Oil palm production has led to large losses of valuable habitats for tropical biodiversity. Sparing of land for nature could in theory be attained if oil palm yields increased. The efficiency of oil palm smallholders is below its potential capacity, but the factors determining efficiency are poorly understood. We employed a two-stage data envelopment analysis approach to assess the influence of...

Potato tuberworm, Phthorimaea operculella (Zeller), is the most serious insect pest of potatoes worldwide. The introduction of the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin gene through genetic engineering offers host plant resistance for the management of potato tuberworm. We report on the field and storage studies to evaluate Bt-cry5 potato lines for resistance to potato tuberworm in Egypt under natu...

The objective of this review was to report on advances in environmental, cultural, and physiological aspects fleshy fruit cracking reduce or avoid disorder, which affects many species. Cracking is a disorder that limits the production quality fruits because it exocarp mesocarp, especially with climate change variability. Fruit generated by external factors (agronomic environmental) internal fac...

System of Rice Intensification (SRI) management practices depart from conventionallyrecommended methods for rice cultivation, aiming to provide rice plants with optimal growing conditions, to enhance yield and resource productivity (Stoop et al. 2002). The benefits of SRI practices have been seen already in 42 countries and are reported to increase yields of irrigated rice by 25–50% or even mor...

Lodging, defined as the permanent displacement of aboveground parts, is a common problem to cause yield loss, deterioration in seed quality and difficult to harvest in canola (Brassica napus L.) crop production. This study aimed to develop a method for assessing crop lodging, to examine how agronomic practices affected the relationships between root lodging and electrical capacitance traits. Ca...

The genus Capsicum ranks as the second most exported vegetable in Brazil, which is also considered to be a center of diversity for this genus. The aim of this study was to rescue genetic variability in the genus Capsicum in the southwest region of Mato Grosso, and to characterize and estimate the genetic diversity of accessions based on morphoagronomic descriptors and inter-simple sequence repe...

Management strategies that minimize P transfer from agricultural land to water bodies are based on relationships between P concentrations in soil and runoff. This study evaluated such relationships for surface runoff generated by simulated sprinkler irrigation onto calcareous arable soils of the semiarid western United States. Irrigation was applied at 70 mm h(-1) to plots on four soils contain...

Western scientists and development officials are often discomfited by the fact that farmers in the developing world rarely behave like the independent actors of neoclassical economics. Instead, farmers appear to be enmeshed in a social fabric, and their decisions often seem unduly guided by social factors such as customs, obligations, and beliefs. It is not surprising that many outsiders regard...

Weather and climate events and agronomic enterprise are coupled via crop phenology and yield, which is temperature and precipitation dependent. Additional coupling between weather and climate and agronomic enterprise occurs through agricultural practices such as tillage, irrigation, erosion, livestock management, and forage. Thus, the relationship between precipitation, temperature, and yield i...