Increasing crop yield and water use efficiency (WUE) in dryland farming requires a quantitative understanding of relationships between crop yield and the water balance over many years. Here, we report on a long-term dryland monitoring site at the Loess Plateau, Shanxi, China, where winter wheat was grown for 30 consecutive years and soil water content (0-200 cm) was measured every 10 days. The ...

This report was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Summary Exposure to a high degree of climate risk is a characteristic feature of rainfed agriculture in the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia. A growing body of evidence l...

Globally and in the United States, agriculture is the major user not only of water but also of land. This paper compares trends in aggregate and per capita water and land use by the agricultural sector in the United States and the world during the 20 century. It finds that although cropland use per capita has been declining in both areas since the early 1900s, agricultural water use per capita ...

Thirteen-lined ground squirrels (Spermophilus tridecemlineatus) and other small rodents damage corn (Zea mays) stands by digging and consuming planted seeds and young seedlings, particularly in reduced-tillage fields. The use of reduced-tillage systems such as ecofarming provides greater dryland crop yields, conserves moisture, reduces soil erosion and provides suitable habitat for ground-nesti...

Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) is a warm season grass with a growing season of 60-100 days. It is a highly nutritious cereal grain used for human consumption, bird seed, and/or ethanol production. Unique characteristics, such as drought and heat tolerance, make proso millet a promising alternative cash crop for the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region of the United States. Development of proso m...

The study for biointerfaces at different scales in the past years has pricked up the march of biological sciences, in which biomembrane concept and its characteristics, receptor proteins, ion channel proteins, LEA proteins, calcium and newly recognized second messengers, ROS, MAPKs and their related sensors and new genes in osmoregulation, signal transduction, and other aspects have been unders...

to study the effect of different fertilizing systems on macro and micro nutrients uptake by annual medic (medicago scutellata cv. robinson) an experiment was conducted under dry farming and irrigated conditions at two research stations (sararood dryland agricultural research institute and soil fertility research station in mahidasht) during 2009 growing season. the experimental treatments consi...