World Agricultural Systems Research Articles

Effects of Bipolaris yamadae strain HXDC-1-2 as a bioherbicide against Echinochloa crus-galli in rice and dry fields.

Barnyardgrass (Weed Science Society of America recommended) or Barnyard grass (Britannica recommended) (Echinochloa crus-galli (L.) P. Beauv.) is one of the most problematic and dominant weeds in world agricultural systems, especially in paddy fields, where tillering and grain yield can be reduced by 50-70% because of its competitive pressure. The frequent use of chemical herbicides to control E. crus-galli has led to the evolution of herbicide resistance. Developing bioherbicides using pathogenic fungi to control E. crus-galli could be an alternative option. In a previous study we showed that a strain of Bipolaris yamadae (HXDC-1-2) was promising in controlling gramineous weeds. Here we present a study that evaluated this fungus as a mycoherbicide against E. crus-galli in greenhouse and paddy fields, characterized mycelium growth and conidial production, and examined the infection development. The median effective dose (ED50) and 90% effective dose (ED90) values of microcapsulated B. yamadae strain HXDC-1-2 on E. crus-galli in the greenhouse were 7.17 × 102 and 9.35 × 103 conidia mL-1, respectively. Conidial germination, mycelial growth, and attachment formation occurred on E. crus-galli leaves within 1 to 6 h. The hyphae directly invaded cells and stomata, primarily from the appressorium on the epidermis, and necrotic lesions were observed on the leaf surface within 20 to 24 h. Applied to E. crus-galli plants at 1 × 105 conidia mL-1, the fungus reduced the weed's fresh weight of 75%. B. yamadae strain HXDC-1-2 has the potential to be developed as a bioherbicide against E. crus-galli plants, especially in rice fields. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.

Economic Uses of Salt-Tolerant Plants.

Climate change is likely to affect the ability of world agricultural systems to provide food, fibre, and fuel for the growing world population, especially since the area of salinised land will increase. However, as few species of plants (less than 1% of all plant species) can tolerate saline soils, we believe it is important to evaluate their potential as crops for salinised soils. We have analysed the economic and potential economic uses of plants that are listed in the database eHALOPH, including the most tolerant species, halophytes. For nine main categories of economic value, we found a total of 1365 uses amongst all species listed in eHALOPH as of July 2022; this number reduced to 918 amongst halophytes. We did not find any obvious differences in rankings between the more tolerant halophytes and the whole group of salt-tolerant plants, where the order of use was medical, followed by forage, traditional medicine, food and drink, fuel, fuelwood, and bioenergy. While many species are potentially important as crops, the effects of salt concentration on their uses are much less well documented. Increasing salt concentration can increase, decrease, or have no effect on the concentration of antioxidants found in different species, but there is little evidence on the effect of salinity on potential yield (the product of concentration and biomass). The effect of salinity on forage quality again varies with species, often being reduced, but the overall consequences for livestock production have rarely been evaluated. Salt-tolerant plants have potential uses in the bioremediation of degraded land (including revegetation, phytoremediation, and extraction of NaCl) as well as sources of biofuels, although any use of saline water for the sustainable irrigation of salt-tolerant crops must be viewed with extreme caution.

Cotton cultivated area detection and yield monitoring combining remote sensing with field data in lower Indus River basin, Pakistan.

As the Earth's population continuously increase with the passage of time, the demand for agricultural raw material for human need increases. It is critical to maintaining updated and accurate information about the dynamics and properties of the world agricultural systems. As cash crop, the updated information of the spatial distribution of cotton field is necessary to monitor the crop area and growth changes at regional level. We used 8-day enhanced vegetation index (EVI) time series to detect cotton crop area and binomial probabilistic approach to obtain the probability distribution of cotton crop occurrence. We used Gaussian kriging to derive cotton yield inside the detected cotton crop areas through crop reporting data. We also used field data from farmers to validate the cotton yield results. A strong correlation between the MODIS-derived cotton cultivated area and statistical data at the tehsil level were achieved (R2 = 0.84) for all study years (2004-2019). The total accuracy for the cotton crop area detection was 84.6% and yield prediction was 92.1%. Our study presents new approaches to map cotton area and yield, which are applicable to other regions through machine learning.

Conservation Agriculture Technology: Extent of Adoption & Constraints Faced by Farmers of Madhya Pradesh, India

Increase in human population and vigorously changing climate leading to declining natural resource are the emerging challenges for the world's agricultural systems, which need to produce more food for the increasing population. Therefore, change in our conventional agriculture practice is required by adapting practices or technology helping in coping up with the changing climate and sustainably using the resources for future productivity gains and Conservation Agriculture (CA) Technology is one of the best alternative. CA is a resource conservation practice which improves biodiversity and natural biological processes above and below the ground surface and includes a trifecta of no-till or minimum-till or zero-till farming, permanent soil cover and crop rotations which have existed for nearly a century, but its uptake has generally been slow and uneven. Present study was conducted at state Madhya Pradesh of India using ex-post facto research design to find out the extent of adoption along with the constraints faced by the farmer in adoption of this decade older technology. The study revealed that despite the proven benefits of CA, its adoption rate is very slow in the region. Further, majority of the farmers had moderate knowledge of CA but were afraid to adopt it completely. The major reason witnessed were complexity of CA in comparison to conventional agriculture, lack of awareness of this technology among farmers and high cost and unavailability of happy seeder.

Food resilience in a dark catastrophe: A new way of looking at tropical wild edible plants.

A global sun-blocking catastrophe is more plausible than anyone would like to think. Models have consistently shown the devastating effects these events could have to the world's agricultural systems for upwards of 15years. New shade-, drought-, and cool-tolerant crops and more food stockpile sources must be found if there would be any hope of feeding the global population in such a scenario. Wild edible plants (WEPs) are important buffers of food security to indigenous peoples, impoverished peoples, and those in areas with erratic growing seasons across the globe. Here, we suggest WEP species that have the potential to be scaled up through cultivation in post-catastrophe conditions, and the use of foraged food stockpiles to function as stop-gap foods until conventional agriculture returns. We also propose policy initiatives for habitat protection, education programs, and general preparedness.

Old ways in new places? Experimenting with plants in the early plantation setting

ABSTRACT Plants and foodways have long been recognized for their importance to the construction of identity and culture in plantation settings. Yet despite this focus on plants and foodways in plantation archaeology, there is a need for more archaeological documentation of the types of plants and fields being cultivated in newly formed plantations in the New World. We combine historical documentation with an assemblage of recovered plant remains from the Lord Ashley site (38DR83a) to examine plant use during the formative years of a plantation economy. A renewed focus on experimental cropping in the New World plantation system at this site, along with one of the most well documented enslaved African populations before the 1690s in South Carolina, point to the influence of cross-cultural entanglements in building New World agricultural systems. The recovery of watermelon, an African cultivar, found alongside an assemblage of artifacts and other archaeobotanical remains associated with the enslaved Africans at the site, also point to the role of first-generation Africans in establishing New World foodway traditions.

Nanotechnology As One of The Possible Solutions To The Problem of Civilization or Threat To Humanity

Nanomaterials and nanotechnologies are used in almost all areas of agriculture: crop production, animal husbandry, poultry farming, fish farming, veterinary medicine, processing industry, agricultural machinery production, etc. The purpose of this article was to review the literature on the use of nanotechnology in agriculture, the risks and safety of using nanotechnology. The current generation of the world of 7.8 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. This means that food security will require new systems for the production of food, water and energy. On the other hand, producing more food requires natural resources, land consumption, water supply. Thus, in the very near future, scientific research will be asked to present new paradigms and practices to solve highly complex and varied problems. Can the world's agricultural systems cope with global climate change! Nanotechnology is a fast-growing field that can advance agriculture and food processing with new tools that promise to sustainably increase food production and protect crops from pests. In recent years, nanotechnology has become one of the most important and exciting areas of knowledge at the forefront of physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. It gives high hopes for quick breakthroughs and new directions in technical development in many areas of activity. Nanotechnology is a powerful technique that can be used to design and reassemble nature on an atomic and molecular scale. Nanotech is working to realize the ancient scientific vision of recreating the atom by manipulating matter on an atomic scale so that it is transformed into a range of new materials, devices, living organisms and technical systems.

Availability of balanced nutrition at the level of scientific basis for norms of all layers of the population of Ukraine

The basis of all life processes of the human body is a constant metabolism between the body and the environment. From the environment, people consume oxygen, water and food. The role of food is to replenish energy and tissue elements necessary for growth, development and functioning of the body, ensuring metabolic processes, normal health and efficiency. Rational nutrition (ratio – reasonable) is a physiologically complete nutrition of healthy people taking into account their age, sex, nature of work and other factors. Nutritional nutrition contributes to maintaining good health, resistance to harmful environmental factors, high physical and mental capacity, as well as active longevity. The article is devoted to the issues of accessibility to a balanced diet at the level of scientifically substantiated norms of the population of Ukraine. The main problems of mankind are covered, such as: poverty, hunger, malnutrition and food security, etc. Based on statistics for the last few years, the article has calculated and reflected such indicators as: the level of poverty in Ukraine according to national accounts and the upper poverty level of $ 5.50. US per day according to the World Bank, %, the dynamics of indicators of meat consumption in Ukraine, the compliance of indicators of meat consumption in Ukraine with rational standards, etc. The importance of solving problematic issues of food security, which affects the level of socio-economic development of society and countries in general, the ratio of production, consumption and demand for sugar and oil in Ukraine, the prevalence of malnutrition in children and adults in Ukraine, the ratio of nutrition standards in secondary schools for one-time nutrition of students and the physiological needs of the population of Ukraine in basic nutrients and energy. The concept of rational nutrition is revealed. The state of food security determines, in particular, the level of food security, is the key to socio-economic development of society. For the world agricultural system there is a growing trend in declining inventories, rising prices, increasing differences in the level of agricultural development in countries with economic crises and globalization. The availability of a balanced diet at the level of scientifically sound standards for all segments of the population is also considered, which today is one of the main challenges of our time, which gives our study importance and significance.

The Ability of Conservation Agriculture to Conserve Soil Organic Carbon and the Subsequent Impact on Soil Physical, Chemical, and Biological Properties and Yield

Increases in human populations and the emerging challenges of climate change mean that the world's agricultural systems will need to produce more food in an environment that is increasingly variable and where the quality of our natural resource base is declining. One central measure of an agricultural system's capacity to do this is its ability to preserve soil organic carbon (SOC), due to the pivotal role that this plays in maintaining soil physical, chemical, and biological properties and ultimately yield. This narrative review examines the literature published worldwide over the last 30 years to assess the impact of one widely applied agricultural management system, conservation agriculture (CA), on its ability to maintain SOC and the subsequent impacts on soil physical, chemical and biological properties, and yield. While the effects of CA on SOC worldwide are variable, with both increases and decreases observed, in regions where soil and climatic conditions are favorable for biomass production and where the system does not negatively impact yield, then CA can lead to higher amounts of SOC relative to conventionally managed systems, particularly in the surface of the soil profile. Where greater SOC occurs, these are also often accompanied by improvements in soil structure, water infiltration and soil water storage, plant nutrient availability, microbial biomass and diversity, and yield. However, where CA is used in certain environments (e.g., cold, wet environments with poorly drained soils) or where the CA system has not been well-adapted to local conditions, taking into account the specific agronomic, social, and environmental challenges present, then it may not be a successful system of management. Farmers require access to a range of tools and resources to allow them to identify if the principles of CA are likely to lead be appropriate for their situation and well-designed, locally adapted systems to successfully overcome the agronomic, social and economic challenges that can be associated with its use.

A real options analysis of Australian wheat production under climate change

A significant portion of the world's agricultural systems currently operate at the extreme end of the climate conditions that are considered to be suitable for crop and livestock production. Under these conditions, even moderate climate changes are anticipated to drive substantial transformational changes to agricultural systems. Transformations require new investments and infrastructure and can leave some assets stranded. These transformations can be partially or wholly irreversible, and hysteresis effects can make switching difficult and mistakes costly to reverse. This study demonstrates how a real options decision framework, ‘Real Options for Adaptive Decisions’ (ROADs), can be used to investigate how uncertainties about the climate affect the adaptation and transformation of agricultural systems. By building upon recent developments in the mathematics of stochastic optimisation, we extend traditional economic analyses of agricultural investment decisions based on net present values to better represent incomplete knowledge and uncertainty. We report results from a case study in South Australia that describes the transition pathways farmers might follow as their industries are transformed in response to climate change.

A method for calculating a land-use change carbon footprint (LUC-CFP) for agricultural commodities - applications to Brazilian beef and soy, Indonesian palm oil.

The world's agricultural system has come under increasing scrutiny recently as an important driver of global climate change, creating a demand for indicators that estimate the climatic impacts of agricultural commodities. Such carbon footprints, however, have in most cases excluded emissions from land-use change and the proposed methodologies for including this significant emissions source suffer from different shortcomings. Here, we propose a new methodology for calculating land-use change carbon footprints for agricultural commodities and illustrate this methodology by applying it to three of the most prominent agricultural commodities driving tropical deforestation: Brazilian beef and soybeans, and Indonesian palm oil. We estimate land-use change carbon footprints in 2010 to be 66 tCO2 /t meat (carcass weight) for Brazilian beef, 0.89 tCO2 /t for Brazilian soybeans, and 7.5tCO2 /t for Indonesian palm oil, using a 10year amortization period. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is its flexibility: it can be applied in a tiered approach, using detailed data where it is available while still allowing for estimation of footprints for a broad set of countries and agricultural commodities; it can be applied at different scales, estimating both national and subnational footprints; it can be adopted to account both for direct (proximate) and indirect drivers of land-use change. It is argued that with an increasing commercialization and globalization of the drivers of land-use change, the proposed carbon footprint methodology could help leverage the power needed to alter environmentally destructive land-use practices within the global agricultural system by providing a tool for assessing the environmental impacts of production, thereby informing consumers about the impacts of consumption and incentivizing producers to become more environmentally responsible.

The Global View: Issues Affecting US Production Agriculture

ABSTRACT This paper discusses small events occurring among developing countries, particularly but not exclusively in Asia, and their subsequent large impacts on net food exporting countries in the world, particularly, but not exclusively, located in the Western hemisphere. A Green Revolution II is underway as a result where the world's agricultural system will produce more (output) with less (inputs). Agriculture will meet the rapidly growing demand for bio-based foods, fuels, feeds, and fiber while reducing input usage, preserving the natural environment, and maintaining native ecosystems. In turn agricultural workers will receive a health dividend as chemical usage falls, automation, metering, and sensing technologies rise, and exposure to harsh environmental, both natural and man-made, conditions is reduced. This paper was prepared for the Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Conference, “Be Safe, Be Profitable: Protecting Workers in Agriculture,” January 27–28, 2010, Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas.

How tight are the limits to land and water use? - Combined impacts of food demand and climate change

Abstract. In the coming decades, world agricultural systems will face serious transitions. Population growth, income and lifestyle changes will lead to considerable increases in food demand. Moreover, a rising demand for renewable energy and biodiversity protection may restrict the area available for food production. On the other hand, global climate change will affect production conditions, for better or worse depending on regional conditions. In order to simulate these combined effects consistently and in a spatially explicit way, we have linked the Lund-Potsdam-Jena Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (LPJ) with a "Management model of Agricultural Production and its Impact on the Environment" (MAgPIE). LPJ represents the global biosphere with a spatial resolution of 0.5 degree. MAgPIE covers the most important agricultural crop and livestock production types. A prototype has been developed for one sample region. In the next stage this will be expanded to several economically relevant regions on a global scale, including international trade. The two models are coupled through a layer of productivity zones. In the paper we present the modelling approach, develop first joint scenarios and discuss selected results from the coupled modelling system.

Phaseolus (Fabaceae) in Archaeology: AMS

Beans of several species were domesticated in tropical America thousands of years ago, to be combined with maize and other crops in highly successful New World agricultural systems. Radiocarbon dates on charcoal associated with Phaseolus in archaeological sites, in Mexico and Peru indicated the presence of domesticated beans as early as 10 000 years ago. However, direct dates on the beans and pods themselves by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) do not provide evidence for the cultivation in Mexico of common beans, P. vulgaris, and teparies, P. acutifolius, before about 2500 B.P. in the Tehuacan Valley, and of common beans about 1300 years ago in Tamaulipas and 2100 years ago in the Valley of Oaxaca. AMS dates support the presence in the Peruvian Andes of domesticated common beans by about 4400 B.P. and lima beans by about 3500 B. P. and lima beans by about 5600 B.P. in the coastal valleys of Peru. The late appearance of common and lima beans in the Central Highlands of Mesoamerica supports the importance of missing evidence that may be obtained from prehistoric agricultural sites in western Mexico and in Central America which are located within the range of the wild populations of these species. Additionally, biochemical studies of subsamples of the dated specimens should be carried out in order to extend the molecular evidence for the independent domestication of North and South American common beans.

Assisting developing countries toward food self-reliance.

Per capita food availability in the developing world has increased by 20% since the early 1960s, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, and today the world has twice as many people but 150 million fewer hungry people than in 1960. The world agricultural system has not done too bad a job over the past 35 years. It is likely that global agricultural production will continue to at least match growth in food demand over the next decade, assuming no major weather anomalies. Continued support of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research and programs involving U.S. universities is important to sharing knowledge about agriculture with colleagues in the developing world. This paper explores the reasons for providing agricultural development assistance, the benefits to the United States that come from doing so, and the special challenges facing the world over the next few decades.

The world agricultural system and ethical considerations relating to the rural environment: Some perspectives on cause and effect in underdeveloped countries

Food is a basic human need and therefore a basic human right. While food output has increased to a level where there is enough food produced to feed the world, still millions starve. Using the concept of capitalist world economy as a framework, this paper provides a structural analysis of the food production and distribution system within monopoly capitalism and its implications for countries of the underdeveloped world. Focusing on the impact of a dominant world food supply system on indigenous systems (particularly through the rise of science, technology, and monopoly capital), considerations relating to environmental use and food production and distribution are raised. Finally a call is made for a new agricultural ethic.

System analysis and the world food system

The current world agricultural system generates persistent hunger, economic instability, and ecological degradation. Quantitative analysis has been used primarily to predict or optimize small parts of this system, not to engage with its larger problems, and not to redesign the system to eliminate those problems. New questions are posed here about world agriculture; several systems studies are described that begin to deal with those questions; and a challenge is put forth to combine systems tools with transcendent human qualities, to bring forth a stable, sufficient, sustainable global food system.