biodiversity is an important component in sustainability assessment of agroecosystems. along with increasing or decreasing of biodiversity, ecosystem services in agroecosystems will be varied. agricultural experts take into account different factors which affect agroecosystems variation. in this study, farming systems of two areas including a protected mountainous area and also a plain – hilly ...

Protected cropping produces more food per land area than field-grown crops. includes low-tech polytunnels utilizing protective coverings, medium-tech facilities with some environmental control, and high-tech such as fully automated glasshouses indoor vertical farms. High crop productivity quality are maintained by using control systems advanced precision phenotyping sensor technologies that wer...

Wild life: The elusive fosa (Cryptoprocta ferox) is the top predator in the dry deciduous forests of Madagascar, but very little was known about its biology until the 1990s. The presence of volunteer groups studying its role in the forest’s ecology has also helped to protect its habitat. (Photo: Earthwatch/ Luke Dollar.) The world’s latest national park has just been created in the east of Russ...

Soil erosion plays an important role in C cycling at farm scale, especially bare soil areas. In Mediterranean woody crops, temporary cover crops (CC) effectively reduce and increase total protected organic carbon (SOC) fractions. However, the effects of CC olive groves on preferential loss (Corg) fractions remains poorly understood. To address this issue, four plots with seeded two tilled (CT) ...

Bioenergy crops have the potential to enhance soil carbon (C) pools fromincreased aggregation and the physical protection of organicmatter; however, our understanding of the variation in these processes over heterogeneous landscapes is limited. In particular, little is known about the relative importance of soil properties and root characteristics for the physical protection of particulate orga...

Herbicide safeners are chemicals used for manipulating the tolerance of large-seeded grass crops to selected soil-applied herbicides. The physiological interactions of herbicides and their respective safeners are characterized by the following facts: a) safeners are most effective when applied prior to or simultaneously with the herbicides whose injury they prevent; b) safeners exhibit a high d...

Risk assessments of new insect-resistant crops will need to estimate the potential for increased weediness of wild crop relatives as a consequence of gene flow. When field experiments are precluded by containment concerns, simulation experiments can identify hazards or measure expected differences between GMOs and parental plants. To measure plant fitness consequences of wild plant protection f...