Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for our children. This discipline addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, starvation, obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control and biodiversity depletion. Novel solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, philosophy and social sciences. As actual society issues are now intertwined, sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world. This book series analyzes current agricultural issues and proposes alternative solutions, consequently helping all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians wishing to build safe agriculture, energy and food systems for future generations.

The Greater Plains tells a new story of a region, stretching from the state of Texas to the province of Alberta, where the environments are as varied as the myriad ways people have inhabited them. These innovative essays document a complicated history of human interactions with a sometimes plentiful and sometimes foreboding landscape, from the Native Americans who first shaped the prairies with fire to twentieth-century oil regimes whose pipelines linked the region to the world. The Greater Plains moves beyond the narrative of ecological desperation that too often defines the region in scholarly works and in popular imagination. Using the lenses of grasses, animals, water, and energy, the contributors reveal tales of human adaptation through technologies ranging from the travois to bookkeeping systems and hybrid wheat. Transnational in its focus and interdisciplinary in its scholarship, The Greater Plains brings together leading historians, geographers, anthropologists, and archaeologists to chronicle a past rich with paradoxical successes and failures, conflicts and cooperation, but also continual adaptation to the challenging and ever-shifting environmental conditions of the North American heartland.

This book presents state-of-the-art research on the many facets of the plant microbiome, including diversity, ecology, physiology and genomics, as well as molecular mechanisms of plant-microbe interactions. Topics considered include the importance of microbial secondary metabolites in stimulating plant growth, induced systemic resistance, tolerance to abiotic stress, and biological control of plant pathogens. The respective contributions show how microbes help plants to cope with abiotic stresses, and represent significant progress toward understanding the complex regulatory networks critical to host-microbe interaction and plant adaptation in extreme environments. New insights into the mechanisms of microbial actions in inducing plant stress tolerance open new doors for improving the efficacy of microbial strategies, and could produce new ways of economically increasing crop yields without harming the environment. As such, this book offers an essential resource for students and researchers with an interest in plant-microbe interaction, as well as several possibilities for employing the plant microbiome in the enhancement of crop productivity under future climate change scenarios.

"This landmark report explains the current state of play in relation to biodiversity loss and explores the ways in which we can find a sustainable path to deal with this problem, one that will require us to change how we think, act and measure success"--

This book reviews the distribution of soils across Egypt, their history, genesis, pollution and management. The conservation of Egyptian soils, soils and their connections to human activities, as well as some future soil issues are also highlighted. It is well known that soil is the main source for food, feed, fuel and fiber production. Accordingly, the study of soils is not only a crucial issue but also an urgent task for all nations worldwide. Due to their important roles in agroecosystems as well as many aspects of our lives, soils have direct and indirect functions in the agricultural, industrial and medicinal sectors. Therefore, understanding the physical, chemical and biological properties of soils, as well as soil security, have now become emerging issues. Climate change has a very dangerous dimension in Egypt concerning the rising sea level. Many coastal zones are already threatened by this sea level rise, and may ultimately disappear. At the same time, water shortages and soil pollution represent the main challenges for the Egyptian nation. Generally speaking, the environmental challenges that Egypt now faces include improving and sustaining soil health, soil carbon sequestration, wastewater treatment, and avoiding the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides. Therefore, this book examines in detail the soils of Egypt from various perspectives including their genesis, history, classification, pollution and degradation, soil security, soil fertility and land uses.

This book is the first comprehensive compilation of deliberations on jute botanical descriptions, germplasm resources, genetic diversity and population structure, DUS test and DNA fingerprinting, interspecific hybridization, classical genetics, cytology and cytogenetics, genetic transformation; and detailed enumeration on molecular mapping, genome sequencing initiatives of three major jute fiber producing countries, interspecific and intergeneric comparative genomics, organellar genomes, elucidation on functional genomics and genomics resources and database. Genetics and genomics of bast fiber development, biotic stress resistance, abiotic stress tolerance, and flowering pathways have also been discussed. It also presents a narrative on the power of molecular markers and genomics technology on jute breeding. Altogether, the book contains about 400 pages over 21 chapters authored by internationally reputed experts on the relevant field in this crop. This book will be useful to the students, teachers and scientists in the academia and relevant private companies interested in agronomy, genetics, pathology, entomology, physiology, molecular genetics and breeding, genetic engineering, and structural and functional genomics.

Addressing methane emissions from livestock and rice systems is vital for promoting sustainable agriculture and mitigating climate change. This FAO report comprehensively addresses methane emissions in agriculture and their impact on global greenhouse gas levels. By analysing sources, sinks, quantification methods, and mitigation strategies, this publication highlights challenges and opportunities to reduce methane emissions from livestock and rice production systems.

We hear a lot about how agriculture affects climate change and other environmental issues, but we hear little about how these issues affect agriculture. When we look at both sides of the issues, we can develop better solutions for sustainable agriculture without adversely affecting the environment. Agroecology, Ecosystems, and Sustainability explor

The Role of Bioenergy in the Bioeconomy: Resources, Technologies, Sustainability and Policy provides the reader with a complete understanding on how bioenergy technologies fit into the new bioeconomy paradigm. Sections focus on the main resources and technologies for bioenergy and its integration in energy systems and biorefining chains, analyze the available methodologies for assessing the sustainability of bioenergy, and address and the propose approaches that are demonstrated through concrete case studies. Additionally, the implications of bioenergy in the water-energy and land nexus is presented, along with new challenges and opportunities. This book's strong focus on sustainability of bioenergy, both as a standalone, and in the larger context of a bio-based economy, makes it a useful resource for researchers, professionals and students in the bioenergy field who need tactics to assess the lifecycle and sustainability of bioenergy technologies and their integration into existing systems. - Presents a complete overview of the main challenges that bioenergy will have to overcome in order to play a key role in future energy systems - Explores sustainability aspects in detail, both qualitatively and by applying proposed methodologies to concrete bioenergy case studies - Covers, in detail, the water-energy-land nexus implications and governance aspects

Advances in Ecological Research, Volume 63, the latest release in this ongoing series includes specific chapters on Tropical Ecosystems in the 21st Century. Chapters in this volume cover topics such as Landscape-scale expansion of agroecology to enhance natural pest control: a systematic review and Ecosystem services and the resilience of agricultural landscapes - Provides information that relates to a thorough understanding of the field of ecology - Deals with topical and important reviews on the physiologies, populations and communities of plants and animals