterson et Surface soil physical properties influence infiltration and cropping al., 2000). Cropping intensification has been possible systems under no-till management may affe...