Temporal NDVI signatures of the following land cover types in the Aral Sea Basin (ASB) were analyzed in MODIS data 2000–2012: Wetlands, bare land, water surfaces, natural vegetation and rainfed agriculture (in mountainous regions), low vegetation, rice cropping systems. Only the last class refers to cropland. All other classes were targeted to separate non-cropland or rainfed agriculture from t...

Water deficit is an important factor limiting crop growth all over the world. In order to evaluate genetic variation, heritability and the interrelationship between agronomic traits, twenty chickpea genotypes were cultivated in two separated randomized complete block experiments with three replications under normal irrigated and rainfed conditions. The experiments were carried out at the Agricu...

With a growing world population and a trend towards more resource-intensive diets, pressure on land and water resources for food production will continue to increase in the coming decades. Large parts of the world rely on rainfed agriculture for their food security. In Africa, 90 % of the food production is from rainfed agriculture, generally with low yields and a high risk of crop failure. One...

Eucalyptus plantations occupy almost 20 million ha worldwide and exceed 3.7 million ha in Brazil alone. Improved genetics and silviculture have led to as much as a three-fold increase in productivity in Eucalyptus plantations in Brazil and the large land area occupied by these highly productive ecosystems raises concern over their effect on local water supplies. As part of the Brazil Potential ...

Climate variability can induce uncertainty in yields, and threaten long term economic viability of rainfed agricultural enterprises in the absence of effective adaptation strategies. Enterprise mix diversification has been found to be an effective adaptation strategy for mitigating multiple sources of farm business risk in some contexts. The extent to which enterprise mix diversification can mi...

(eds M.C.S. Wopereis et al.) 35 Upland environments are situated at the high end of the toposequence, where rice depends solely on rainfall as the water table is out of the reach of rice roots for much of the growing season. At the lower end of the toposequence, rice plants can reach the water table or profit directly from flood water. Along the toposequence, interactions exist between environm...

Relative (actual / potential) evapotranspiration (RET) was derived using ten-day composite NOAA PAL datasets (8km x 8km spatial resolution) over Indian landmass and an operational energy balance algorithm for five agricultural years (June-May) between 1996 to 2001. This was used to characterize ‘Kharif’ (June-October) rice growing environment and its yield prediction in rainfed conditions. Inve...

Climate variability adversely impacts crop production and imposes a major constraint on farming planning, mostly under rainfed conditions, across the world. Considering the recent advances in climate science, many studies are trying to provide a reliable basis for climate, and subsequently agricultural production, forecasts. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon (ENSO) is one of the princ...

This study assesses the vulnerability of Bulgarian agriculture to drought using the WINISAREG model and seasonal standard precipitation index SPI(2) for the period 1951-2004. This model was previously validated for maize on soils of different water holding capacity (TAW) in various locations. Simulations are performed for Plovdiv, Stara Zagora and Sofia. Results relative to Plovdiv show that in...