estimated at 4.0 to 4.5 t ha 1 (Illy, 1997; Wopereis et al., 1999), and in general two crops per year are grown. Development of improved fertilizer recommendations entirely based This compares to average yields in the Sahelian and on field experiments is time-consuming and costly. We employed a comSavannah regions of 3.0 to 5.5 t ha 1. The cropping bination of two simulation models and selected...

This paper presents a proposed expert system to identify the leaf diseases of three cereal crops (rice, maize and wheat). Keeping in view the advances in the field of agriculture and need of farmers, this expert system has been proposed. The identification of plant diseases is usually a difficult task and requires a plant pathologist or well-trained technician to accurately describe the case. M...

This paper explores the origins of observed differences in cooperativeness across societies and cultures. In particular, we provide evidence that rice cultivation gives rise to a more cooperative social norm. The rationale behind the hypothesis is that unlike cultivating other crops, such as wheat or corn, farming rice historically required extensive cooperation among farmers. We travelled to f...

Beyond the conventional role of providing food, rice farming in European Mediterranean wetlands performs a valuable non-marketable function related to the provision of environmental services. Rice and biodiversity are jointly produced, so that provision of flooded-rice-fields based environmental services depends crucially on private profitability of rice farming. Recent reforms of the Common Ag...

Ð An analytical construct of social capital is presented, followed by a case study from Sri Lanka. There, farmer organizations were established in the Gal Oya irrigation scheme in the early 1980s with a combination of roles, rules, norms and values that supported mutually bene®cial collective action. This produced measurable improvements in system performance and eciency. In the 1997 dry seaso...

When flowing through Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana, India, the Musi River picks up (partially) treated and untreated sewage from the city. Downstream of the city, farmers use this water for the irrigation of rice and vegetables. Treatment of the river water before it is used for irrigation would address the resulting risks for health and the environment. To keep the costs and operational ...

Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide, due to its broad spectrum, low cost, low toxicity, high efficiency, and non-selective characteristics. Rice farmers rarely use glyphosate as a herbicide, because the crop is sensitive to this chemical. The development of transgenic glyphosate-tolerant rice could greatly improve the economics of rice production. Here, we transformed the Pseudomonas fluoresc...

Including food production in non-food systems, such as rubber plantations and biofuel or bioenergy crops, may contribute to household food security. We evaluated the potential for planting rice, mungbean, rice cultivar mixtures, and rice intercropped with mungbean in young rubber plantations in experiments in the Arakan Valley of Mindanao in the Philippines. Rice mixtures consisted of two- or t...

Weedy rice are complex of Oryza morphotypes widely distributed in the commercial rice fields in more than 50 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, especially in areas where farmers have switched to direct seeding due to labour shortage and high cost. Wild and weedy forms of different species coming under the genus Oryza are also known as wild rice, red rice, padi angin, windy rice, air r...

One of the reasons for the success of the agricultural sector in the developed countries is regulate the size of the farms, because it helps to scale economy of production. Considering that the size of agricultural production units should be specifically determined for each product and in each area, the aim of this study is to determine the optimum size of rice farms in the Fereydounkenar count...