Diagnostic research is important in helping to create an enabling environment for promising biotechnology products in smallholder agriculture, before rather than after release. The biotechnology products that now hold promise for poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa are those that tackle economically important, biotic or abiotic problems not easily addressed through conventional plant breeding or ...

The experiment was carried out at Regional Agricultural Research Station, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Jessore to evaluate the performance of different varieties of hybrid maize under intercropping systems with groundnut in rabi seasons to find out the suitable intercropping system in increasing crop productivity and profitability of consecutive two years (2004 and 2005). ...

High air temperatures during the crop growing season can reduce harvestable yields in major agronomic crops worldwide. Repeated and prolonged high night air temperature stress may compromise plant growth and yield. Crop varieties with improved heat tolerance traits as well as crop management strategies at the farm scale are thus needed for climate change mitigation. Crop yield is especially sen...

Delivering improved seeds to smallholder farmers in the developing world is an efficient and sustainable method of increasing crop yields and quality. Unlike fertilizers, pesticides and equipment, seeds can be produced locally for distribution to farmers or self-saved. Furthermore, improved varieties of horticultural crops often reduce dependence on synthetic pesticides, improve food safety, re...

Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is the major cereal crop in the Horn of Africa particularly in Ethiopia where it is staple food for about 50 million people. Its resilience to extreme environmental conditions and high in nutrition makes tef the preferred crop among both farmers and consumers. The efficiency of in vitro regeneration plays significant role in the improvement of crops. We inve...

Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc.) [BGN] is an easy-to-cultivate legume seed classified under the family Fabaceae, sub-family Faboidea and genus Vigna [1]. Two botanical varieties exist, namely V. subterranea var. spontanea (wild varieties) and V. subterranea var. subterranea (cultivated varieties). BGN originated in West Africa from the Bambara district near Timbuktu and is now ...

In recent work with Warren Maguire and Paul Heggarty, we have been exploring the possibilities for quantitative phonetic comparison of English accents. Currently, the ‘Sound Comparisons’ project (www.soundcomparisons.com) includes over 90 varieties of modern English. In some localities, up to three sub-varieties are also included to illustrate the potential of these techniques of comparison for...

Soybean growers have adopted herbicide tolerant varieties at a rapid rate. While some potential cost savings may have driven adoption, the primary reason growers are switching to new programs is the simplicity and flexibility of a weed control program that relies on one herbicide to control a broad spectrum of weeds without crop injury or crop rotation restrictions. Roundup Ready weed control p...

This paper presents a methodology to recognize certain crop fields’ images using texture, color and combination of both types of features. In this work, we have considered eight varieties of crop images, namely, Brinjal, Cotton, Groundnut, Paddy, Soyabean, Sugarcane and Sunflower. Texture features using GLCM and color features using HSV are deployed. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used for ...

Since the domestication of crop species, humans have derived specific varieties for particular uses and shaped the genetic diversity of these varieties. Here, using an interdisciplinary approach combining ethnobotany and population genetics, we document the within-variety genetic structure of a population-variety of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in relation to farmers' practices to deciphe...