Landraces are heterogeneous plant varieties that are reproduced by farmers as populations that are subject to both artificial and natural selection. Landraces are distinguished by farmers due to their specific traits, and different farmers often grow different populations of the same landrace. We used simple sequence repeats (SSRs) to analyse 12 barley landrace populations from Sardinia from tw...

Industry and mainstream research and policy institutions often suggest that transgenic crop varieties can raise the productivity of poor third world farmers, feed the hungry, and reduce poverty. These claims are critically evaluated by examining global-hunger data, the constraints that affect the productivity of small farmers in the third world, and the factors that explain their poverty. No si...

Pollination contributes to an estimated one third of global food production, through both the improvement of the yield and the quality of crops. Volatile compounds emitted by crop flowers mediate plant-pollinator interactions, but differences between crop varieties are still little explored. We investigated whether the visitation of crop flowers is determined by variety-specific flower volatile...

Leaf area index (LAI) is a significant biophysical variable in the models of hydrology, climatology and crop growth. Rapid monitoring of LAI is critical in modern precision agriculture. Remote sensing (RS) on satellite, aerial and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has become a popular technique in monitoring crop LAI. Among them, UAVs are highly attractive to researchers and agriculturists. Howev...

Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com The global human population increased from 1.6 billion to six billion during the 20th century and is estimated to reach 10 billion by 2050. Producing sufficient food to feed rapidly growing human population is one of the biggest challenges the world is ever facing in modern history. For decades, agriculture has been heavily reliant on industrial nit...

• Beans are vital sources of protein, iron and other micronutrients in Rwanda and Uganda. • The average yield gain over local varieties from adopting improved bean varieties is 53% in Rwanda and 60% in Uganda. • Rwandan households planting improved bean varieties gain, on average, an extra 42 kg of the crop over local varieties per agricultural season, increasing household revenue by US$50. • F...

The purpose of this study was to measure daily and seasonal evapotranspiration and daily crop coefficient of two common varieties of sunflower (Sirna and Euroflor) via drip-tape irrigation system. For this purpose, the sunflower water use was determined by daily monitoring of soil moisture at the depths of 10, 20, 30, 40 and 60 cm, and the crop evapotranspiration (ETC) was measured using volume...

The Indo-Swiss collaboration in Biotechnology (ISCB) initiated in Phase IV a pigeon pea network considering the importance of pulses in the food and nutrition security of India. Pulses are grown on rainfed marginal lands with meagre nutrient and pest managements. Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan L.) is the second largest pulse crop and is an important source of dietary proteins in India. India contrib...