Agriculture Monitoring Articles
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Using leaf area meters: Assessing roosting sites for Melon fly and Oriental fruit fly - Case study
Assessment of Attractiveness of Plants as Roosting Sites for the Melon Fly, Bactrocera cucurbitae, and the Oriental Fruit Fly, B. dorsalis. The Researcher Dr. Grant McQuate is a researcher with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Hilo, Hawaii. With over 24 years of experience in research in insect ecology, Dr. McQuate has focused much of his work on the attraction, ecology, host ...
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Crowds Visit Bacsoft At the Expo Agrofuturo in Medellin, Colombia
Expo Agrofuturo is the largest international agricultural show in Columbia. As agrotechnology becomes increasingly more popular and important in Columbia, thousands gathered at the Expo, which took place September 7-9th. Agribusiness professionals, farmers and agricultural exporters from around the world met to share business platforms for the development of productive ecosystems. And Bacsoft ...
By Bacsoft
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What are leaves and why are they important? - Case study
As a research scientist, you’ve dedicated your life to understanding and communicating details about plants that others haven’t considered in the past. Our infographic below focuses on the leaf basics: what leaves are, what they do, and why they are so important. Share it with your students, your friends and family, or just use it as a reminder of why you do what you do. Plus, ...
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Reducing agricultural nitrogen inputs in the German Baltic Sea catchment – trends and policy options
We depict recent agricultural nitrogen input and future loads to be expected in 2021 in the German Baltic Sea catchment to assess the feasibility of reaching water quality targets defined by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). We calculate recent and future nitrogen balances from agriculture by applying an interdisciplinary modelling system, also considering the effects of the ...
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Historic record of pasture soil water and the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation in south-west England
The North Wyke Farm Platform for sustainable grassland research in south-west England contains infrastructure measuring soil moisture and field runoff. Its time series of sensor data is used to validate the parsimonious SH2O-NW model for soil water at field-scale. Thirty-four years of daily soil moisture and runoff is simulated, and used to detect long-term trends and produce a risk analysis. ...
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Factors influencing water-use security among smallholder irrigating farmers in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal Province
This study investigates the physical, socio-economic and institutional factors affecting water-use security among irrigating smallholder farmers in Msinga Local Municipality to recommend policy. Cluster analysis was used to classify farmers according to their water-use security status. The logit model was then used to investigate the socio-economic factors influencing farmers' water-use ...
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Effect of sowing year and seedbed type on yield and yield component in bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L) Verdc) in woodland savannahs of Cote d`Ivoire
Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) is one of the most promising food legumes in Africa, due to its agronomic and nutritional potential. To take advantage of these attributes, several research programs gathering agronomic and genetic data are being implemented throughout Africa. In this context, the responses of yield and yield components to year sowing and seedbed type were tested in three ...
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Effects of the boscalid fungicide Filan® on the marine amphipod Allorchestes compressa at environmentally relevant concentrations
Fungicides are widely used in agriculture to control fungal diseases. After application, fungicides can be transported offsite to surface and ground water and ultimately enter estuarine/marine environments. The presence of fungicides in the marine environment may pose risks to marine organisms but little is known about fungicide effects on these organisms, especially invertebrates. The present ...
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Phosphorus runoff is a big problem, but Florida is getting closer to a solution
Excess phosphorus runoff and emissions from urban areas and croplands, animal feedlots, sewage treatment plants, and combustion of fossil fuels has been blamed for the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, toxic algal blooms in Lake Erie and problems in numerous other lakes and rivers around the world. For years unwanted nutrients were also choking the Florida Everglades, but in a surprising ...
By Ensia
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Let’s stop treating our soil like dirt
One of the most underappreciated resources on our planet, soil does much more than grow crops The United Nations’ International Year of Soils is hardly a media darling. Maybe it’s because many people are like me, who recall Mom’s words: “Take off your shoes! Don’t bring dirt into the house!” With all the challenges in the world today, why would we recognize ...
By Ensia
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Is organic farming climate friendly?
Think organic farming is climate friendly? You might want to think again. A study published recently in the journal Agriculture and Human Values suggests that as organic agriculture emulates conventional industrial agriculture, the environmental benefits may not be the slam-dunk that Earth-loving proponents might like them to be. It’s well known that organic practices offer climate ...
By Ensia
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Trend analysis in climatic variables and impacts on rice yield in Nigeria
The effects of changes in meteorological parameters on rice yield variations were considered. Weather parameters, temperature (T), rainfall (R), relative humidity (RH) and solar radiation (SR), and rice yield variation for Ibadan were analyzed. Meteorological parameters were obtained from the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture while rice yield data were obtained from the Africa ...
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Only capitalism can save the planet
It’s not “sustainable” business when a company takes a long view and targets problems that aren’t going away — it’s smart business. To say the world has changed a lot in the last century is a huge understatement. Industrial, medical and social progress has resulted in unprecedented growth in the world’s population and economy, and that growth has placed ...
By Ensia
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Insecticide risk map exposes threat to aquatic life
The global threat that insecticides pose for aquatic biodiversity has been revealed in a recent modelling study that pinpoints areas at greatest risk. The mapping exercise conducted by the researchers reveals that aquatic life in water bodies within 40 per cent of the global land surface is at risk from insecticides running off the land. Published in Environmental Pollution last month (30 ...
By SciDev.Net
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The cloud isn`t just for rain anymore
Precision agriculture has been a key enabling technology to achieve higher yields with lower cost and less environmental impact, while keeping the cost of food fairly stable Has global agricultural productivity increased or decreased in the last 25 years? It has, in fact, more than doubled since 1985. Next to advances in seed genetics, precision agriculture has been a key enabling technology to ...
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Analysis of price volatility of mineral fertilisers: possible issues for European farmers
European farmers are currently affected by an increase in the price of fertilisers (from an index of 100 in 2005 to 150 in 2012 after it peaked at almost 200 at the end of 2008) that calls into question the future availability of these kinds of inputs. Since 2007, the strong demand from emerging countries, geopolitical tensions over natural resources, and the rise in the price of energy have been ...
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How plants grow and develop
How does a complete plant with stems, leafs and flowers develop from a tiny clump of seemingly identical cells? For a very long time, the mechanism of tissue formation in plants remained unclear. The biochemists from Wageningen University also would not have come up with the answer if it wasn’t for their model building colleagues that simulated plant development with their mathematical ...
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Nano silicon dioxide mitigates the adverse effects of salt stress on Cucurbita pepo L
Nanotechnology, an emerging science, has advanced research in almost all fields of technology. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the role of nano silicon dioxide (nSiO) in plant resistance to salt stress through improving the antioxidant system of squash (Cucurbita pepo L. cv. White Bush Marrow). We found that seeds treated with NaCl showed reduced germination percentage, vigor ...
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Valuation of nitrogen retention as an ecosystem service on a catchment scale
An ecosystem service approach was used to study the water purification service exemplified by impacts of land management scenarios. Nitrogen retention was calculated in two agricultural catchments by the dynamic Integrated Nutrients in Catchments (INCA)-N model. The monetary valuation was based on purification efficiency of artificial wetlands. The set of scenarios were based on existing ...
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The problems with the arguments against GM crops
New evidence shows that arguments against GM crops are unfounded, says Margaret Karembu. The year 2013 marked the 18th consecutive year of commercial cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or now commonly referred to as biotech crops. And in just under two decades, the volume of land on which biotech crops are grown has increased from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 — the first ...
By SciDev.Net
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