Any change in climate will have implications for climate-sensitive systems such as agriculture, forestry, and some other natural resources. With respect to agriculture, changes in solar radiation, temperature, and precipitation will produce changes in crop yields, crop mix, cropping systems, scheduling of field operations, grain moisture content at harvest, and hence, on the economics of agricu...

Maize (Zea mays L.) is truly a remarkable crop species, having been adapted from its tropical origins to a wide diversity of environments and end uses. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAOSTAT webpage, 792 million metric tons of maize were produced worldwide in 2007, making it the world’s highest yielding grain crop (http://faostat.fao.org/site/339/defaul...

Seed is the basic input in agriculture. The quality of seed used by farmers determines the status of agriculture they practice. However, for maximum gain in productivity the use of both improved varieties and improved integrated crop management practices are required. Not only do they contribute to increasing productivity individually, but they also act synergistically. Seed of improved varieti...

The aim of this work was to develop a method for selection of optimal soybean varieties for the American Midwest using data analytics. We extracted the knowledge about 174 varieties from the dataset, which contained information about weather, soil, yield and regional statistical parameters. Next, we predicted the yield of each variety in each of 6,490 observed subregions of the Midwest. Further...

Rice is an important staple crop throughout the world, but environmental stress like low-light conditions can negatively impact crop yield and quality. Using pot experiments and field experiments, we studied the effects of shading on starch pasting viscosity and starch content with six rice varieties for three years, using the Rapid Visco Analyser to measure starch pasting viscosity. Shading at...

The organic farmers use wider range of crop varieties than the conventional farming. Bread wheat is the most favorite and the most common food crop. The organic bread wheat is usually of worse technological quality. Therefore, it is supposed to be an attractive alternative to the hulled wheat species (einkorn, emmer wheat and spelt). Twenty-five hulled bread wheat varieties and control bread wh...

This paper compares the profitability and cost of production of irrigated Roundup Ready cotton varieties and conventional cotton varieties grown under crop share rental agreements in the Texas High Plains Region for 1998. The Standardized Performance Analysis (SPA) program was used to analyze 25 sub-enterprises for each variety type from six producers selected from the regional SPA database for...

Plant transformation is an important tool with many applications in modern plant biology. Although this technique is primarily used to produce superior crop varieties, it is also being utilized to answer basic questions concerning gene function and regulation in contemporary functional genomics research. In our laboratory, we have established a transformation system for Hypericum perforatum. Th...