D. H. Gent*, J. L. Farnsworth and D. A. Johnson US Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit, and Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331; Department of Crop and Soil Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331; and Department of Plant Pathology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA ...

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Phytic acid Genetics 2.1. Background 2.2. The Isolation of Cereal low phytic acid Mutants 3. Breeding and evaluation of " low phytic acid " crops 4. The use of near-isogenic crop lines in studies of dietary Phytate in human health 5. Conclusions and future directions Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketch

China’s role on the global grain market is expected to increase as the demand for food and feed grows, both within and outside the country. This role could also be affected by unexpected crop failures caused by natural hazards. This paper uses agricultural production (rice, wheat, maize, tubers, soybeans and other grains) and natural hazards data (floods and droughts) for 31 provinces in China ...

Abstract Diversifying cropping systems by increasing the number of cash and cover crops in crop rotation plays an important role improving resource use efficiency promoting synergy between ecosystem processes. The objective this study was to understand how combination diversification practices influences performance arable sequences terms grain yield, weed biomass, nitrogen acquisition a temper...

The narrowing of diversity in crop species contributing to the world's food supplies has been considered a potential threat to food security. However, changes in this diversity have not been quantified globally. We assess trends over the past 50 y in the richness, abundance, and composition of crop species in national food supplies worldwide. Over this period, national per capita food supplies ...

Plant-soil feedback (PSF) and plant competition play an important role in structuring vegetation composition, but their interaction remains unclear. Recent studies suggest that competing plants could dilute pathogenic effects, whereas the standing view is that competition may increase the sensitivity of the focal plant to PSF. In agro-ecosystems each of these two options would yield contrasting...

China and other rapidly developing economies face the dual challenge of substantially increasing yields of cereal grains while at the same time reducing the very substantial environmental impacts of intensive agriculture. We used a model-driven integrated soil-crop system management approach to develop a maize production system that achieved mean maize yields of 13.0 t ha(-1) on 66 on-farm expe...

The utilization of NOAA-AVHRR NDVI data for crop yield forecasting is of particular importance in semiarid regions where there are strong inter-year yield fluctuations due to meteorological vagaries. The present work deals with the use of monthly GAC NDVI data for the early estimation of cereal crop yield in Mediterranean African countries. A preliminary analysis showed that relatively high cor...

The manuscript explores the effect of the N fertilizer applied to a previous horticultural crop on the subsequent, unfertilized, wheat crop: the different response of weight and nitrogen content of the cereal. The differences shown by the wheat crop after the fertilization of the previous crop were already examined by several of the authors using the wavelet technique (Milne et al. 2010). The n...

Several researchers have hypothesized that shade avoidance behaviour is favoured by natural selection because it increases the fitness of individuals. Shade avoidance can be disadvantageous for crops, however, because it reduces allocation of resources to reproductive yield, increases the risk of lodging and reduces weed suppression. One approach to develop varieties with reduced shade avoidanc...