Crop yield
hideIn agriculture, crop yield (also known as "agricultural output") is not only a measure of the yield of cereal per unit area of land under cultivation, it is also the seed generation of the plant itself, i.e. one grain of wheat produces a stalk yielding three grain, or 1:3. The figure, 1:3 is considered by agronomists as the minimum required to substain human life: one of the three seeds must be set aside for the next planting season, the remaining two either consumed by the grower, or one for human consumption and the other for livestock feed.
Historically speaking, a major increase in crop yield took place in the early eighteenth century with the end of the ancient, wasteful cycle of the three course system of crop rotation whereby a third of the land laid fallow every year -- and hence taken out of human food, and animal feed, production. It was to be replaced by the four-course system of crop rotation, devised in England in 1730 by Viscount Charles Townshend or "Turnip" Townshend during the British Agricultural Revolution as he was called by his early, but quickly converted, detractors. Both simple and obvious in hindsight, the new procedure was nothing short of revolutionary. In the first year wheat or oats were planted; in the second year barley or oats; in the third year clover, rye, rutabaga and/or kale was planted; in the fourth year turnips were planted but not harvested. Instead, sheep were driven on to the turnip fields to eat the crop, trample the leavings under their feet into the soil, and by doing all this, the sheep also fertilized the land with their droppings. In the fifth year (or first year of the new rotation), the cycle began once more with a planting of wheat or oats, in an average, a thirty percent increased yield.
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News tagged with crop yields
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Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) researchers have determined precisely how the plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) works at the molecular level to help plants respond to environmental stresses such as drought and cold. ...
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Scientists show that plants have measure of the shortest day
Dec 23, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- It is not only people who feel the effects of short winter days - new research by the University of Edinburgh and the University of Warwick has shed light on how plants calculate their own winter solstice. ...
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Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
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Glaciers along the Gulf of Alaska are enriching stream and near shore marine ecosystems from a surprising source - ancient carbon contained in glacial runoff, researchers from four universities and the U.S. ...
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The ability to make, test, and map the atomic structure of new anti-cancer agents has enabled a team of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists to discover a compound capable of halting a common type of drug-resistant ...
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Giant rainforest trees, rare and beautiful orchids, spectacular palms, minute fungi, wild coffees and an ancient aquatic plant are among more than 250 new plant and fungi species discovered and described by botanists from ...
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A team of researchers studying the protein that, when defective or absent, causes cystic fibrosis (CF) has made an important discovery about how that protein is normally controlled and under what circumstances ...
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After chasing the perfect Christmas tree for three decades, Gary Chastagner could be getting close.
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Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) have developed a plant-sorting machine that uses computer vision and machine learning to inspect and grade harvested strawberry plants ...
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