Productivity is the final outcome of a long chain of developmental events. The reproductive processes leading to cropping in a fruit tree may be analyzed at two distinct levels: 1) the reproductive unit, single organ level, and 2) the multi-organ fruit population, tree level. (The orchard, with its tree population, represents a still higher organizational level.) Although a complete “failure” a...

Nitrogen (N) cycling was determined in monocultures of Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench and alley cropped sorghum with Acacia saligna (Labill.) H. Wendl. in semiarid Northern Kenya. N input through biological N2 fixation of the acacia, N transfer from the legume to the intercrop and losses of applied N through harvest and 15 leaching were estimated using N enrichment. The biological N fixation and N...

Temperate agricultural practices that lower external inputs, increase potential for carbon (C) storage, and augment system resilience, particularly through agrodiversity, remain crucial to productive landscapes. Agroforestry systems, the combination of trees and crops, achieve such shifts in agricultural management, predominantly when positive interspecific interactions are optimized. Although ...

4th International Workshop on Functional-Structural Plant Models, 7-11 june 2004 –Montpellier, France Edited by C. Godin et al., pp. 29 Predicting coarse root biomass from branching patterns of native tree species in a tropical mountain forest in South Ecuador N. Soethe, J. Lehmann, C. Engels Department of Plant Nutrition, Humboldt University; Germany Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Corne...

In the current scenario of worldwide limited water supplies, conserving water is a major concern in agricultural areas. Characterizing within-orchard spatial heterogeneity in water requirements would assist in improving irrigation water use efficiency and conserve water. The crop water stress index (CWSI) has been successfully used as a crop water status indicator in several fruit tree species....

Apple (Malus x domestica Borkh.) grown in a Mediterranean climate depends on regular irrigation throughout the growing season. The objective of the current study was to elucidate the changes in carbohydrate storage and utilization by mature, field-grown apple trees in response to water availability to the trees and to the level of cropping. Fourteen-year-old apple trees cv. 'Golden Delicious' w...

Crop productivity is improved by ecosystem services, including pollination, but this should be set in the context of trade-offs among multiple management practices. We investigated the impact of pollination services on coffee production, considering variation in fertilization, irrigation, shade cover, and environmental variables such as rainfall (which stimulates coffee flowering across all pla...

Since agriculture directly contributes to global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, integrating trees into agricultural landscapes through agroforestry systems is a viable adaptive strategy for climate change mitigation. The objective of this study was to evaluate the carbon (C) sequestration and financial benefits of C sequestration according to Quebec’s Cap-and-Trade System for Gre...

Global temperature increases are significantly altering species distributions and the structure of ecological communities. However, the impact of temperature increases on multi- species interactions is poorly understood. We used an ant-Hemiptera-plant interaction to examine the potential outcomes of predicted temperature increases for each partner and for the availability of honeydew, a keyston...