Agriculture, agronomy and extension Research Papers (original) (raw)

Increasing use of agro-chemicals, higher production cost and deteriorating ecosystem
health have advocated the need to change traditional and external input use
agriculture towards safe and sustainable organic production. Since the consumers’
level of awareness towards the harmful effects of agro-chemicals has been increasing,
the demand for organic food has increased thus emphasizing the need of organic
farming. This report presents the current status, scope and obstacles of organic
farming in Kathmandu valley on the basis of sample data taken from Tarkeshshwor,
Budhanilkantha, Tokha and Chandragiri municipalities of the valley where we could
observe much of the agricultural productions being done. The organic farms in
Kathmandu valley were found to come in practice past 4-5 years. Most of the organic
farmers have started their business after receiving trainings organized by Ministry
of Agriculture (MOA) but still information gap or extension gap about agricultural
techniques can be seen widely. Large involvement of ladies and women can be seen in
the commercial farming where they possess wide knowledge about farming practices.
Mostly the organic farmers are interested in vegetable farming.The organic products
from farms are sold to five star hotels, supermarkets, etc. while the small holder
farmers take their product to market via middle man. Some of the farms sell their
products to the local consumers directly as well. The awareness among consumers
regarding their health issues have shown willingness to pay good for organic products
thus having a good market price. On the other hand, consumers think that plastic
farming is more fresh and organic although they use chemicals and pay more. Thus
there exists the misconception about organic farming and organic products. Utilizing
this benefit, many of the farms use intermediate method where they use manuring
for fertilizers and chemical pesticides for insect and pest control while only few of
them very use totally organic method. On the next scenario, many of the farmers are
forced to depend on organic methods due to lack of money for affording chemical
pesticides. Farmers are complaining about the seed producing more male plants and
a large incidence of insect and pest. Organic industry is too small and a long way to
go in Nepal. The lack of organic agriculture extension among farmers has been the
hindrance for agricultural development.More than this the carelessness of experts in
producing quality seed has discouraged the farming community.Thus initiatives need
to be done for extension of organic farming providing subsidy to farmers and awaring
and ensuring them about organic practices and its importance. Women involvement,
increasing organic practices though in slow trend are some of the positive changes
seen in the research. Considering the positivity and negativities, and solving the
problems, organic agriculture can have a good possibility in city area like Kathmandu.
Key words: awareness, consumers, marketing, organic production, willingness to pay,
Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), extension

- by
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- Agronomy, Sustainable agriculture, Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Studies
- by Dr Faheem Akbar
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- Sustainable agriculture, Agriculture, Capacity Building, Organic Farming
- by SAMUEL ADJEI NSIAH
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- Agronomy, Agriculture, Agriculture, agronomy and extension
- by Amit Khanal
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- Livelihood, Agriculture, agronomy and extension, Legumes, Groundnut

Kacang hijau memiliki potensi yang tinggi untuk dikembangkan dimana kacang hijau memiliki kelebihan baik dari segi budidaya dan ekonomi. Namun menurut data BPS tahun 2014 produktivitas dan produksi kacang hijau kurun waktu 2011-2013 mengalami tren penurunan. Produktivitas kacang hijau nasional pada tahun 2013 mencapai 11,24 kuintal/Ha sedangkan produksi kacang hijau mencapai 20.467 ton. Sesuai data tersebut dapat diketahui terdapat permasalahan yang menyebabkann rendahnya tingkat produksi kacang hijau secara kuantitas maupun kualitas.

One of the major issues facing humankind is global food security. A changing climate, coupled with a heightened consumer awareness of how food is produced and legislative changes governing the usage of agrichemicals for improving plant health and yield, means that alternative, more integrated and sustainable approaches are needed for crop management practices. To this end, there is increasing recognition of the value of the role of microbial inoculants in agriculture. The focus of this review is to understand how plant-growth-promoting bacteria and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can play a part in improving crop yield by promoting the health status of the plant through the sequestration of various nutrients and in the control of plant diseases.

An extensive background overview on the use of agricultural residues (wastes) for production of paper, board, binderless board, energy, different types of fuels by pyrolysis (solid, liquid and gaseous fuel), many petrochemicals substitutes, charcoal (activated carbon), dissolving pulps and rayon. It includes both scientific and industrial data, case studies, current status, sustainability of paper and sugar industries, green nanotechnology, and future prospects.
Keywords: Agricultural Residues (Wastes); Paper and Board manufacture; Sustainability of Paper and Sugar Industries; Green Nanotechnology; Future Prospects

- by Prof Dr Yehia Fahmy and +3
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- Rural Sociology, Development Economics, Bioeconomics, Energy Economics
- by Ayano Susanti
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- Agriculture, agronomy and extension, Pertanian

Agriculture is a backbone of most economies in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region (ESAR). It is a major source of livelihood to over 80% of the rural households in the region. ESAR has considerable expanse of drylands on the African continent within which both subsistence and commercial agriculture takes place. Since, colonial times Africa’s agriculture has been struggling with booms and collapses spatially distributed but not unique to any country. This review study focused on water productivity in agriculture; challenges and opportunities for smallholder farmers in the drylands of Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA). The core objective of this review was to re-energize debate on African agriculture particularly in the ESAR. Two broad objectives constituted the gist of this review: first was to exposition the situation existing among smallholder farmers in dryland ESAR. Secondly; was to bring to the fore challenges and opportunities facing smallholder dryland farmers in ESAR with regard to water productivity. These issues have been addressed broadly in chapters one, two and three. The review basically adopted on desk research and basic comparative discussions with colleagues at University of Nairobi and electronic literature searches.
It is apparent that there is Africa’s agriculture has very limited positive nodes whenever it is discussed. Whereas it is presumed to be the backbone of the economies very few African countries’ budgetary allocation are indicative to this direction. Of the former 53 countries on the continent, only 6 countries had met their CAADP obligations by 2010; a decimal performance indeed. In the ESAR, agriculture is heavily burdened by limited investment in infrastructure, declining donor support, declining soil fertility and climate change is further exacerbating a ghastly situation. Water productivity in most ESAR countries has been declining. In fact staple crops such as maize, bananas, millet, sorghums and cereals have been underperforming. Considerable disparities equally exist between on-station yields and farmer field yields. Amidst this seemingly hopeless situation, some efforts towards better water productivity have been implemented. In Kenya, several soil and water conservation projects have been implemented. Most of these efforts have been undertaken in the Ukambani region, Kenya.
Undertaking a holistic approach to water productivity management will be critical in increasing adoption of its technologies. Smallholder farmers in the drylands of ESAR need to be appreciated for their indigenous knowledge. In these knowledge systems lie considerable solutions to increasing water productivity. This because, communities tend to be more compliant with locally formulated regulations and have a high positive perception and values regard to their local systems. Therefore, building capacity in local institutions will contribute to increased water productivity. Moreover, there is need to minimize the classical separation between ‘green’ and ‘blue’ water use characterization.

Mustard possesses a good position in oilseed crops along with high yield potential in both rainfed
and irrigation conditions. It contains 37-49 % oil content. Mustard is the major growing oilseed crop
during Rabi in the district with low productivity i.e. less than 1400 kg/ha. The major reason behind low
yield of mustard is wide gap between improved package of practices (IP) & farmers practice (FP). In order
to identify the gap and performance of the FLDs conducted by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Jhalawar, present
study was undertaken. The major factors which were responsible for the lower yield of mustard was
higher seed rate without treatment, delayed sowing time, defective method of sowing, imbalance use of
chemical fertilizer, no or less plant protection measures, no weed management and use of old varieties. The
yield under IP ranged from 1900 to 2330 kg/ha. The per cent increase in yield with IP over FP was recorded
in the range of 16.40 to 18.75 %.

- by Arjun K U M A R Verma
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- Agriculture, agronomy and extension

Flavonoids are a class of bioactive compounds extremely important in food and wine industry. The development of rapid methods for their quantification in grape berries is one of the modern challenges in viticulture and enology research. Total flavonoid (TF) amount changes during grape ripening and also berry physical-mechanical properties, as evaluated by instrumental texture analysis, change in the same period. In this work, TF and berry physical-mechanical parameters were linked together through predictive models. Models were developed for each of four red wine grape cultivars: Brancellao, Cabernet Franc, Mencía and Merenzao, and another one considered all cultivars together. These models reached high accuracy and allowed to predict TF in grape berries with a low error (RMSE from 0.15±0.07 mg g-1 to 0.35±0.10 mg g-1 in prediction, as evaluated by cross-validation).
Berry weight (BW) was the parameter having the largest influence on TF predictions, and also was the only variable having part in all models. BW and chewiness had a similar behavior and when berry weight was excluded, chewiness was able to substitute its role in all models.
The other physical-mechanical characteristics displayed a different behavior across cultivars.
In conclusion, this work shows that it is possible to predict TF from physical-mechanical predictors in grape berries and that cultivar specific models reach higher accuracy for this purpose than the multi-cultivar model.

- by Luca Brillante
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- Agronomy, Food Science, Horticulture, Food Science and Technology

Satellite remote sensing has essentially been applied in agriculture such as monitoring paddy growth stages, cropping schedule, and fertilizer management over vast areas. Many methods have been devoted for detecting paddy growth stages by deriving a certain profiles of vegetation indices from high temporal resolution satellite data. In this paper, we introduce a time-variant method referred to as a heuristic decision tree (HDT) for detecting 3-classes of paddy growth stages from a limited number of MODIS images and generalize the result through machine learning to predict the growth stages in time-invariant manner. We compared our proposed method to two previous studies in [8] and [9]. For the time-variant case, all methods are validated by 124 times of observation data among 50 reference points from field survey. After doing some adjustments for calculating the accuracy, the result shows that the accuracy for [8, 9], and our proposed method are 0.8951, 0.9375, and 0.9435 respectively. For the time-invariant case, we evaluate three Kernel-based Regularized (KR) classification methods, i.e. Principal Component Regression (KRPCR), Extreme Learning Machine (KR-ELM), and Support Vector Machine with radial basis function (RBF-SVM). All data samples are divided into training (25%) and testing (75%) sampling, and all models are trained and tested through 10-rounds random bootstrap re-sampling method to obtain more variety on hypothesis models during learning. The best model for each classifier method is defined as the one with the highest kappa coefficient during testing. The experimental results for 3-classes of paddy growth stages prediction show that the classification accuracy in testing for our proposed method of each learner are 0.8485, 0.8874, and 0.8252 respectively, whereas for previous study [8] are 0.6845, 0.7845, and 0.6949 respectively.

Esta no es un manual que contenga recetas para repetir, simplemente porque la agricultura conservacionista no es una receta sino una actitud distinta frente a la forma de cultivar la tierra. Parte de la base, de reconocer a la agricultura como un sistema, un complejo de elementos interrelacionados. Por eso, las soluciones técnicas que se proponen en la agricultura conservacionista no son prácticas aisladas sino integradas en la planificación de cada establecimiento agropecuario. Por eso también, más que exactitud en las fórmula técnica, lo que esta material intenta es que se visualicen los problemas que las prácticas conservacionistas se proponen solucionar:
- el problema del agua;
- el problema del planchado y la compactación;
- el problema de la pérdida de calidad de la tierra;
- el problema de la pérdida de suelos;
- el problema de la implementación de prácticas aisladas.
Son, en definitiva, algunas sugerencias para los productores que se decidan a conservar para producir más y mejor.

The present study was undertaken to analyze the nutritional composition of celery and mint to be used for beverages preparation, using a variety of fruit bases like orange, gooseberry and cherry tomatoes and also to chemically determine the nutritional constituents of the prepared beverages. Celery juice/pulp and mint was incorporated into three beverages using orange, gooseberry and cherry tomato in three different drinks along with Stevia as the natural and zero calorie sweeteners, using the standard ingredients and methods of preparation. The four treatments were T The beverages prepared were organoleptically evaluated for color, consistency, taste & flavor and overall acceptability using a 9 point Hedonic Scale. The cherry tomato based celery beverage with mint was best among all the three. The nutritional compositions of beverages were chemically analyzed. The total carbohydrate content ranged from 2.28gm to 33.5gm/100ml, the carotene content ranged from 9µg-486.32µg, the highest being in the cherry tomato based drink. The iron content was between 1.2mg and 2.66mg/100ml, the vitamin-C was between 22.8mg and 600mg/100ml, the highest being in the gooseberry based juice. The calcium content ranged from 5mg-56.56mg/100ml. It was concluded from the study that the beverages formulated using celery; mint and Stevia at different levels of incorporation were at par with conventional beverages while improving the vitamin-C, carotene, iron and calcium content in addition to the fact that celery and mint has several other therapeutic benefits.

- by IJAAST Journal and +1
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- Agricultural Engineering, Agronomy, Nutrition, Public Health Nutrition

Se presentan los resultados de una investigación fundamentalmente cualitativa, sobre contenidos y formas de la enseñanza de metodología de la ciencia, aplicables a la formulación de una propuesta de curso para impartirse en la modalidad de educación a distancia. El caso es el de la Licenciatura en Agronomía, con concentración en educación agropecuaria.

- by ince raden
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- Agriculture, agronomy and extension

(Authors: E. Petcu, G. Petcu, C. Lazar, R. Vintila) Several data of the ADAM (Assimilation of Data within Agricultural Models) Project were used to establish the relationships between agronomic variables of winter wheat. During the campaign 2000-2001, ten calibration units from seed production farms of the Research Institute for Agriculture of Fundulea(Romania)were selected based on several factors of variation, such as: the cultivar (Dropia and Flamura 85); the preceding crops, soils with different microtopography and nitrogen fertilization. Positive correlations between leaf area index (LAI) and biomass of winter wheat in different developmental phases were found (from r = 0.66* to r = 0.84***). The biomass was correlated with yield (r = 0.65*), number of seeds and number of ears/m 2 (r = 0.63*, r = 0.72**), too. The results of regression analysis indicate that polynomial models gave the best fit for regression of total biomass and LAI (max) on harvest index and linear model for grain yield. The coefficients of determination between harvest index and total biomass are smaller than those between harvest index and grain yield. This means that wheat crops with the highest harvest index do not necessarily have the highest biomass accumulation. In fact, the opposite can be true. The magnitude of coefficient of determination for the regression of total biomass and grain yield on harvest index indicates that approximately 0.34 % of the total variation of total biomass can be attributed to variation in harvest index of the analysed wheat crop. The low correlation (r = 0.29) found by this study between LAI and TKW (Thousand Kernel Weight)indicates that these two traits are largely independent of each other. In fact, TKW depends on the genetic background as some researchers have reported.

- by Ruxandra VINTILA
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- Soil Science, Agronomy, Remote Sensing, Agribusiness

Soybean possesses a very high nutritional value along with high yield potential. It contains about 40% high quality protein and 20% oil. Soybean is the major growing crop (more than two lakhs hectare) during kharif in the district with low productivity i.e. equal or less than 1.4 t/ha. The major reason of low yield of soybean crop was gap between improved package and practices (IP) and farmers practice (FP). The present study was carried out to know this gap along with impact of the front line demonstrations (FLDs) conducted by K.V.K., Jhalawar. It was found that the adoption gap of soybean technologies were more in nutrient management followed by methods of sowing, seed rate, weed management, seed treatment, time of sowing, high yielding varieties, irrigation and plant protection measures. The yield under IP ranged from 1510 to 2350 kg/ha. The per cent increase in yield with IP over FP was recorded in the range of 18.06 to 30.19.

(Authors: F. Baret and R. Vintila)
This study investigated the potential of high spatial resolution and high revisit frequency observations to monitor the LAI distribution over regional domains. It is based on the ADAM experiment during which 39 SPOT images were acquired from October 2000 and July 2001 over the study area located close to Bucharest in Romania. The study focuses on wheat crops for which intensive ground measurements were performed over the whole growing season for 40 elementary sampling units corresponding to about 30×30m². The sampling units were divided into 10 for calibration and 30 for validation.
The approach is based on the use of a semi-empirical model of LAI dynamics (MODLAI). It was first adjusted on the calibration units to smooth out local measurement uncertainties and interpolate the measurements to the dates of SPOT acquisition. Then, empirical transfer functions were derived for each date, based on multiple linear regressions. Finally, the LAI was estimated for all the validation units at the SPOT dates. MODLAI was adjusted to the retrieved LAI of the validation units, and used to interpolate the values to the date of ground measurements. The LAI values derived this way were compared to those measured directly in the field. They show a very good consistency. The potentials of this approach and its adaptation to other applications is then discussed."

- by Ruxandra VINTILA
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- Agronomy, Sustainable agriculture, Precision Agriculture, Agriculture

This study was conducted at the College of Agricultural Studies, Sudan University of Science and Technology Farm to evaluate the residual effect of the recommended dose of Sevin, a carbamate insecticide, and Malathion, an organophosphate insecticide, on the growth of jews mallow and soil. Two doses of each insecticide (recommended 1.9kg/ha and higher 2.8kg/ha, respectively) in addition to a control without pesticide were used in two separate experiments. The experimental units were in completely randomized design with four replications. The parameters measured were (plant height, leaf area, root length and shoot fresh and dry weight) for jews mallow growth and pH, total nitrogen, extractable phosphorus and electric conductivity (Ece.) of the soil. The result showed that, the recommended dose of both pesticides (Sevin and Malathion) has significant positive effect on all growth parameters. The recommended dose gave the highest plants (72 and 76cm), leaf area (171.7and 220 cm2) and shoot fresh and dry weight (7.3, 2.2, 7.4 and 2.7g) compared to the control or the highest dose for Sevin and Malathion , respectively. The total nitrogen percentage was significantly affected by both
pesticides. The soil pH and electric conductivity (Ece.) were not significantly affected.

- by INNSPUB Journals
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- Soil Science, Agronomy, Food Science, Horticulture
- by Stefan Dano
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- Agriculture, agronomy and extension

Three Pot experiments (seeds presoaking only, plant foliar spraying only or presoaking and foliar spraying together) were performed twice during the two growing seasons of (2010/2011 and 2011/2012) to investigated the influence of some antioxidant materials on the harmful effects of different salinity stress levels on vegetative growth parameters, yield and its components, biochemical constituents, nutrient element contents and protein percentage of faba bean plant (vicia faba, L.) cv. Sakha 1.
تأثیر بعض مضادات الأكسدة على جودة التقاوي والمحصول في الفول البلدي تحت ظروف الإجھاد الملحي
الھدف من التجربة: دراسة دور بعض مواد مضادات الأكسدة الطبیعیة ( حمض السالسلیك – حمض الاسكوربیك – التوكوفیرول- حمض الھیومیك – مستخلص الخمیرة الحافة) في التغلب على الآثار الضارة لمستویات الإجھاد الملحي ( ٣٢٠ ملیجرام/لتر، ٢٠٠٠ ملیجرام/لتر، ٤٠٠٠ ملیجرام/لتر، . ٦٠٠٠ ملیجرام/لتر و ٨٠٠٠ ملیجرام/لتر) وتأثیرھا على النمو الخضري والمحصول ومكوناتھ وجودة التقاوي لنباتات الفول البلدي صنف سخا ١

- by Mohamed T Zalama
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- Agronomy, Seed germination, Priming, Seed physiology

Adoption of resource conservation technologies (RCT) may improve the productivity, reduce cost and sustainability of wheat production in the irrigated areas of eastern Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP) of South Asia. Critical on –farm study on factors favouring adoption and non-adoption is required. Findings from an on-farm trial conducted during 2005-2009 are used to evaluate the on-farm impacts of zero tillage (ZT) in wheat from three sites at Tarai-Teesta flood plain of eastern IGP. On an average, there was 11.54% increase in productivity in ZT wheat over conventional tilled (CT) wheat. Water productivity increased from 1.99 kg m-3 in CT to 2.73 kg m-3 in ZT due to lower estimated water use (1147 m3 ha-1 in ZT than 1435 m3 ha-1 in CT) and higher productivity (3.38 t ha-1 in ZT than 3.03 t ha-1 in CT). Saving in tractor operation and diesel use in farmers' ZT wheat fields were 3.23 and 19.09 hours ha-1. Sowing can be done earlier by one week through adoption of ZT machine for better utilization of limited winter. Savings in ZT on farmers' fields were in the components of land preparation (1938 Rs ha-1), seed (462 Rs ha-1), nitrogen (269 Rs ha-1), phosphate fertilizer (104 Rs ha-1) and irrigation (380 Rs ha-1) over conventional wheat cultivation. Availability of zero-till seeder and its servicing, skilled operator and sometimes reluctance of local tiller operator for apprehension of lower earnings from single tillage pass are also revealed as the factors of non-adoption. More such in-depth studies should be conducted on site-specific basis so that it can be replicated more widely in areas for the benefit of the farming community.

- by Benukar Biswas
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- Agriculture, agronomy and extension
- by Darwin H . Pangaribuan
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- Agronomy, Horticulture, Organic agriculture, Vegetable Science
- by Felix Navarro
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- Geology, Horticulture, Natural Resources, Plant Biology

(Authors: Prevot, L.; Poenaru, V.; Voicu, P.; Vintila, R.; Deboissezon, H.; Pourthie, N.) Surface soil moisture estimation from SAR (ERS-2 and Radarsat)images was investigated using the “water-cloud” model. It was verified that the “water-cloud” model can adequately represent the backscattering coefficients over winter wheat fields, during the entire growing season, as a function of canopy water content and surface soil moisture.

- by Ruxandra VINTILA
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- Agronomy, Remote Sensing, Soil, Precision Agriculture
- by Samantha Noll and +1
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- Philosophy of Science, Value Theory, Epistemic Justice, Agriculture, agronomy and extension

Event-B is a formal method, based on set theory and first-order logic, for specification and verification of reactive systems supported by the Rodin tool kit. Feature modelling is a well-known technique for managing variability and configuring products within software product lines (SPLs). Our objective is to explore whether we can use existing Event-B composition techniques and tooling for feature-based product line development. If case-study experiments reveal these mechanisms to be inadequate, then they also should suggest further research directions. The main objective is to maximise the amount of reuse. This includes avoiding as far as possible having to reprove a composed specification when the models being composed have already been proven. We have modelled two case-studies in Event-B using both horizontal and vertical refinements. This work contributes by analysing existing tools and techniques in Event-B for feature-based development, exploring composition related issues by modelling example case-studies and suggesting further tooling requirements.

- by Ali Gondal
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- Agriculture, agronomy and extension

le. In managing climate change, a few developed countries have drawn up and implemented
relevant policies and strategies to minimize impacts on the economy. Agriculture is a major land use,
using approximately 38% of the global land area. Climate change impacts agriculture by the need to
develop existing practices, including field cropping, to minimize greenhouse gas emissions and thus
meet the mitigation targets for climate change. Farmers must adapt to the impacts of climate change
to secure sufficient food production for the growing world population. Agriculture is highly impacted
by climatic change, such as increasing temperature, the extreme event of drought and flash flood,
climatic fluctuation is putting Nigeria agriculture system under serious threat and stress, the impact
of climatic change on agriculture in respect to economic sector could however, be measured in terms
of effect on crop growth, availability of soil water, soil erosion, incident of pest and diseases, sea
level rises and decease in term of soil fertility. If food prices increase because of climate change
impacts, households not only will have to spend more income on food consumption but also could
face a risk of nutritional shortage and insufficient access to food.

A field experiment was conducted at Research Farm of ANASTU, Kandahar, Afghanistan during 2015 to evaluate the effect of nitrogen rates and time of application on growth and yield of maize. Treatment consisted four rate of nitrogen (0, 120, 180 and 240 kg N ha-1) and three time of N application (½ dose at sowing + ½ dose at knee high stage; ½ dose at knee high stage + ½ dose at tasseling and ¼ dose at sowing + ½ dose at knee high stage + ¼ dose at tasseling stage) were tested in a randomized block design (RBD) in factorial arrangement with one treatment as absolute control and replicated thrice. The results revealed that growth and yield were higher with application and 240 kg N ha-1 than others doses of N. These values were also higher when N was applied in three splits as ¼ S + ½ K + ¼ T. Significantly higher yield attributes, yield and economics were observed due to interaction effect of N rates and time of nitrogen application in response to applying 240 kg N ha-1 with split application of ¼ S + ½ K + ¼ T.

Reproducibility is a major feature of Science. Even agronomic research of exemplary quality may have irreproducible empirical findings because of random or systematic error. This work presents SisGExp, a provenance-based approach that aid researchers to manage, share, and enact the computational scientific workflows that encapsulate legacy R scripts. SisGExp transparently captures provenance of R scripts and endows experiments reproducibility. SisGExp is non-intrusive, does not require users to change their working way, it wrap agronomic experiments as a scientific workflow system.

- by Sergio Serra and +1
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- Statistics, Sustainable agriculture, Data Analysis, Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review
- by Marvel Sun
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- Image Processing, Agriculture, agronomy and extension, Grading System
- by carla konsten and +1
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- Soil Science, Environmental Soil Science, Agriculture, agronomy and extension

– Realistic assessments of sustainability are often viewed as typical decision-making problems requiring multi-criteria decision-aid (MCDA) methods taking into account the conflicting objectives underlying the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability, and the different sources of knowledge representing them. Some MCDA-based studies have resulted in the development of sustainable agricultural systems, but the new challenges facing agriculture and the increasing unpredictability of their driving forces highlight the need for faster ex ante (‘Before-the-event’) assessment frameworks. These frameworks should also (i) provide a more realistic assessment of sustainability, by integrating a wider range of informal knowledge, via the use of qualitative information; (ii) address alternative scales, such as cropping system level, improving granularity for the handling of sustainability issues and (iii) target a larger panel of decision-makers and contexts. We describe here the MASC model, which is at the center of a framework addressing these objectives. The MASC model has at its core a decision tree that breaks the sustainability assessment decisional problem down into simpler units as a function of sustainability dimensional structure (economic, social and environmental), generating a vector of 32 holistic ‘mixed’ (quantitative and qualitative) elementary criteria rating cropping systems. The assessment process involves the calculation of these criteria, their homogenization into qualitative information for input into the model and their aggregation throughout the decision tree based on ‘If-Then’ decision rules, entered by the user. We present the model and describe its first implementation for the evaluation of four cropping systems generated from expert knowledge, and discuss its relevance to the objectives cited above. The MASC model has several advantages over existing methods, due to its ability to handle qualitative information, its transparency, flexibility and feasibility.

- by Bruno Colomb
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- Higher Education, Leadership, Organisational Change, Sustainable agriculture
- by Ahmed M. El Naim
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- Agronomy, Data Analysis, Agriculture, agronomy and extension, Sorghum

The paper presents preliminary results of a study dedicated to the functioning of the ‘soil-vegetation’ system and its spatial variability estimated by satellite remote sensing. Such studies are required to deepen the understanding of the processes and events that cause changes in the environment. Particularly, the processes and events linked to the carbon cycle can cause climate change with dramatic effects on agriculture, human and animal life, as well as on the ‘web’ of soil life. The present study aimed at characterizing the functioning of the ‘soil-vegetation’ system by several variables linked to the vegetation canopies health and vigor. The basic data used were acquired by the MERIS spectrometer aboard the ENVISAT satellite over Romania during autumn 2009. The following biophysical variables that describe the functioning of the ‘soil-vegetation’ system across different biomes were estimated at 300m spatial resolution from MERIS superspectral data: (i) the fraction of the soil surface covered by vegetation (fCover), (ii) the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by vegetation canopies (fAPAR), (iii) the green leaf area index (LAI), and (iv) the canopy chlorophyll a+b content (LAI x Cab), which is an index related to nitrogen content. First, these variables were estimated with the TOC_VEG processor over the South-West development region of Romania (Oltenia). Next the functioning of the ‘soil-vegetation’ system, synthetically expressed in statistical data, was compared among this region and its five constituent counties (Dolj, Gorj, Olt, Mehedinti and Valcea). The results showed marked differences in the vegetation status at the counties level. Taking the most contrasting situations as example, for mid-September 2009 LAI has ranged from an average of 0.87 m2/m2 and coefficient of variation CV = 0.68 (in Dolj county) to 2.06 m2/m2 and CV = 0.55 (in Valcea county), while LAI x Cab has ranged from an average of 47.76 g/m2 and CV = 0.83 (in Dolj) to 122.89 g/m2 and CV = 0.59 (in Valcea). This ongoing study over Oltenia region will characterize the ‘soil-vegetation’ system functioning in terms of the spatial and temporal dynamics of fCover, fAPAR, LAI and LAIxCab, by exploiting time series of MERIS data, complemented by exogenous data for the validation of results. The method will be used at a national scale by using radiometrically and geometrically compatible data, acquired by ENVISAT and SENTINEL-3 satellites, for the European Program ‘Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES)’.

- by Ruxandra VINTILA
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- Environmental Engineering, Botany, Landscape Ecology, Environmental Sociology

"The present article constitutes a review of the innovative approaches and results
obtained in the ADAM project, dedicated to the „Assimilation of spatial Data into
Agronomic Models”, a scientific collaboration between France and Romania. The
results mainly refer to the following aspects: (i) constitution of the first reference
spatial remote sensing and agronomic knowledge base for scientific investigation;
(ii) production of a SPOT XS/XI time series of high quality satellite images; (iii)
validation of a method for monitoring soil surface moisture throughout crop
phenological cycles, using SAR (ERS-2 and RADARSAT-1) images and the “water
cloud” model; (iv) definition of the revisit frequency of satellites for the field-scale
agriculture; (v) development of an efficient strategy of variational assimilation of
spatial data into agronomic models, by exploiting the high spatial coherence that
characterizes the crops during their development; (vi) calculation of the adjoint
model of the complex canopy functioning model STICS by automatic
differentiation; (vii) improvement of the canopy radiative transfer modeling by
accounting for the leaf clumping, and elaboration of the CLAMP model.
Furthermore, this article presents other studies led to valorize the “ADAM
knowledge” after this project had finished. These are primarily related to the
development of pattern analysis algorithms (i.e., advanced data mining for efficient
extraction of information on spatio-temporal phenomena from Satellite Image Time
Series / SITS, and data fusion for multi-resolution decomposition, by using the
morphological pyramid technique), which the high quality of the ADAM knowledge
base made possible.
Being free for scientific studies, with easy access through the Kalideos Portal, the
ADAM knowledge base still has the potential to produce other notable findings
(http://kalideos.cnes.fr/spip.php?article68)."

- by Violeta Poenaru and +2
- •
- Agricultural Engineering, Botany, Landscape Ecology, Social Psychology