In this edition
- The role of agriculture is a vital role that makes life based on it. The idea of stopping farming, regardless of the reasons leading to that, is an extremely difficult idea in starvation and drought. Barren lands, the number of the dead and the hungry are multiplied, global depression and economic wars with dire consequences, so what is the nature of that to death. It’s just that science and technology do not make everything, but the earth gives everything.
Money can provide food for a while, power can provide food for a while, but agriculture provides food for all living things forever. That is why we hope that we are aware of the importance and necessity of agriculture and do not stop farming no matter what happens. - Plant breeding is a continual process of improving crop varieties to meet market demands and the requirements of a changing environment. While it is essential for achieving global food security, it is a slow process, limited by the often long growing times of most crop plants. Recently, the potential for this process to be accelerated by a method called ‘speed breeding’ has been demonstrated. The new method, speed breeding is a new technology that aims to shorten the agricultural breeding cycle and accelerate crop improvement through rapid generation advancement and involves the use of extended photoperiod and high light levels to accelerate plant development in key crop species like wheat, barley, chickpea, pea and oilseed rape. Growing crops in a speed breeding-specific growth chamber speeds up research on adult plant phenotyping, crossing, mutants, and transformation.
- The world is facing successive disturbances and crises in addition to an unprecedented rapid change in climatic conditions and a water shortage suitable for human consumption and agricultural production.
All that led to a deterioration in the productivity of strategic crops due to exposure to unsuitable environmental conditions or the effect of a new pest and an increase in the severity of infection due to climate change. Due to these changes, it has become necessary to think of innovative solutions to maintain food and water security, preserve natural resources, maintain production continuity, and work to reduce the deterioration in production. We depend on wheat, corn, rice, and soybeans for about two-thirds of our food, and reports indicate a decrease in the productivity of most of these crops, and they have been affected by the conditions of climate change. Environmental or biological conditions are not suitable, so work must be done on more than one path so that crop improvement continues and the development of the best varieties to meet the existing and expected conditions. In addition to considering the need to go to alternative crops and diversity in crops to meet the challenge of limited resources, crops must be chosen carefully to get the highest benefit from the land and water. Also, we have to take advantage of cover crops to expand their beneficial role in maintaining soil health and getting a significant yield. Moreover, there is a need to think about untraditional sources of food and feed, such as seaweeds, and plants can grow by using seawater. - The high producing dairy cow requires a diet that supplies the nutrient needs for high milk production. Carbohydrates, amino acids, fatty acids, minerals, vitamins, and water are all nutrients required by the lactating dairy cow to meet the demand by the mammary gland to produce milk and milk components. However, in order to develop the cow that will produce a high milk yield, it begins with the nutrition of the calf and heifer.
- Sustainability is a concept that was revealed during the twentieth century as a reaction to the excessive and imbalance use for synthetic chemicals and pesticides in Agricultural methods. Organic farming & Bio fertilizing are ones of the methods used to maintain sustainability and to preserve the environment and public health, securing resources by meeting basic human needs and improving environmental conditions and natural resources to get the maximum benefit from non-renewable resources and conserving them for the coming generations.
- Fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) is a lepidopteran pest which is native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. Fall armyworm is considered one of the most destructive pests that have recently spread in the middle east and target more than 80 different plants including maize, sorghum, rice, and cotton. The pest was first detected in Central and Western Africa in early 2016. By November 2019, the pest was confirmed in Sudan, Egypt and Yemen. And in 2020, it was confirmed in UAE, Jordan, and Syria. The fall armyworm life cycle has an egg stage, 5 to 6 caterpillar (larval) stages, a pupal stage, and an adult moth stage. The larval life cycle stages cause widespread damage to crops through feeding. The life cycle is completed in about 30 days during summer, 60 days in the spring and autumn, and 80 to 90 days during winter. Effective control can only be obtained by using selective insecticides such as chlorantraniliprole, indoxacarb, and spinosyns.