Economic evaluations of the benefits of integrated weed management often only consider the benefits of management in the crop phase, and ignore the impact of rotational options. In particular, non-crop phases such as annual and perennial pasture phases can have a substantial impact upon weed population dynamics and economic returns. Moreover, extended perennial pasture phases are being promoted...

Progress in crop improvement is limited by the ability to identify favourable combinations of genotypes (G) and management practices (M) given the resources available to search among possible combinations in the target population of environments (E). Crop improvement can be viewed as a search strategy on a complex G×M×E adaptation or fitness landscape. Here we consider design of an integrated s...

Winter cover crops are sources of C and N in flooded rice production systems, but very little is known about the effect of crop residue management and quality on soil methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. This study was conducted in pots in a greenhouse to evaluate the influence of crop residue management (incorporated into the soil or left on the soil surface) and the type of cover-...

Management of plant litter or crop residues in agricultural fields is an important consideration for reducing soil erosion and increasing soil organic C. Current methods of quantifying crop residue cover are inadequate for characterizing the spatial variability of residue cover within fields or across large regions. Our objectives were to evaluate several spectral indices for measuring crop res...

Land-use conversion into bioenergy crop production can alter litter decomposition processes tightly coupled to soil carbon and nutrient dynamics. Yet, litter decomposition has been poorly described in bioenergy production systems, especially following land-use conversion. Predicting decomposition dynamics in postconversion bioenergy production systems is challenging because of the combined infl...

CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS The Agricultural Risk Management SimProbabilistic budgeting methods are used in ulator (ARMS) is a microcomputer program ARMS to evaluate the impact of alternative designed to help users evaluate strategies for management strategies on annual net cash managing yield and price risk in crop farming flow probability distributions. Probabilistic operations. Risk management st...

This study provides a spatially comprehensive assessment of sustainable agricultural residue removal potential across the United States for bioenergy production. Earlier assessments determining the quantity of agricultural residue that could be sustainably removed for bioenergy production at the regional and national scale faced a number of computational limitations. These limitations included ...

It has been debated how different farming systems influence the composition of soil bacterial communities, which are crucial for maintaining soil health. In this research, we applied high-throughput pyrosequencing of V1 to V3 regions of bacterial 16S rRNA genes to gain further insight into how organic and conventional farming systems and crop rotation influence bulk soil bacterial communities. ...

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of financial assistance to farms on crop biodiversity in an uncertain setting. The findings reveal that risk aversion is an important driving force for crop biodiversity conservation. Riskaverse farmers can hedge against the uncertainty they face by allocating land to different crop species. However, policies intended to sta...

Crop protection is a key activity for farmers. There is a need to improve the practice and use less chemical pesticides. We hypothesized that farmers may be overwhelmed by the amount of data available. Therefore we proposed the concept of crop protection decision workflow system (CPDeWS) to guide them in interpreting the information in tactical adjustments of treatment decisions. We provide her...