Biotic and abiotic constraints seriously affect the productivity of agriculture worldwide. The broadly recognized benefits of legumes in cropping systems-biological nitrogen fixation, improving soil fertility and broadening cereal-based agro-ecologies, are desirable now more than ever. Legume production is affected by hostile environments, especially soil salinity and high temperatures (HTs). A...

For the early Iron Age Elymian town on Monte Polizzo, inland western Sicily, hulled barley was the dominant cereal, followed by emmer and free-threshing wheat. The dominant legume was Vicia faba. In the contemporary Greek harbour town of Selinunte on the southern coast of western Sicily, free-threshing wheat was dominant, while hulled barley and the legume V. ervilia were subdominant. For Selin...

In dryland farming areas of Montana, annual precipitation is not sufficient for annual planting of cereal grains. Instead, a crop-summer fallow farming system is used to conserve soil moisture and increase available nitrogen for subsequent crop growth. Managing this summer fallow, either by mechanical means or with herbicides, is the highest variable cost associated with dryland grain productio...

crop productivity, water use efficiency (wue), and microbial biomass c and n in rainfed dry area are influenced by tillage, rotation, and crop residue management. field experiments were conducted during 2005-08 to study the effect of tillage, crop rotation, and crop residue retention on oat fodder yield, water use efficiency, and microbial biomass c (mbc) and n (mbn) under semi-arid conditions ...