276 (eds M.C.S. Wopereis et al.) regimes ranging from 1100 mm to 1400 mm per year, while convex inland valleys (Fig. 22.3c) are formed under the high-rainfall regimes of 1400 mm and above, typical of the equatorial forest zone. With an estimated land area of 190 Mha,1 inland valleys are common landscapes serving a multitude of ecosystem functions in many parts of Africa. In general, wetland env...

This research reports on a pilot project that aimed to develop a prototype ontology for plant production using Thai rice as a case study. It is expected that the developed ontology will be used as a prototype model for other efforts to develop plant production ontology in the future. The Thai Rice Production Ontology provides an organizational framework of 2322 concepts and 5603 terms, in a sys...

Knowing where, when, and how much rice is planted and harvested is crucial information for understanding the effects of policy, trade, and global and technological change on food security. We developed RiceAtlas, a spatial database on the seasonal distribution of the world's rice production. It consists of data on rice planting and harvesting dates by growing season and estimates of monthly pro...

Shrimp production in Thailand has historically been undertaken in the saline and brackish waters of coastal mangroves. In recent years rising demand and prices for shrimp and falling productivity of mangrove areas have motivated an expansion of shrimp production into the fresh-water margins of river estuaries that were previously used for rice cultivation. Generalised additive models, which off...

Given the low access that women in rural Bangladesh have to productive assets, their crucial role as caretakers, and their high vulnerability to micronutrient deficiencies, numerous NGOs target women for food-based income-generating activities. Three such programs were examined. The programs promote adoption of polyculture fish production (two sites) and commercial vegetable production (one sit...

projected global climate change may have a major influence on crop yield. the likely effects of climate change caused by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels on rice yield in iran were evaluated using a mechanistic growth model for rice, gsac-rice, running under a climate change scenario predicted for a doubled-co2 (2xco2) atmosphere by the geophysical fluid dynamics laboratory (gfd...

This paper employed the endogenous switching regression and propensity score matching methods to analyse the impact of row-planting technology on rice productivity using 470 rice farms in Northern Ghana. The empirical findings showed that the adoption of row-planting technology exerted greater positive impact on rice yields of smallholder farmers. In addition, rice yields of adopters and non-ad...

Rice production in the country is characterized by two production seasons namely, mainseason and off-season. Officially, the two production seasons data usually aggregated to form single data of domestic rice supply for the nation. This aggregation is refers to as all-season rice production. All the previous studies estimated supply equation based on the aggregated data thereby denying the oppo...

Background: Aflatoxins are toxic fungal metabolites enable to contaminate a wide range of natural substrates. This contamination can be host-specific for different plant species. In this study, the ability of a toxigenic Aspergillus parasiticus to produce various aflatoxins on major Iranian cereals was evaluated with special focus on plant susceptibility to toxin production at cultivar level. M...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) has supported a greater number of people for a longer period of time than any other crop since it was domesticated between 8,000 to 10,000 years ago (Greenland, 1997). At present, rice is the staple food for more people than wheat, and 90 percent of total rice production is grown and consumed in Asia (Evans, 1998). Unlike maize or wheat, less than five percent of total ri...