The origin of agriculture is one of the defining events of human history. Some 11-10,000 years ago bands of hunter-gatherers started to abandon their high-mobility lifestyles in favour of growing crops, and the creation of settled, sedentary communities. This shift into agricultural lifestyle triggered the evolution of complex political and economic structures, and technological developments, and ultimately underpinned the rise of all the great civilisations of recent human history. Domestication of Plants in the Old World reviews and synthesises the information on the origins and domestication of cultivated plants in the Old World, and subsequently the spread of cultivation from southwest Asia into Asia, Europe, and North Africa, from the very earliest beginnings. This book is mainly based on detailed consideration of two lines of evidences: the plant remains found at archaeological sites, and the knowledge that has accumulated about the present-day wild relatives of domesticated plants. This new edition revises and updates previous data and incorporates the most recent findings from molecular biology about the genetic relations between domesticated plants and their wild ancestors, and incorporates extensive new archaeological data about the spread of agriculture within the region. The reference list has been completely updated, as have the list of archaeological sites and the site maps. This is an advanced, research level text suitable for graduate level students and researchers in the fields of crop science, agriculture, archaeology, botanical archaeology, and plant biotechnology. It will also be of relevance and use to agricultural historians and anyone with a wider interest in the rise of civilisation in this region.

While there has been great progress in the development of plant breeding over the last decade, the selection of suitable plants for human consumption began over 13,000 years ago. Since the Neolithic era, the cultivation of plants has progressed in Asia Minor, Asia, Europe, and ancient America, each specific to the locally wild plants as well as the ecological and social conditions. A handy reference for knowing our past, understanding the present, and creating the future, this book provides a comprehensive treatment of the development of crop improvement methods over the centuries. It features an extensive historical treatment of development, including influential individuals in the field, plant cultivation in various regions, techniques used in the Old World, and cropping in ancient America. The advances of scientific plant breeding in the twentieth century is extensively explored, including efficient selection methods, hybrid breeding, induced polyploidy, mutation research, biotechnology, and genetic manipulation. Finally, this book presents information on approaches to the sustainability of breeding and to cope with climatic changes as well as the growing world population.

As human populations grow and resources are depleted, agriculture will need to use land, water, and other resources more efficiently and without sacrificing long-term sustainability. Darwinian Agriculture presents an entirely new approach to these challenges, one that draws on the principles of evolution and natural selection. R. Ford Denison shows how both biotechnology and traditional plant breeding can use Darwinian insights to identify promising routes for crop genetic improvement and avoid costly dead ends. Denison explains why plant traits that have been genetically optimized by individual selection--such as photosynthesis and drought tolerance--are bad candidates for genetic improvement. Traits like plant height and leaf angle, which determine the collective performance of plant communities, offer more room for improvement. Agriculturalists can also benefit from more sophisticated comparisons among natural communities and from the study of wild species in the landscapes where they evolved. Darwinian Agriculture reveals why it is sometimes better to slow or even reverse evolutionary trends when they are inconsistent with our present goals, and how we can glean new ideas from natural selection's marvelous innovations in wild species.

With more consumers moving away from traditional cereal-based foods due to concerns about health impacts, including wheat intolerance, the sector must develop next-generation nutritionally-enhanced cereal products to maximise market potential. Improving the nutritional and nutraceutical properties of wheat and other cereals reviews key research into the nutritional components of cereals and their role in preventing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cancer. Initial chapters cover our understanding of the nutritional value of starch, antioxidants and lipids in wheat. The book also details the interactions of these components with the gut and whether the way they are processed can inhibit or optimise benefits to overall human health. Final chapters review the key steps in nutritional enhancement of cereals such as wheat, spelt and millet. Edited by Professor Trust Beta, University of Manitoba, Canada, Improving the nutritional and nutraceutical properties of wheat and other cereals will be an excellent reference framework for academic researchers in cereal science, arable farmers, manufacturers/suppliers of cereal nutrition products, as well as government and private sector agencies supporting cereal production.

Nitrogen is an important agricultural input that is critical for crop production. However, the introduction of large amounts of nitrogen into the environment has a number of undesirable impacts on water, terrestrial, and atmospheric resources. This book explores the use of nitrogen in U.S. agriculture and assesses changes in nutrient management by farmers that may improve nitrogen use efficiency. It also reviews a number of policy approaches for improving nitrogen management and identifies issues affecting their potential performance.

Finger millet though a small cereal grain is a most promising millet for its strength of calcium, iron, dietary fibre and polyphenols. These compounds provide better skeletal health and the cereal possess anti-diabetic properties. But the information documented so far on finger millet refers more to varieties and cultivation practices. This book covers the global information within 9 chapters in a methodological way, the finger millet strength, history and cultivation of varieties, nutrients, non-nutrients, the finger millet processing methods, processed products development and their health benefits evaluation which creates a scientific evidence for the benefits.

Functional-structural plant models describe in quantitative terms the development over time of the three-dimensional structure of plants as governed by physiological processes and affected by environmental factors. FSPMs are particularly suited to analyse problems in which the spatial structure of the plant or its canopy is an essential factor to explain, e.g., plant competition and the effects of plant configuration and plant manipulation on yield and produce quality. This book describes the philosophy of FSPM and several tools for making FSPMs; it outlines methods for measuring essential parameters, including those pertaining to plant structure. As FSPMs offer new opportunities to model sink-source interactions, the physiological theory and modelling approaches regarding partitioning of carbon are given specific attention. The book will be useful for scientists and advanced students interested in innovative approaches in plant and crop modelling.

This book describes interactions of plant viruses with hosts and transmission vectors in an agricultural context. Starting with an overview of virus biology, economics and management, chapters then address economically significant plant diseases of tropical and subtropical crops. For each disease, symptoms, distribution, economic impact, causative virus, taxonomy, host range, transmission, diagnostic methods and management strategies are discussed.

Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), Diaphorina citri, is an insect pest which transmits a bacterium, Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas), primarily through feeding in newly emergent foliage of citrus trees. This pathogen causes a disease known as Huanglongbing (HLB), or citrus greening, which has become the most debilitating and intractable disease in citrus crops. This book, written by a team of experts on the Asian citrus psyllid, gathers together everything currently known about the biology and ecology of this important pest species, examines the transmission and acquisition processes of the pathogen, and looks at current management practices and their effectiveness. The potential for new, innovative management techniques are also described, along with the economic implications of managing this rapidly establishing disease. This book: Covers all aspects of Asian citrus psyllid biology and ecology for the first time in one place. Examines new, innovative management practices and assesses their effectiveness. Discusses the vector-pathogen relationship in detail. Explains the economics of controlling this devastating pest. This title is essential reading for all researchers involved in the management and control of Asian citrus psyllid, extension agents, and pest management consultants. It will also be of great use to graduate students in applied entomology and related disciplines.

Alternative methods of disease control such as natural products and compounds derived from biological origins, provide an effective alternate to the use of chemical products or a means to minimize their use. It is imperative now to look for such sustainable crop disease management approaches, that include routine and alternative methods. Natural products for sustainable crop disease management is an effort in this direction, and deals with immediate concerns in the field of natural and alternative products for disease control, apart from using biocontrol organisms. This book presents up-to-date information on natural products and compounds derived from biological origins and thoroughly discusses their applicability, field use and prospects for adoption under different cropping conditions. This book also validates disease management strategies.

Biotechnology of Major Cereals focuses on the recent advances and future prospects in cereal biotechnology. The first part of the book covers the world's major cereals and focus on new developments and trends. The second part is technology rather than species-led, detailing fundamental developments in technologies and significant target traits.

Automation in agriculture is made possible by the integration of advanced agricultural technology and precision agriculture management. This book, uniquely, will focus on applications of automation to the important industry of tree fruit production. Written by experts in agricultural automation technology from around the world, chapters in this book cover topics such as automated tree fruit production systems, plant stress sensing and high-throughput phenotyping in precision horticulture, the economics of automation in tree fruit production, light interception sensing systems for canopy management, precision irrigation and water management, precision technologies for pest and disease management, opportunities for the application of robotics in tree fruit production, and the mechanical harvesting and handling of fruit crops. The book is a representative, concise overview of the variety of technologies currently being applied to tree fruit crops around the world and the challenges faced by engineers and farmers that these technologies raise. It is aimed at researchers and graduate students of agriculture systems, agricultural and biological engineering, crop and soil sciences, horticulture, precision agriculture, and other relevant disciplines. It will also be of use to agriculture consultants, engineers, and other professionals such as agricultural equipment manufacturers and management professionals who use precision agriculture technologies. Key Features: - Takes a systematic approach to how to apply precision and automation technologies to fruit production. - Combines the disciplines of economics, horticulture, and engineering. - Illustrated by case studies throughout describing actual applications of automation technology.

Greenhouse control system manufacturers produce equipment and software with hundreds of settings and, while they hold training courses on how to adjust these settings, there is as yet no integrated instruction on when or why. Despite rapid growth in the greenhouse industry, growers are still faced with a multitude of variables and no unifying framework from which to choose the best option. Consolidating 30 years of research in greenhouse climate control, Optimal Control of Greenhouse Cultivation utilizes mathmatical models to incorporate the wealth of scientific knowledge into a feasible optimal control methodology for greenhouse crop cultivation. Discussing several different paradigms on greenhouse climate control, it integrates the current research into physical modeling of the greenhouse climate in response to heating, ventilation, and other control variables with the biological modeling of variables such as plant evapo-transpiration and growth. Key topics include state-space greenhouse and crop modeling needed for the design of integrated optimal controllers that exploit rather than mitigate outside weather conditions, especially sunlight, given widely different time scales. The book reviews classical rule-based and multivariable feedback controllers in comparison with the optimal hierarchical control paradigm. It considers real and hypothetical examples including lettuce, tomato, and solar greenhouses and examines experimental results of greenhouse climate control using optimal control software. The book concludes with a discussion of open issues as well as future perspectives and challenges. Providing a tool to automatically determine the most economical controls and settings for their operation, this much-needed book relieves growers of unnecessary control tasks, and allows them to achieve the best possible trade-off between short term savings and optimal harvest yield.

Long-Term Farming Systems Research: Ensuring Food Security in Changing Scenarios presents the legacy and heritage of Long-Term Experiments (LTEs) in Agriculture while also addressing the challenges and potential solutions. The book discusses how LTEs form an important asset in understanding agriculture's significant influence on life on earth. As global governments and development agencies try to achieve the Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, this book's content is of unprecedented importance, providing insights into the interactions of agricultural production with ecological, economic and societal aspects. In this regard, this book offers a thorough resource of information based on experiences from various ongoing LTEs in different parts of the world. The contextual variety and geographic diversity presented in this book makes it useful for agricultural and environmental scientists, as well as students and educators in such fields. --- From the Editors: "Thanks to the excellent panel of our contributing authors, in this book, we have attempted to offer the widest possible thematic and geographical coverage on LTEs. Experts from different institutions leading LTEs across the globe have provided their perspectives on different aspects of LTEs, not only highlighting the unique knowledge contribution of LTEs, but also discussing the unique challenges of effectively managing LTEs and maintaining their relevance to changing scenarios. We hope that this book will offer something for everyone interested in the history, present and future of our agroecosystem."

One-Straw Revolutionary represents the first commentary on the work of the late Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka (1913 - 2008), widely considered to be natural farming's most influential practitioner. Mr. Fukuoka is perhaps most known for his bestselling book The One-Straw Revolution (1978), a manifesto on the importance of no-till agriculture, which was at the time of publication a radical challenge to the global systems that supply the world's food, and still inspires readers today. Larry Korn, who apprenticed with Mr. Fukuoka in Japan at the time, translated the manuscript and brought it to the United States, knowing it would change the conversation about food forever. The One-Straw Revolution, edited by Korn and Wendell Berry, was an immediate international success, and established Mr. Fukuoka as a leading voice in the fight against conventional industrial agriculture. In this new book, through his own personal narrative, Larry Korn distills his experience of more than thirty-five years of study with Mr. Fukuoka, living and working on his farm on Shikoku Island, and traveling with Mr. Fukuoka to the United States on two six-week visits. One-Straw Revolutionary is the first book to look deeply at natural farming and intimately discuss the philosophy and work of Mr. Fukuoka. In addition to giving his personal thoughts about natural farming, Korn broadens the discussion by pointing out natural farming's kinship with the ways of indigenous cultures and traditional Japanese farming. At the same time, he clearly distinguishes natural farming from other forms of agriculture, including scientific and organic agriculture and permaculture. Korn also clarifies commonly held misconceptions about natural farming in ways Western readers can readily understand. And he explains how natural farming can be used practically in areas other than agriculture, including personal growth and development. The book follows the author on his travels from one back-to-the-land commune to another in the countryside of 1970s Japan, a journey that eventually led him to Mr. Fukuoka's natural farm. Korn's description of his time there, as well as traveling with Mr. Fukuoka during his visits to the United States, offers a rare, inside look at Mr. Fukuoka's life. Readers will delight in this personal insight into one of the world's leading agricultural thinkers.

Plants, being sessile and autotrophic in nature, must cope with challenging environmental aberrations and therefore have evolved various responsive or defensive mechanisms including stress sensing mechanisms, antioxidant system, signaling pathways, secondary metabolites biosynthesis, and other defensive pathways among which accumulation of osmolytes or osmo-protectants is an important phenomenon. Osmolytes with organic chemical nature termed as compatible solutes are highly soluble compounds with no net charge at physiological pH and nontoxic at higher concentrations to plant cells. Compatible solutes in plants involve compounds like proline, glycine betaine, polyamines, trehalose, raffinose family oligosaccharides, fructans, gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA), and sugar alcohols playing structural, physiological, biochemical, and signaling roles during normal plant growth and development. The current and sustaining problems of climate change and increasing world population has challenged global food security. To feed more than 9 billion, the estimated population by 2050, the yield of major crops needs to be increased 1.1-1.3% per year, which is mainly restricted by the yield ceiling. A major factor limiting the crop yield is the changing global environmental conditions which includes drought, salinity and extreme temperatures and are responsible for a reduction of crop yield in almost all the crop plants. This condition may worsen with a decrease in agricultural land or the loss of potential crop yields by 70%. Therefore, it is a challenging task for agricultural scientists to develop tolerant/resistant varieties against abiotic stresses. The development of stress tolerant plant varieties through conventional breeding is very slow due to complex multigene traits. Engineering compatible solutes biosynthesis by deciphering the mechanism behind the abiotic tolerance or accumulation in plants cell is a potential emerging strategy to mitigate adverse effects of abiotic stresses and increase global crop production. However, detailed information on compatible solutes, including their sensing/signaling, biosynthesis, regulatory components, underlying biochemical mechanisms, crosstalk with other signaling pathways, and transgenic development have not been compiled into a single resource. Our book intends to fill this unmet need, with insight from recent advances in compatible solutes research on agriculturally important crop plants.

This book presents the progress, changes, and evolvement for apple mechanical harvest during the past decades, which include, but not limited to, bulky harvest method, harvest platform, apple infield sorting, and harvest robotics. Though there are significant progresses in apple harvest robotics, there still is a long way ahead before its practical applications, with existing and potential bottlenecks described in this book. Hence, other researchers would take advantage of this book to have a hint of the apple mechanical harvest history and state-of-the-art progress, so that they can find the room for their new research. This book targets senior undergraduates and more importantly graduate students in the field of agricultural engineering, sensing, automatic, and robotics.

This volume provides a comprehensive collection of methods for plant breeders and researchers working in functional genomics of cereal crops. Chapters detail advances in sequencing of cereal genomes, methods of traditional plant breeding, use of machine learning for genomic selection, random and targeted mutagenesis with CRISPR/Cas9, quantitative proteomics and phenotyping in cereals. Authoritative and cutting-edge, Accelerated Breeding of Cereal Crops aims to be of interest to plant breeders, researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and students working in functional genomics for the development of the next generation of crop plants.

The Earth's climate is constantly changing. Some of the changes are progressive, while others fluctuate at various time scales. The El Nino-la Nina cycle is one such fluctuation that recurs every few years and has far-reaching impacts. It generally appears at least once per decade, but this may vary with our changing climate. The exact frequency, sequence, duration and intensity of El Nino's manifestations, as well as its effects and geographic distributions, are highly variable. The El Nino-la Nina cycle is particularly challenging to study due to its many interlinked phenomena that occur in various locations around the globe. These worldwide teleconnections are precisely what makes studying El Nino-la Nina so important.
Cynthia Rosenzweig and Daniel Hillel describe the current efforts to develop and apply a global-to-regional approach to climate-risk management. They explain how atmospheric and social scientists are cooperating with agricultural practitioners in various regions around the world to determine how farmers may benefit most from new climate predictions. Specifically, the emerging ability to predict the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle offers the potential to transform agricultural planning worldwide. Biophysical scientists are only now beginning to recognize the large-scale, globally distributed impacts of ENSO on the probabilities of seasonal precipitation and temperature regimes. Meanwhile, social scientists have been researching how to disseminate forecasts more effectively within rural communities. Consequently, as the quality of climatic predictions have improved, the dissemination and presentation of forecasts have become more effective as well. Thisbook explores the growing understanding of the interconnectedness of climate predictions and productive agriculture for sustainable development, as well as methods and models used to study this relationship.

Soil Genesis and Classification, Sixth Edition, builds on the success of the previous editions to present an unparalleled resource on soil formation and classification. Featuring a color plate section containing multiple soil profiles, this text also includes information on new classification systems and emerging technologies and databases with updated references throughout. Covering the diverse needs of both the academic and professional communities, this classic text will be a must have reference for all those in soil science and related fields.

Citrus fruit, originating in Southeast Asia, have been cultivated and enjoyed for over 4000 years. Moreover, they are grown in nearly every country within 40 Degreesnorth-south latitude, the major producers being China, Brazil, the USA, and countries bordering the Mediterranean. This new edition continues to adopt an international perspective on citrus, covering its biology and cultivation as well as considering issues in the citrus industry and providing examples from around the world. The authors include discussion on important topics such as biotechnical advances in citrus genetics, current techniques in breeding, the role of climatic factors in worldwide production, the importance of rootstocks, plant husbandry, pests and diseases, and postharvest technology. They emphasize current theories and technological advances in citriculture, citing specific examples of how they are used and in which regions. Citrus 2nd edition describes the scientific basis of production practices and is aimed at professionals in the industry as well as advanced students of horticulture and allied disciplines within plant science and food science.

Lin Foxhall explores the cultivation of the olive as an extended case study for understanding ancient Greek agriculture in its landscape, economic, social, and political settings. Evidence from written sources, archaeology, and visual images is assembled to focus on what was special about the cultivation and processing of the olive in classical and archaic Greece, and how and why these practices differed from Roman ones. This investigation opens up new ways of thinking about the economies of the archaic and classical Greek world.

Grain legumes are characterised by their nutritional value, an ability to grow rapidly and improve soil health. This makes them a key rotation crop in promoting food security. However, yields are constrained by factors such as pests and diseases as well as vulnerability to poor soils, drought and other effects of climate change. This collection reviews the wealth of research addressing these challenges. Volume 2 assesses key research on particular types of grain legume with chapters on developing improved varieties as well as improvements in cultivation techniques. The book covers common beans, lentils, soybeans, groundnuts, cowpea, faba beans and pigeonpea. With its distinguished editorial team and international range of expert authors, this will be a standard reference for the grain legume research community and farmers of these important crops. It is accompanied by a companion volume which reviews general advances in breeding and cultivation techniques.

This book is the first comprehensive assemblage of contemporary knowledge relevant to genomics and other omics in date palm. Volume 2 consists of 11 chapters. Part I, Nutritional and Pharmaceuticals Properties, covers the utilization of date palm as an ingredient of various food products, a source of bioactive compounds and the production of nanomaterials. Part II, Omics Technologies, addresses omics resources, proteomics and metabolomics. Part III, Molecular Breeding and Genome Modification, focuses on genetic improvement technologies based on mutagenesis, quantitative traits loci and genome editing. Part IV, Genomics of Abiotic and Biotic Stress, covers metagenomics of beneficial microbes to enhance tolerance to abiotic stress and the various genomics advances as they apply to insect control. This volume represents the efforts of 34 international scientists from 12 countries and contains 65 figures and 19 tables to illustrate presented concepts. Volume 1 is published under the title: Phylogeny, Biodiversity and Mapping.

This book presents deliberations on molecular and genomic mechanisms underlying the interactions of crop plants to the biotic stresses caused by different diseases and pests that are important to develop resistant crop varieties. Knowledge on the advanced genetic and genomic crop improvement strategies including molecular breeding, transgenics, genomic-assisted breeding, and the recently emerging genome editing for developing resistant varieties in cereal crops is imperative for addressing FHNEE (food, health, nutrition, energy, and environment) security. Whole genome sequencing of these crops followed by genotyping-by-sequencing has provided precise information regarding the genes conferring resistance useful for gene discovery, allele mining, and shuttle breeding which in turn opened up the scope for 'designing' crop genomes with resistance to biotic stresses. The eight chapters each dedicated to a cereal crop in this volume elucidate on different types of biotic stresses and their effects on and interaction with the crop; enumerate on the available genetic diversity with regard to biotic stress resistance among available cultivars; illuminate on the potential gene pools for utilization in interspecific gene transfer; present brief on classical genetics of stress resistance and traditional breeding for transferring them to their cultivated counterparts; depict the success stories of genetic engineering for developing biotic stress-resistant crop varieties; discuss on molecular mapping of genes and QTLs underlying stress resistance and their marker-assisted introgression into elite varieties; enunciate on different genomics-aided techniques including genomic selection, allele mining, gene discovery, and gene pyramiding for developing adaptive crop varieties with higher quantity and quality of yields, and also elaborate some case studies on genome editing focusing on specific genes for generating biotic stress-resistant crops.