BACKGROUND Agrobiodiversity is said to contribute to the sustainability of agricultural systems and food security. However, how this is achieved especially in smallholder farming systems in arid and semi-arid areas is rarely documented. In this study, we explored two contrasting regions in Benin to investigate how agroecological and socioeconomic contexts shape the diversity and utilization of ...

determination of the amount of sugar in sugar beet is usually accomplished by polarimetric method in sugar industry. this method is not accurate due to impurities such as sodium, potassium and amino-nitrogen that are present and might cause some errors in the evaluation of the technical quality of sugar beet. in this research, 7309 samples of sugar beet from two semi- arid county, isfahan and c...

an agroecological zones (aez) map is an essential tool for agricultural planning. by integrating the key components of the agricultural environments, it offers a bird's-eye view of internal diversity, agricultural potential and constraints that decision-makers find easier to understand than a pile of single-theme maps. in this study, aez map of the karkheh river basin has been prepared usi...

Arid and semi-arid areas occupy one third of the total area of the world. This vast region is rich in natural resources. In recent times, desertification has become a world-wide phenomenon, due to human activities. China also suffers from this problem. Desertification is especially severe in the southeastern part of the arid and semi-arid region of the country. In this paper, the use of remote ...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Rajasthan is one of the dengue endemic states of India. Very few studies have been published on entomological aspects of dengue in this state. Owing to water scarcity, inhabitants in desert areas overstore domestic water which leads to the persistence of dengue vectors within the domestic premises. Area specific knowledge on breeding, key containers and seasonal rhythms ...

Goji (fruits of Lycium barbarum L. and L. chinense Mill.) has been used in China as food and medicine for millennia, and globally has been consumed increasingly as a healthy food. Ningxia, with a semi-arid climate, always had the reputation of producing best goji quality (daodi area). Recently, the increasing market demand pushed the cultivation into new regions with different climates. We ther...

A minimum composite method was applied to produce a 15-day interval normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) daily 250 m reflectance in the red and near-infrared bands. This dataset was applied to determine lake surface areas in Mongolia. A total of 73 lakes greater than 6.25 km2in area were selected, and 28 of these lakes ...

Current global changes are putting both biodiversity and the processes that depend on it at risk. This is especially true for semi-arid regions and the flagship groups that inhabit them, such as amphibians and reptiles. Semi-arid regions are often thought to have lower biodiversity and thus have been overlooked, resulting in the underestimation of their biological richness. Therefore, the aim o...