Meeting the projected global demand for food and fuel from corn systems while conserving natural resources and improving environmental quality can only be achieved by the intensification of existing corn systems. Yield analysis of the central U.S. Corn Belt indicates that there is a large exploitable yield gap for corn. Since 1999, we have been experimenting with optimizing corn management syst...

Cultural practices (CPs) can be harnessed for the management of foliar and soilborne diseases by creating an environment which is favorable for the crop and unfavorable for the pathogen. Certain CPs, e.g. flooding and sanitation, are used mainly for pest control while others, e.g. irrigation, can be used for both crop management and pest control. Some CPs, e.g. deep plowing, crop rotation, flam...

Crop plants are subjected to multiple abiotic stresses during their lifespan that greatly reduce productivity and threaten global food security. Recent research suggests that plants can be primed by chemical compounds to better tolerate different abiotic stresses. Chemical priming is a promising field in plant stress physiology and crop stress management. We review here promising chemical agent...

Global food production needs to be increased by 60-110% between 2005 and 2050 to meet growing food and feed demand. Intensification and/or expansion of agriculture are the two main options available to meet the growing crop demands. Land conversion to expand cultivated land increases GHG emissions and impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services. Closing yield gaps to attain potential yields may...

All agricultural producers face recurring risks, significant among them being production risk. Many factors contribute to production risk, including adverse weather conditions such as drought or floods, fires, insects or pests, and disease. These events can devastate a crop, significantly reducing yield and farmer revenue. Since the only way to completely avoid all production risks is to stop p...

A crop can be represented as a biotechnical system in which components are either chosen (cultivar, management) or given (soil, climate) and whose combination generates highly variable stress patterns and yield responses. Here, we used modeling and simulation to predict the crop phenotypic plasticity resulting from the interaction of plant traits (G), climatic variability (E) and management act...

Information on maximum grain yield and its attributes are limited for double-season rice crop grown under the subtropical environment. This study was conducted to examine key characteristics associated with high yielding double-season rice crop through a comparison between an integrated crop management (ICM) and farmers' practice (FP). Field experiments were conducted in the early and late seas...

Biotechnology has enriched the strategy set available to crop managers. Suppose a manager faces a decision between applying a pre-emergence pesticide or applying nothing at all. The advent of pesticide tolerance traits in plants admits the possibility of a state-contingent post-emergence application of pesticide. The innovation adds value in large part because it provides the manager with the o...

In New Zealand, increasing levels of resistance in diamondback moth (DBM) to recommended synthetic pyrethroid and organophosphate insecticides were monitored for five years in vegetable Brassica crops until in 1997 they were associated with control failures in three regions. Subsequently, Crop & Food Research initiated a two-year IPM implementation programme with financial assistance from gover...