39 Books found
Springer-Verlag GmbH Books
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Biocontrol Potential and its Exploitation in Sustainable Agriculture
Plant based biotechnology has come to represent a means of mitigating the problems of global food security in the twenty-first century. Products and processes in agriculture are increasingly becoming linked to science and cutting edge technology, to enable the engineering of what are in effect, designer plants. One of the most successful , non-chemical approaches to pest management and disease control is biological control, which seeks a ...
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Climate Change: Significance for Agriculture and Forestry
Societies throughout the world depend on food, fiber and forest products. Continuity and security of agricultural and forest production are therefore of paramount importance. Predicted changes in climate could be expected to alter, perhaps significantly, the levels and relative agricultural and forestry production of different nations over the next few decades. Agriculture and forestry are also likely to influence the rate and magnitude ...
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Economic, Environmental, and Health Tradeoffs in Agriculture Pesticides and the Sustainability of Andean Potato Production
Today the goal of designing highly productive, sustainable agricultural production systems is at the forefront of agricultural research agendas around the world. The key to designing sustainable agricultural production technologies is in understanding their economic, environmental, and human health impacts. This volume presents a methodology designed to quantify such impacts and to represent them as tradeoffs. This tradeoff methodology is ...
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Effects of Climate Change and Variability on Agricultural Production Systems
Evidence shows that global climate change is occurring. Research and debate continue on the role of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in influencing climate change. Many sectors are or will be influenced by changing climate and climate variability, including increasing global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and increased frequency of unusual weather events. Agriculture and the world's supply of food and ...
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Environment in the 21st Century and New Development Patterns
Economic growth after World War II was made possible through dramatic increases in the use of material resources and energy. It is apparent that current development patterns followed by industrialized countries are causing serious environmental problems and that they are neither ecologically nor socially sustainable. In recent years, many Asian developing countries, which have suffered from poverty for decades, are experiencing high rates ...
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Flexible Incentives for the Adoption of Environmental Technologies in Agriculture
Flexible Incentives for the Adoption of Environmental Technologies in Agriculture identifies and structures more flexible economic incentives for the achievement of environmental goals in agriculture. It provides a conceptual framework and presents case studies that analyze how flexible incentives can address environmental problems that are caused by agricultural production. The book brings together economists, agency personnel and ...
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Improved Crop Quality by Nutrient Management
Emphasis in agricultural production has shifted from mere quantity to quality products. Practical experience and scientific investigations have shown that, of the various culture measures, balanced fertilization above all exerts a considerable influence on the quality of agricultural products. Simply adding more of what the crop has already absorbed to capacity is unproductive, expensive, wasteful and damaging to the environment. ...
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Managing Organic Matter in Tropical Soils: Scope and Limitations
Soil organic matter is a reservoir for plant nutrients, provides water-holding capacity, stabilizes soil structure against compaction and erosion, and thus determines soil productivity. All agriculture to some degree depends on soil organic matter. It has long been known that soil organic matter declines when land is taken into cultivation, and that the productivity of new agricultural land is governed by fertility contributions from decomposing ...
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Mycorrhizal Biology
'The fundamental problem the world faces today, is the rapidly increasing pressure of population on the limited resources of the land. To meet the ever increasing demands of expanding populations, agricultural production has been raised through the abundant use of inorganic fertilizers, the adoption of multicropping systems and liberal application of chemical pesticides (fungicides, bactericides, etc. ). Though the use of chemicals has ...
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Plant Kairomones in Insect Ecology and Control
The nature of the coevolutionary process that produced the interactions between plant kairomones and insect sensory organs suggests that kairomones can be employed for insect control in a variety of baits and traps. This book discusses the major theoretical approaches to the subject, as well as a number of specific applications in pest control. The authors describe their own work with volatile kairomones and their synthetic analogues ...
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Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Insect-Plant Relationships
The reason why insect-plant relationships attract more and more attention has been given by Professor Schoonhoven in the introductory lecture to this symposium: 'The green blanket on the earth's surface with its myriads of insects has already revealed some of its complex workings, but contains many more facets which need to be discovered to gratify our insatiable curiosity, as well as help to improve agricultural production'. The 9th ...
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Resource Management in Rice Systems: Nutrients
Rice is the major staple food in Asia, and food security means rice security for most Asians. By the year 2025, we need to produce about 60% more rice than we do today to meet the growing demand. Efficient use of inputs is vital to safely produce the additional food from limited resources with minimal impact on the environment. This book reviews emerging knowledge-intensive technologies and decision aids for improved nutrient management in ...
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Restoration of Forests
In the conflict between logging as a material resource and preservation the forests are becoming depleted throughout the world and this depletion is aggravated by the effects of air pollution. The concept of utilization is thus now being expanded to include vital societal values. These issues are nowhere more acute than in Central and Eastern Europe, where obsolete, poorly maintained industrial plant is common. Air pollutant levels are ...
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Rural Planning from an Environmental Systems Perspective
This book synthesizes knowledge from several fields that are crucial to sustainable rural development: the physical environment, biological and agricultural production, rural sociology and economics. It takes a systems perspective incorporating systems analysis, landscape analysis and soil, water, and land planning. Rural Planning from an Environmental Systems Perspective is directed toward graduate students and professionals, providing a source ...
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Sulphur in Agroecosystems
This is the second volume in the series Nutrients in Ecosystems. Sulphur as an essential plant nutrient has received little attention. This is explained by the facts that sulphur was obviously in sufficient supply from the atmosphere, from soil and as a by-product in mineral fertilizers. Increases in the yield potential and thus in the nutrient requirement of modern crops, however, as well as remarkable changes in SO2 emissions by private ...
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Sustainability of Irrigated Agriculture
Irrigated agriculture and the use of water resources in agriculture face the challenges of sustainable development. Research has advanced our knowledge of water use by crops, soil-water-solutes interactions, and the engineering and managerial tools needed to mobilize, convey, distribute, control and apply water for agricultural production. However, the achievements booked in user practice have revealed the need for new developments in the ...
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The Pesticide Question
Pesticides have contributed impressively to our present-day agricultural productivity, but at the same time they are at the center of serious concerns about safety, health, and the environment. Increasingly, the public wonders whether the benefits of pesticides - 'the perfect red apple' - outweigh the costs of environmental pollution, human illness, and the destruction of animals and our habitat. Scientists and government officials are ...
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Understanding Options for Agricultural Production
Understanding Options for Agricultural Production is a synthesis of a global multidisciplinary network of scientists from around the world. This book describes the outputs of the IBSNAT network, including topics on data standards and the minimum data set, crop simulation models of major food crops, and application programs to assess risk resulting from implementation of different management options and strategies. These outputs were ...