The levels of toxic and microbial contamination in the food and environment are influenced by harvesting or slaughtering technologies and by the processes applied during food manufacture. With current cultivation methods, it is impossible to guarantee the absence of pesticides and pathogenic microorganisms in raw foods, both of plant and animal origin. Widespread and increasing incidence of foodborne diseases and the resulting social and economic impact on the world population have brought food and environmental safety to the forefront of ecological safety and public health concerns. The emerging field of advanced materials based on functional architectures offers potential solutions to some of the key performance challenges along with the improved sensitivity, longevity, stability, miniaturization and ruggedness, while reducing complexity and production cost. The overall purpose of this book is to generate new solutions to the technical challenges in easy and rapid detections of food toxicants, microorganisms and environmental pollutants. The book focuses on the role of advanced materials in the food, water and environmental applications. The monitoring of harmful organisms and toxicants in water, food and beverages is mainly discussed in the respective chapters. The senior contributors write on the following topics: Layered double hydroxides and environmentCorrosion resistance of aluminium alloys of silanesNew generation material for the removal of arsenic from waterPrediction and optimization of heavy clay products qualityEnhancement of physical and mechanical properties of fiberEnvironment friendly acrylates laticesNanoparticles for trace analysis of toxinsRecent development on gold nanomaterial as catalyst Nanosized metal oxide based adsorbents for heavy metal removalPhytosynthesized transition metal nanoparticles- novel functional agents for textilesKinetics and equilibrium modelingMagnetic nanoparticles for heavy metal removalPotential applications of nanoparticles as antipathogensGas barrier properties of biopolymer based nanocomposites: Application in food packingApplication of zero-valent iron nanoparticles for environmental clean upEnvironmental application of novel TiO2 nanoparticles

This volume highlights achievements in cryopreservation, chronicles method development, and describes relevant literature. The provided detailed information helps practitioners develop and improve methods for desired species. The volume is divided into four parts:I. Cryopreservation of Germplasm;II. Herbaceous Plants: Barley, celery, chamomile, chicory, garlic, ginseng, hop, horseradish, mint, taro, wasabi;III. Woody Species: Coffee, Eucalyptus, guazuma, horse-chestnut, neem, olive, poplar, oak, Prunus, Ribes, rose.IV. Australian Species.Initially, cryopreservation was driven by the concern for loss of diversity of crops essential for continued improvement of the many plants used for food, health, and shelter. The interest has been expanded by conservationists and their concerns for retaining the diversity of natural populations.

This book constitutes Part III of the refereed four-volume post-conference proceedings of the 4th IFIP TC 12 International Conference on Computer and Computing Technologies in Agriculture, CCTA 2010, held in Nanchang, China, in October 2010. The 352 revised papers presented were carefully selected from numerous submissions. They cover a wide range of interesting theories and applications of information technology in agriculture, including simulation models and decision-support systems for agricultural production, agricultural product quality testing, traceability and e-commerce technology, the application of information and communication technology in agriculture, and universal information service technology and service systems development in rural areas.

Endophytic prokaryotes can invade the tissue of the host plant without triggering defense reactions or disease symptoms. Instead, they promote the growth of the host plant due to their ability to fix atmospheric dinitrogen and/or to produce plant growth-promoting substances.

This Microbiology Monographs volume presents up-to-date findings on the interactions between plants and beneficial prokaryotes, including the use of genomics for the analysis of plant-prokaryote symbioses and their evolution. Rhizobia-legume, actinorhizal and cyanobacterial symbioses are presented.

Biomass obtained from agricultural residues or forest can be used to produce different materials and bioenergy required in a modern society. As compared to other resources available, biomass is one of the most common and widespread resources in the world. Thus, biomass has the potential to provide a renewable energy source, both locally and across large areas of the world. It is estimated that the total investment in the biomass sector between 2008 and 2021 will reach the large sum of $104 billion. Presently bioenergy is the most important renewable energy option and will remain so the near and medium-term future. Previously several countries try to explore the utilization of biomass in bioenergy and composite sector. Biomass has the potential to become the world s largest and most sustainable energy source and will be very much in demand. Bioenergy is based on resources that can be utilized on a sustainable basis all around the world and can thus serve as an effective option for the provision of energy services. In addition, the benefits accrued go beyond energy provision, creating unique opportunities for regional development.The present book will provide an up-to-date account of non-wood, forest residues, agricultural biomass (natural fibers), and energy crops together with processing, properties and its applications to ensure biomass utilization and reuse. All aspects of biomass and bioenergy and their properties and applications will be critically re-examined. The book consists of three sections, presenting Non wood and forest products from forestry, arboriculture activities or from wood processing, agricultural biomass (natural fibers) from agricultural harvesting or processing and finally energy crops: high yield crops and grasses grown especially for energy production."

In this book, historical narratives chart how people created forms of agriculture in the highlands of New Guinea and how these practices were transformed through time. The intention is twofold: to clearly establish New Guinea as a region of early agricultural development and plant domestication; and, to develop a contingent, practice-based interpretation of early agriculture that has broader application to other regions of the world. The multi-disciplinary record from the highlands has the potential to challenge and change long held assumptions regarding early agriculture globally, which are usually based on domestication. Early agriculture in the highlands is charted by an exposition of the practices of plant exploitation and cultivation. Practices are ontologically prior because they ultimately produce the phenotypic and genotypic changes in plant species characterised as domestication, as well as the social and environmental transformations associated with agriculture. They are also methodologically prior because they emplace plants in specific historico-geographic contexts.

Evolutionary Algorithms and Agricultural Systems deals with the practical application of evolutionary algorithms to the study and management of agricultural systems. The rationale of systems research methodology is introduced, and examples listed of real-world applications. It is the integration of these agricultural systems models with optimization techniques, primarily genetic algorithms, which forms the focus of this book. The advantages are outlined, with examples of agricultural models ranging from national and industry-wide studies down to the within-farm scale. The potential problems of this approach are also discussed, along with practical methods of resolving these problems. Agricultural applications using alternate optimization techniques (gradient and direct-search methods, simulated annealing and quenching, and the tabu search strategy) are also listed and discussed. The particular problems and methodologies of these algorithms, including advantageous features that may benefit a hybrid approach or be usefully incorporated into evolutionary algorithms, are outlined. From consideration of this and the published examples, it is concluded that evolutionary algorithms are the superior method for the practical optimization of models of agricultural and natural systems. General recommendations on robust options and parameter settings for evolutionary algorithms are given for use in future studies. Evolutionary Algorithms and Agricultural Systems will prove useful to practitioners and researchers applying these methods to the optimization of agricultural or natural systems, and would also be suited as a text for systems management, applied modeling, or operations research.

On 'Lady Day', March 1943 a group of Christian pacifists took possession of a vacant farm in Frating, a hamlet on the Essex Tendring Peninsula. There they established a working community, inspired by their association with The Adelphi journal, where D.H.Lawrence, John Middleton Murry, Vera Brittain, Iris Murdoch, George Orwell and others shared ideas for the future with European religious radicals such as Nikolai Berdyaev, Martin Buber and Simone Weil. Frating Hall Farm provided a settlement and livelihood for individuals and families (as well as a temporary sanctuary for refugees and prisoners-of-war), and over time became a successful arable and livestock land-holding of more than 300 acres. Scorned initially by their neighbours for their anti-war views, the Frating community won respect not only through their farming achievements, but having established a touring theatre company and choir, for bringing new life to the villages and churches around them. The lost story of Frating Hall Farm is based on the reminiscences of those who grew up on the farm, together with photographs, letters and organisational records, never before seen or published. The book is a kaleidoscopic history of a farm during its eleven-year occupation, and an enquiry into the passionate religious and political ideals of the back-to-the-land movement in wartime and post-war rural England.

Interactions between agriculture, climate and patterns of land use are complex. Major changes in agriculture, and land use patterns are foreseen in the next couple of decades in response to shifts in climate, greenhouse gas management initiatives, population growth and other forces. The book explores key interactions between changes in agriculture, patterns of land use and efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions from agriculture. The volume is based on inter-disciplinary science and policy interactions, exploring the way land use may aid in addressing or be affected by the onset of climate change and alterations in food demand. Future forces shaping land use decisions are examined, and its sensitivity to climate change is highlighted. Patterns of land use and the agricultural role in climate change mitigation are explored. Also, policy and social responses to the new perspectives on future land use patterns are identified. The perspective of the book is beyond the year 2015.

Subsistence intensification, innovation and change have long figured prominently in explanations for the development of social complexity among foragers and horticulturalists, and the rise of chiefly societies and archaic states, yet there is considerable debate over the actual mechanisms that promote these processes. Traditional approaches to the "intensification question" emphasize population pressure, climate change, bureaucratic management, or even land degradation as prerequisites for the onset of new or changing strategies, or the construction and maintenance of agricultural landscapes. Most often these factors are modeled as external forces outside the realm of human decision-making, but recent archaeological research presents an alternative to this suggesting that subsistence intensification is the result of human driven strategies for power, prestige and status stemming from internal conditions within a group. When responding to environmental adversity, human groups were less frequently the victims, as they have been repeatedly portrayed. Instead human groups were often vigorous actors, responding with resilience, ingenuity, and planning, to flourish or survive within dynamic and sometimes unpredictable social and natural milieux.

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This volume offers a new perspective to debates on local food and urban sustainability presenting the long silenced voices of the small-scale farmers from the productive green fringe of Sydney's sprawling urban jungle. Providing fresh food for the city and local employment, these culturally and linguistically diverse farmers contribute not only to Sydney's globalizing demographic and cultural fabric, but also play a critical role in the city's environmental sustainability. In the battle for urban space housing development threatens to turn these farmlands into sprawling suburbia. In thinking from and with the urban 'fringe', this book moves beyond the housing versus farming debate to present a vision for urban growth that is dynamic and alive to the needs of the 21st century city. In a unique bringing together of the twin forces shaping contemporary urbanism - environmental change and global population flows - the voices from the fringe demand to be heard in the debate on future urban food sustainability.

Sustainable Protein Production and Consumption: Pigs or Peas? is a book that presents and explores the PROFETAS programme for development of a more sustainable food system by studying the feasibility of substituting meat with plant based alternatives. The emphasis is on improving the food system by reducing the use of energy, land, and freshwater, at the same time limiting the impacts on health and animal welfare associated with intensive livestock production. It is clear that such a new perspective calls not only for advanced environmental and technological research, but also for in-depth societal research, as the acceptance of new food systems is critically contingent on perceptions and attitudes of modern consumers. In this unique multidisciplinary setting, PROFETAS has opened up pathways for a major transition in protein food production and consumption, not by just analyzing the food chain, but rather by exploring the entire agricultural system, including biomass for energy production and the use of increasingly scarce freshwater resources. The study presented here is intended to benefit every stakeholder in the food chain from policymakers to consumers, and it offers guiding principles for a transition towards an ecologically and socially sustainable food system from a multi-level perspective.

Summer farms occur throughout the world where there are rich pastures that can only be utilised for part of the year, mainly because they are under snow and ice during the winter. In Europe transhumance is often a major event when the cattle and other livestock leave their home villages and move up into the mountains, and likewise on their return. The best known sites in Europe are perhaps those found in the Alpine areas, but they occur everywhere where there are suitable highland areas to exploit. Traditionally they have been the subject of the studies of ethnographers and anthropologists, especially in the second half of the 20th century when technological and economic changes led to the gradual abandonment of the farms and to other ways of exploiting the highlands. The last of these farmers are gradually disappearing and with them the oral records and memories. Now it is archaeologists who are leading the recording of this material and also looking at the history of such farming from prehistory and from the Bronze Age with the rise in importance of 'Secondary Products' such as cheese which could be stored for use over winter.Much of the evidence can only be gathered by surface survey and by excavation, though in some cases there are good written sources which have yet to be fully exploited. This volume provides case studies, as well as brief summaries of other projects in Europe, extending from the Black Sea in the east to northern Spain and Iceland in the west, though with a concentration on the Alpine area. One thing that emerges is the very varied nature of these sites in terms of their chronology, who went to the farms, the distances travelled, and the other activities associated with transhumance such as mining. In some cases the products were primarily for the subsistence of the agricultural population, but in other cases they were traded and could produce a large amount of profit. This is the first overview of these sites in Europe written from an archaeological point of view.

The chapters collected here explore a number of different issues, including the operation of the tariff-rate quotas established under the Uruguay Round Agreement, the implications of sanitary and phytosanitary restrictions on trade, and the growing controversy over genetically modified organisms. In addition, several chapters analyze the interaction between agricultural trade and environmental concerns. The relative prosperity in U.S. agriculture that attended the passage of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 was followed by a general decline in U.S. agricultural prices from 1998 to 2000. This trend in declining prices continues through the year 2001, despite the movement toward more liberalized agricultural trade. Trade liberalization has been the result of a variety of factors, including the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement, and the establishment of a variety of regional trade agreements, such as the North America Free Trade Agreement. Needless to say, in the face of falling agricultural prices and increasingly liberalized agricultural trade, the agricultural policy scene is an extremely complex one, both locally and globally. This volume does not pretend to offer a single, systematic prescription for what the next agricultural policy should be. Rather, the arguments and analyses contained herein are intended to highlight several issues that must be considered in the continuing debates on agricultural policy.

Our requirement for plant breeders to be successful has never been greater. However one views the forecasted numbers for future population growth we will need, in the immediate future, to be feeding, clothing and housing many more people than we do, inadequately, at present. Plant breeding represents the most valuable strategy in increasing our productivity in a way that is sustainable and environmentally sensitive. Plant breeding can rightly be considered as one of the oldest multidisciplinary subjects that is known to humans. It was practised by people who first started to carry out a settled form of agriculture. The art, as it must have been at that stage, was applied without any formal underlying framework, but achieved dramatic results, as witnessed by the forms of cultivated plants we have today. We are now learning how to apply successfully the results of yet imperfect scientific knowledge. This knowledge is, however, rapidly developing, particularly in areas of tissue culture, biotechnology and molecular biology. Plant breeding's inherent multifaceted nature means that alongside obvious subject areas like genetics we also need to consider areas such as: statistics, physiology, plant pathology, entomology, biochemistry, weed science, quality, seed characteristics, repro ductive biology, trial design, selection and computing. It therefore seems apparent that modern plant breeders need to have a grasp of wide range of scientific knowledge and expertise if they are successfully to a exploit the techniques, protocols and strategies which are open to them.

This edited volume summarizes information about the situational context, threats, problems, challenges and solutions for sustainable pastoralism at a global scale. The book has four goals. The first goal is to summarize the information about the history, distribution and patterns of pastoralism and to identify the importance of pastoralism from social, economic and environmental perspectives. The results of an empirical investigation of the environmental and socio-economic implications of pastoralism in representative pastoral regions in the world are also incorporated. The second goal is to argue that breaking coupled human-natural systems of pastoralism leads to degradation of pastoral ecosystems and to create an analysis framework to assess the vulnerability of worldwide pastoralism. Our analysis framework provides approaches to help comprehensively understand the transitions and the impacts of human-natural systems in the pastoral regions in the world. The third goal is to identify the successful models in promoting coupled human-natural systems of pastoralism, and to learn lessons of breaking coupled human-cultural pastoralism systems through examining the representative cases in regions including Central Asia, Southern and Eastern Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, the European Alps and South America. The fourth goal is to identify the strategies to build the resilience of the coupled human-natural systems of pastoralism worldwide. We hope that our book can facilitate the further examination of sustainable development of coupled human-natural systems of pastoralism by providing the summaries of existing data and information related to the pastoralism development, and by offering a framework for better understanding and analysis of their social, economic and environmental implications.