Crop Yields Articles

Original story at MIT News Nearly 25 percent of the world’s malnourished population lives in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 300 million people depend on corn, or maize, as their main food ...

Mar. 16, 2017

By MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Introduction At present, a great part of vegetable production in Chile is dedicated to industrial agronomy and one of the most important products is the tomato crop for industrial processing. Chile has a capacity of 180,000 tons of tomatoes per year, which is equivalent to 12,000 hectares of crop land. Among canned products tomato paste represents 38%. This is an important employment ...

Nov. 21, 2016

By Terawet Green Technologies, Inc. (TGT)

Rice and wheat are major cereal crops in Nepal. Climate change impacts are widespread and farmers in developing countries like Nepal are among the most vulnerable. A study was carried out to assess the impact of climate change on yield and irrigation water requirement of these cereal crops in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Laboratory and soil-plant-air-water analysis showed silt-loam being the most ...

Oct. 27, 2016

By IWA Publishing

Maize (Zea mays L.) is a major crop on the Loess Plateau, and calculating the ratio of transpiration to evapotranspiration (T/ET) of maize is important for estimating field water balance. In this study, the sap flow method was adopted to measure transpiration (T) characteristics of maize. In order to calibrate the sap flow gauge, the sap flow rate was compared to the leaf T determined by the ...

Aug. 3, 2016

By IWA Publishing

"Eight years into implementing a zero-till policy across the farm, we’re seeing improved yields of 10 tonnes per hectare for our first year wheat, and five tonnes per hectare on winter beans. We’ve also noticed that we continue to see year-on-year improvements to soil structure and crop yields. “The winter beans have been extremely valuable in the rotation to ensure nitrogen and ...

Aug. 1, 2016

By Certis UK

Nigel Riches, Arable Technical Specialist for Certis, explains what he’s been seeing in the field. “Black-grass is a problem that in the past has generally been confined to the main arable areas, in the east of the country. “But increasingly we’re seeing this pernicious weed spreading further west each season. Where previously black-grass has not been a big issue in the ...

Jul. 28, 2016

By Certis UK

Wild cousins aren’t always appreciated at family gatherings. But when it comes to crops, the opposite is often true: Plant breeding has historically relied on genes from plants growing in the wild as a source of diversity that can be introduced into crop plants to produce new crop varieties that are more resilient, nutritious and productive than those currently cultivated. As human ...

Jun. 8, 2016

By Ensia

Overview Growers interested in purchasing supplemental or sole-source lighting need to be able to accurately predict the economics and cost of ownership for the many different types of fixture layouts and options available on the market. A useful financial estimate is the simple payback (or return on investment, ROI) of choosing one system over another. The ROI takes into consideration ...

Apr. 28, 2016

By Illumitex Inc.

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 ...

Jan. 6, 2016

By American Society of Agronomy

Researchers around the world are exploring how GMO technology might boost food production under hot, dry conditions. Roger Deal is trying to figure out how plants remember drought. An assistant professor of biochemistry and genetics at Emory University, Deal says most plants have a kind of memory for stress. When experiencing water shortage, for example, plants close ...

Jan. 4, 2016

By Ensia

Standards that credibly and effectively certify sustainable commodity production are important to both producers and consumers. Agriculture is the dominant user of water worldwide, so water sustainability in agriculture is an area of particular interest. In conjunction with Bonsucro, a sustainability standard setting body for the sugarcane sector, an indicator was developed to ensure that ...

Dec. 3, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The goal of this paper is to analyze the impacts of climatic variation around current normals on crop yields and explore corresponding adaptation effects in Arizona, using a unique panel data. The empirical results suggest that both fertilizer use and irrigation are important adaptations to climate change in crop production. Fertilizer use has a positive impact on crop yields as expected. When ...

Sep. 11, 2015

By IWA Publishing

On August 19, 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) announced the start of enrollment for financial assistance through the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) to assist in growing new sources of biomass. The enrollment is open for farmers and forest landowners who will ...

Sep. 4, 2015

By Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.

Today from InfoAg, FarmLogs, the leading all-in-one field monitoring platform and trusted partner to over 25% of U.S. row crop farms, announced the release of FarmLogs Flow, the first connected machine product to generate instant yield maps. The small plug-in hardware device integrates with the FarmLogs platform and automatically creates yield maps, eliminating the complex and manual time ...

Aug. 26, 2015

By TractorExport

Plants are far better than humans at turning sunlight into food. But they’re not nearly as good as they could be: Thanks to quirks in the systems that have evolved to capture solar energy and use it to build sugars from carbon dioxide and water, the conversion efficiency of photosynthesis is but a few percent at best. With the need to produce more crops growing even faster than human ...

Aug. 14, 2015

By Ensia

This study investigates incentives and disincentives regarding adoption of controlled tile drainage (CTD) in a region of eastern Ontario, Canada, where CTD could be used prolifically from a biophysical standpoint, but is not. Irrespective of documented environmental and agronomic benefits of CTD, adoption remains low. Surveys and semi-structured interviews with producers and drainage ...

Jul. 22, 2015

By IWA Publishing

Information related to trends in different crops can aid the policy makers in recommending policies leading to sustainable increase in the food production. The present study was aimed at analyzing the trends in area, production and yield of important ...

Jul. 17, 2015

By International Network for Natural Sciences (INNSPUB)

On June 18, 2015, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $55 million in funding for projects to accelerate biomass development and develop generator technologies under the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The funding will be divided between two of ARPA-E's ...

Jun. 25, 2015

By Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.

Uncertainties caused by climate change and population explosion require suitable methods for estimating grain yield during the growing seasons. This paper evaluates the applicability of the AquaCrop model in the region of western Kenya. The objectives of the study were to: simulate the long-term maize crop yields for the region using AquaCrop model for variable climate scenarios, and estimate ...

Jun. 1, 2015

By IWA Publishing

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 ...

May 21, 2015

By Ensia