Crop Research Articles
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Are you maxing out? Applying the Law of the Maximum gets the most from your fertility investment dollars
Avoid excess crop nutrients in your fertilizer strategy to maintain soil health and protect your pocketbook The push to produce higher yields per acre every year continues to weigh heavily on western Canadian farmers. That pressure is accompanied by economic and environmental concerns. Should you invest more money into crop nutrients to reach record yields? Will that investment pay off? Will ...
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Revolutionizing Agriculture with Auxins
One area where there has been a tremendous development in recent years is the discovery and application of auxins in the agricultural industry. This article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of what auxins are, their applications, and the advantages of using them. Introduction of Auxins Auxins are a class of plant growth regulators. They are hormones that stimulate or inhibit the growth ...
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A day in the life of an Agricultural Technologist
An Agricultural Technologist mainly does two things that keep Pollen Systems flying: researching crops and drawing maps! Agricultural Technologists are often studying ways to improve our analytics and best serve our customers. However, the bulk of the work during the Pacific Northwest growing season is analyzing imagery collected by our pilots and packaging it into periodic updates for our ...
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Managing Moisture: Navigating Drydown Decisions
This season has been, without a doubt, one of the wettest since 2009. In many states, the excessive rain led to flooding and late planting. On my family farm in North Central Iowa, like on many farms throughout the Corn Belt, it was so wet that we couldn’t get into the field to plant on schedule. And the continued wet weather means that now high and variable grain moisture levels are ...
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Irrigating with saline or seawater
Currently, agriculture uses seventy percent of the freshwaters, globally. Available freshwater sources will not be enough to increase food production to feed growing populations in the coming decades. Therefore, there is a concerted effort to grow crops with seawater. Hence, scientists are investigating the various challenges involved in growing plants with saline water. These include greenhouse ...
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Urban Crop Solutions makes indoor farming technology for Mars biosphere
Will the first people to bake and eat bread on Mars do it due to a Belgian breakthrough? This is the challenge facing the SpaceBakery project, a unique consortium composed of seven Belgian organisations using technology provided by Urban Crop Solutions. However, before they use their research to help feed the first people on the red planet later this century, the project aims to have a clear ...
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NIR & spectroscopy in agriculture & crop science
According to a review by Dr. Crocombe, hand-held spectrometers have historically been used by only small groups of people, such as analytical and drug companies. These days, spectroscopy is available in simple low cost devices for a multitude of applications for scientists and non-scientists alike. One of the most prominent uses of spectroscopy has been the use of the technology on leaves for ...
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The Importance of Leaf Area Index (LAI) in Environmental and Crop Research
Leaf Area Index (LAI), which is used as a measure in hundreds of studies on forests, crops, climate and the environment, is calculated as half the area of all leaves per unit area of ground. It is measured as the leaf area (m2 ) per ground area (m–2) and is unit-less. So, a plant with a LAI of 2 has an amount of leaves that can cover a given area two times. LAI is calculated for a plant or ...
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The importance of Leaf Area Index (LAI) in environmental and crop research
Leaf Area Index (LAI), which is used as a measure in hundreds of studies on forests, crops, climate and the environment, is calculated as half the area of all leaves per unit area of ground. It is measured as the leaf area (m2 ) per ground area (m–2) and is unit-less. So, a plant with a LAI of 2 has an amount of leaves that can cover a given area two times. LAI is calculated for a plant or ...
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Legal Hemp In 2019 May Be A Boon For Stressed Out American Farmers
Legal hemp is about to enter the American scene in a big way. The 2018 Farm Bill, which includes language that legalizes hemp across the U.S., was signed into law this week by President Trump. The stroke of that pen unleashes a potential economic dynamo for American farmers. Currently used in over 25,000 products globally, industrial hemp-based goods include automotive parts, furniture, ...
By Pharmalogyx
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Perfect poinsettias for Christmas? Controlling compost moisture can remove the need for chemical growth retardants
Poinsettias, the classic Christmas pot plant, are grown in their thousands in UK nurseries from late July onwards, but growers have to rely on the use of plant growth regulators (PRGs) to ensure that the optimum height and number of bracts is achieved by early December. With protective environmental legislation threatening to reduce the availability and use of such PGR treatments, a project led ...
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The Latest in Whitefly Control
Next month’s Greenhouse Canada Grower Day is welcoming leading researchers and crop specialists to help you tackle one of the industry’s biggest challenges. Whitefly is proving to be one of the most difficult pests to control, mainly due to the lack of effective registered chemicals that can eradicate silverleaf whitefly. It is also due to the unwillingness of biological suppliers to ...
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Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (GDAAS) - Case Study
There are 13 research institutes under the GDAAS, including specific foods and crops and fertilizer research. The main mission of the institution is to carry out non-profit research around agricultural science and techniques. As one of the most important agricultural crops institutions, the Crops Research Institute has been focusing on the development of new varieties of crops, cultivation ...
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One crop, two ways, multiple benefits
Nitrogen fixation is one of the best examples of cooperation in nature. Soil microbes – naturally occurring bacteria in the soil – work with plants to pull nitrogen from the air. They turn the nitrogen into a form the plant is able to use. In return, the plant lets the microbes eat some of the sugars it makes. Faba beans (also called fava beans) are one example of plants that work ...
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Crop gene banks are preserving the future of agriculture. But who’s preserving them?
As climate change makes crop diversity even more important, gene banks struggle to stay afloat. During the past few years of civil war in Syria, rebel fighters have destroyed Shia mosques and Christian graves, and burned and looted Christian churches while the Islamic State group has demolished priceless artifacts in the region. Nothing seemed sacred to the disparate groups vying for control of ...
By Ensia
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Asia–Pacific Analysis: Plan for growth in biotech crops
South-East Asian nations should follow the Philippines down the path to biotech crops for food security, argues Crispin Maslog. Since biotechnology-derived crops were introduced in 1996, they have been adopted at an unprecedented rate, according to the 2011 annual report of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) released earlier this year. [1] There ...
By SciDev.Net
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Model forecasts long-term impacts of forest land-use decisions
The drive to develop crops for use as biofuel, continues to raise questions about additional uses of forest land. A cutting edge computer model developed at North Carolina State University offers detailed insight to predict the environmental impact – along with understanding forest ecosystem response to global climate change. “We think the model will help policy makers and forest ...
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Assessing agroforestry`s advantages
Agroforestry, the deliberate placement of trees into crop and livestock operations, can help capture substantial amounts of carbon on agricultural lands while providing production and conservation benefits. However, we currently lack tools for accurately estimating current and projected carbon values in these systems. In North America, windbreaks are an effective carbon-capturing option. Only ...
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Controlling Barnyardgrass with Corn Hybrid Selection
Barnyardgrass is a summer annual grass weed with a global impact on corn production. Yield losses due to barnyardgrass competition have been estimated up to 45% or more for crops such as cotton and corn. Besides corn, it can also be a serious weed pest in rice, soybean, sugarbeet, cotton, and corn. Integrated weed management techniques can be used for control of barnyardgrass in corn. High ...
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Developing a mini core collection of sorghum for diversified utilization of germplasm
The sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] germplasm collection at the ICRISAT gene bank exceeds 37,000 accessions. A core collection of 2247 accessions was developed in 2001 to enable researchers to have access to a smaller set of germplasm. However, this core collection was found to be too large. To overcome this, a sorghum mini core (10% accessions of the core or 1% of the entire collection) ...
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