Background. Up to 75% of crop species benefit at least to some degree from animal pollination for fruit or seed set and yield. However, basic information on the level of pollinator dependence and pollinator contribution to yield is lacking for many crops. Even less is known about how insect pollination affects crop quality. Given that habitat loss and agricultural intensification are known to d...

In this paper we first construct a theoretical model of land use by swidden cultivators when these cultivators can choose whether to grow a cash crop or a food/subsistence crop. Second, we study the land quality accumulation decision faced by shifting cultivators and, in the process, we show how to compute the optimal length of time during which cleared land is to be left fallow. Finally, we in...

A partial equilibrium model of stochastic crop production is used to analyze the impacts of subsidized crop insurance on the extensive margin of agricultural production. It is shown that land use is unchanged only when an actuarially fair, perfectly separating insurance contract is offered. For actuarially fair, pooling equilibrium contracts, however, land with a minimum quality that is strictl...

Assessment of management-induced changes in soil quality is important to sustaining high crop yield. A large diversity of cultivated soils necessitate identification development of an appropriate soil quality index (SQI) based on relative soil properties and crop yield. Whereas numerous attempts have been made to estimate SQI for major soils across the World, there is no standard method establi...

Pesticides have played very important roles against food shortages and plant diseases, and our modern life would be vastly different without their use. Weed infestation adversely affects crop production by reducing yields and decreasing market prices of the crop. For cost-effective land use, crop yield and price must be maximized, and the cost of weed control minimized. Herbicides substantially...

The recent developments of remote sensing technology, in particular with its improved spatial and temporal resolution, open new possibilities for estimating crop acreage over larger areas. Remotely sensed data allow the estimation of crop acreage independently of sometimes biased and incomplete sub-national survey statistics. This paper presents a methodology on crop acreage estimations using t...

One of the major problems in the Brazilian agriculture is related to the production loss in the field, which, due to many factors, is not being considered. This article has the objective to develop a methodology to identify a quality index which integrates some crop quality variables which are able to indicate how the crop is developing in terms of loss in the field. The results have showed tha...

Camelina sativa is an oilseed with desirable agronomic and oil-quality attributes for a viable industrial oil platform crop. Here we generate the first chromosome-scale high-quality reference genome sequence for C. sativa and annotated 89,418 protein-coding genes, representing a whole-genome triplication event relative to the crucifer model Arabidopsis thaliana. C. sativa represents the first c...