Pseudomonas syringae is a bacterial plant pathogen that can lead to heavy losses in crop production. Th is bacteria is a very good model to study the infection processes, as it can cause disease in Arabidopsis thaliana, a well-studied plant model. Th is text presents an overview of the bacterial pathogenesis from a molecular biology perspective, and explains the role of plant responses in stopp...

Ideal fertilizer management to optimize plant productivity and quality is more relevant than ever, as global food demands increase along with the rapidly growing world population. At the same time, sub-optimal or excessive use of fertilizers leads to severe environmental damage in areas of intensive crop production. The approaches of soil and plant mineral analysis are briefly compared and disc...

Agriculture is one of the most important and possibly the oldest economic activity developed by humans and it is becoming increasingly dependent on development of technologies (Alexandre, 2009). Agriculture in Africa is a subsistent, low technology and low-performing one which requires reduced drudgery and increased commercialization. For crop production, farmlands are cleared using cutlass and...

This appendix provides the detailed analysis of size economies and comparative advantage by area for crop production. A summary of this analysis was presented in chapter 8. The analysis was conducted at the University of Minnesota by Steve Cooke under the guidance of Burt Sundquist. Cooke’s manuscript “Size Economies and Comparative Advantage in the Production of Corn, Soybean, Wheat, Rice, and...

Drought is a major limiting factor in crop production. Rewatering is a process opposite to drought, allowing plants to recover to their normal physiological state. To understand more thoroughly the set of genes involved in plant response to drought, we comparatively and jointly analyzed the microarray data of drought and rewatering experiments in Arabidopsis. A total of 3833 differentially expr...

After a decade of transgenic crop production, the dynamics of gene introgression into wild relatives remain unclear. Taking an ecological genetics approach to investigating fitness in crop-wild hybrid zones, we uncovered both conditions and characteristics that may promote introgression. We compared diverse crop-wild hybrid genotypes relative to wild Helianthus annuus under one benign and three...

The use of modern crop varieties is a dominant method of obtaining high yields in crop production. Efforts to identify suitable varieties, with characteristics that would increase crop yield under future climate conditions, remain essential to developing sustainable agriculture and food security. This work aims to evaluate potential genotypic adaptations (i.e., using varieties with increased ab...

Substantial research has been done in Idaho and elsewhere on the chemistry and movement of agricultural P. Southern Idaho’s situation is unique, however, both because of the region’s calcareous soils and because the region’s dairy industry produces a large supply of manure that is used as a fertilizer in crop production. This publication summarizes the research relevant to southern Idaho and gi...

Precision farming, precision agriculture or site-specific management (SSM) is a management system where crop production practices and inputs such as seed, fertilizers and pesticides are variably applied within a field. Input rates are based on the needs for optimum production at each within-field location. Since over-application and under-application of agrochemicals are both minimized, this st...