Excessive salt accumulation in soil is a major ecological and agronomical problem, especially in arid and semiarid areas. Excessive soil salinity affects the establishment, development and growth of plants, resulting in major losses of production. A pot experiment was set up to examine the effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (Glomus etunicatum and Glomus versiforme) and salinity on the gro...

Meteorological satellite data from 1982 to 1990 were used to identify areas of significant association between tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) and remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) anomalies, here taken as a surrogate for rainfall anomalies. During this period, large areas of arid and semi-arid Africa, Australia and South America experienced NDVI anoma...

The Agave genus embraces many species with outstanding ecological and economic importance in the arid regions of the Americas. Even though this genus covers a broad geographic distribution, our knowledge on the population genetics of species is concentrated in taxa located in North America. Recently, it has been demonstrated that plant domestication decreases levels of genetic diversity in mana...

A brief history of development of the 1985 Hargreaves equation and its comparison to evapotranspiration ~ET! predicted by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations ~FAO! Penman-Monteith method are described to provide background and information helpful in selecting an appropriate reference ET equation under various data situations. Early efforts in irrigation water requiremen...