Agricultural Science Commons^™

Economic Contribution Of The Agricultural Sector To The Arkansas Economy In 2021, Leah English, Jennie Popp

AAES Research Reports and Research Bulletins

Agriculture and associated agricultural activities are major contributors to the Arkansas economy. Agriculture is defined as the sum of agricultural production and processing activities, unless otherwise specified, and includes crop and animal production and processing, agricultural support industries, forestry and forest products, and textile goods. Agriculture contributes to the economy through direct agricultural production and processing, leading to economic activity in other parts of the economy.

This report is the sixteenth in a series that examines agriculture’s economic contribution to the Arkansas economy. The total economic contribution of agriculture (direct, indirect, and induced effects) on value added, employment, and labor …

Country-Scale Crop Field Mapping For Zambia Using U-Net, Yao-Ting Yao

Sustainability and Social Justice

Cropland mapping is a crucial tool for evaluating food security. Cropland in African countries is expected to expand by at least 140M ha by 2050 to satisfy food demand. Developing accurate, large-area cropland maps of Africa’s smallholder agricultural systems is critical. To address this need, we use U-Net, a convolutional neural network, to map cropland for the year 2021 in the Republic of Zambia, a country experiencing rapid agricultural growth. To undertake this work, we first created a labeling platform and workflow protocol on Google Earth Engine (GEE) to collect labels from high spatial-resolution Planet-Scope NICFI Basemaps (4.77m) within grids …

Protecting Wa Crops Issue 30 - May 2023, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Protecting WA Crops

Protecting WA Crops Issue 30 - May 2023 contents:

• GRDC Perth Research Updates – Pathology – Part 2
• Impact of fungicide product, rotation and timing on Net form net blotch in Planet barley in southern WA
• Economical management of Spot form net blotch in low rainfall environments
• Meet crop protection team member – Jason Bradley

Pestfacts Wa Issue 03 - May 2023, Cindy L. Webster, Svetlana Micic, Alan Lord, Andrea Hills, Jean Galloway, Rebecca Severtson

PestFacts WA

PestFacts WA Issue 3 - May 2023 contents:

• Identifying weevils
• Downy mildew in canola
• Meet PestFacts WA team member, Bec Severtson

Pestfacts Wa Issue 05 - May 2023, Benjamin S. Congdon, Cindy L. Webster, Ciara Beard, Geoff J. Thomas

PestFacts WA

PestFacts WA Issue 5 - May 2023 contents:

• Early season aphid and virus risk in cereals and canola
• Black and white tiger moth caterpillars
• Lupinosis risk this season

In Vitro Screening Of 12 Strains Of Birdsfoot Trefoil (Lotus Corniculatus) Against Haemonchus Contortus, Isabella Caldwell, Elizabeth Kass, Rebecca Brown, Katherine Harper Petersson

Senior Honors Projects

Gastrointestinal nematodes (GIN), primarily Haemonchus contortus, are one of the leading causes of death in sheep and goats. As resistance to commercial dewormers continues to rise, alternative strategies for GIN parasite control are needed. Preliminary studies have demonstrated that secondary plant compounds in birdsfoot trefoil (BFT, Lotus corniculatus) possess antiparasitic activity against GIN. In this study, the antiparasitic effect of twelve strains of BFT on the hatching of H. contortus eggs and motility of larvae was determined. BFT strains were harvested in June of 2020 and hay-dried. H. contortus eggs were recovered from mono-infected Dorset yearlings by running fresh …

Evaluating Planting Green And Herbicides For Integrated Weed Management And Their Effect On Soil Properties In Corn And Soybean In Nebraska, Trey Parker Stephens

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Producers across the Midwest are finding new ways to implement cover crops into cropping systems and the practice of “Planting Green” is one of the newest uses of cover crops. When planting green, producers plant their row crops into actively growing cover crops and terminate the cover crop at time of planting or shortly after planting. This practice would allow for higher biomass accumulation of the cover crop and could aid in weed management of herbicide-resistant weeds. The objective of the first two studies was to evaluate planting green and its effect on soil-applied residual herbicides, weed management, dicamba/glyphosate-resistant soybean …

Genomic Selection For Yield And Seed Composition Stability In An Applied Soybean Breeding Program, Benjamin Mark Harms

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Stability traits are of primary importance in plant breeding to ensure consistency in phenotype across a range of environments. However, selection efficiency and accuracy for stability traits can be hindered due to the requirement of obtaining phenotype data across multiple years and environments for proper stability analysis. Genomic selection is a method that allows prediction of a phenotype prior to observation in the field using genome-wide marker data and phenotype data from a training population. To assess prediction of stability traits, two elite-yielding soybean populations developed three years apart in the same breeding program were used. The individuals in each …

Plasticity Of Sorghum Biomass And Inflorescence Traits In Response To Nitrogen Application, Kyle M. Linders

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Nitrogen is an essential nutrient required for growth and development in plants. Insufficient nitrogen availability can reduce vegetative growth and grain yield. However, nitrogen is a costly input for farmers, is energy intensive to manufacture, and runoff of excess nitrogen fertilizer impacts water quality. Compared to its close relative, maize, sorghum has much greater resilience to nitrogen and water deficit, and heat stress, allowing sorghum to be grown with fewer inputs and on marginal land. Variation in total biomass accumulation and grain yield between sorghum accessions, as well as between nitrogen conditions, can be largely explained by differences in vegetative …

Irrigation-As-A-Service For Smallholder Farmers, Ishani Lal

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Irrigation is a crucial management practice that can help increase food security among smallholders globally while mitigating climate change impacts. High-efficiency irrigation technologies such as drip kits and sprinkler systems are relatively expensive and smallholder farmers cannot afford them to buffer crop yields against low precipitation. In many developing countries, farmers participate in robust informal markets for renting and sharing of irrigation equipment. Such services may be operated by farmers or via a third party such as irrigation start-ups, water user associations, non-governmental organizations, or even government agencies. These services are referred to collectively as Irrigation-as-a-Service (IaaS).

The objective of …

Meta-Analysis Of The Effects Of Endophytes And Their Secondary Metabolites On Herbivory From Insects, Derrick Taylor

All Theses

Endophyte-infected plants have reduced the level of herbivory. The defense to herbivory can vary due to the metabolites in the plant and the method of feeding from the pest. Secondary metabolites produced by the endophytes are mainly alkaloids. The associations between endophytes and some alkaloid groups are studied in greater detail. The lack of research of certain alkaloid groups ultimately means that some alkaloids had more data that could be analyzed. As a result, the alkaloid groups were not evenly represented in the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis analyzed the relative effectiveness of the metabolites or endophytes in each of the articles …

Investigating Effect Of Seed Source And Developing Germination Protocols To Improve Success In Restoration Of Arkansas Tallgrass Prairies, Rhiannon Spencerosa

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

American tallgrass prairie has faced losses estimated at 87-98% of original land area since European settlement. Native seeds are often used to supplement struggling or extinct plant populations in tallgrass prairie restoration and establishment sites. Two main considerations in restoration and establishment are from where to source seed and how to obtain high germination rates. In order to determine the effect of seed source, a common garden experiment was performed in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2022 with five prairie species: Andropogon gerardii (big bluestem), Bouteloua curtipendula (sideoats grama), Panicum virgatum (switchgrass), Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem), and Sorghastrum nutans (Indiangrass). Seed was …

Effect Of Nanobubble-Oxygenated Water For Irrigation Of Sand-Based Golf Course Putting Greens, Eric Deboer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nanobubbles (NBs) are sub-micron, stable cavities of gas. The properties of NBs theoretically allow long bubble residence times and high gas dissolution rates resulting in the supersaturation of oxygen in water. Adequate soil aeration is a constant concern for producers of agricultural and horticultural crops. Because of their unique properties, NBs have been investigated for oxygenating water used in the irrigation of various agricultural and horticultural crops to increase soil oxygen concentration. Creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera L.) is the most widely used turfgrass for golf course putting green surfaces. Golf course superintendents use various methods to increase soil oxygen in …

Impact Of Drought And Fertilizer Use On The Photosynthesis Rate Of Cucumber And Sweet Corn Under Ambient And Elevated Atmospheric Co2 Conditions, Kate Fenske

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

No abstract provided.

A Deep Learning Framework For Processing And Classification Of Hyperspectral Rice Seed Images Grown Under High Day And Night Temperatures, Víctor Díaz-Martínez, Jairo Orozco-Sandoval, Vidya Manian, Balpreet K. Dhatt, Harkamal Walia

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

A framework combining two powerful tools of hyperspectral imaging and deep learning for the processing and classification of hyperspectral images (HSI) of rice seeds is presented. A seed-based approach that trains a three-dimensional convolutional neural network (3D-CNN) using the full seed spectral hypercube for classifying the seed images from high day and high night temperatures, both including a control group, is developed. A pixel-based seed classification approach is implemented using a deep neural network (DNN). The seed and pixel-based deep learning architectures are validated and tested using hyperspectral images from five different rice seed treatments with six different high temperature …

Entropy And Energy Profiles Of Chemical Reactions, Johannes C. B. Dietschreit, Dennis J. Diestler, Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

The description of chemical processes at the molecular level is often facilitated by use of reaction coordinates, or collective variables (CVs). The CV measures the progress of the reaction and allows the construction of profiles that track the evolution of a specific property as the reaction progresses. Whereas CVs are routinely used, especially alongside enhanced sampling techniques, links between profiles and thermodynamic state functions and reaction rate constants are not rigorously exploited. Here, we report a unified treatment of such reaction profiles. Tractable expressions are derived for the free-energy, internal-energy, and entropy profiles as functions of only the CV. We …

Divergent Metabolic Changes In Rhizomes Of Lowland And Upland Switchgrass (Panicum Virgatum) From Early Season Through Dormancy Onset, Nathan A. Palmer, Gautam Sarath, Michael J. Bowman, Aaron J. Saathoff, Serge J. Edmé, Robert B. Mitchell, Christian M. Tobias, Soundararajan Madhavan, Erin D. Scully, Scott E. Sattler

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

High-biomass-yielding southerly adapted switchgrasses (Panicum virgatum L.) frequently suffer from unpredictable winter hardiness at more northerly sites arising from damage to rhizomes that prevent effective spring regrowth. Previously, changes occurring over the growing season in rhizomes sampled from a cold-adapted tetraploid upland cultivar, Summer, demonstrated a role for abscisic acid (ABA), starch accumulation, and transcriptional reprogramming as drivers of dormancy onset and potential keys to rhizome health during winter dormancy. Here, rhizome metabolism of a high-yielding southerly adapted tetraploid switchgrass cultivar, Kanlow—which is a significant source of genetics for yield improvement—was studied over a growing season at a northern …

Differential Behaviour Of Guineagrass (Panicum Maximum Jacq.) Hybrids, With Different Al+3 Reactions, As To Major Nutrient Translocations To The Leaves, R. S. Paterniani, J. A. Usberti Jr., J. C. Werner

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Most of the Brazilian cultivated pasture fields presents soils with high Al⁺³ levels and liming is economically unfeasible. So, there is an urgent need for grasses with good forage yielding potentials that can withstand Al⁺³ deleterious effects (abnormal root development: short, thick and poorly branched roots, which are unable to effectively translocate water and essential nutrients to the leaves) (Foy, 1984); as a consequence, susceptible genetic materials have their field persistences greatly affected, mainly during drought periods. Researches on Al⁺³ reaction are usually compare supposedly resistant/tolerant genotypes with a resistant control check; doing so, the genotypic effect …

Animal Performance And Productivity Of New Ecotypes Of Brachiaria Brizantha In Brazil, Valéria P. B. Euclides, Manuel C. M. Macedo, Cacilda B. Do Valle, R. Flores, M. P. Oliveira

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Brazil has the competitive advantage of a very dynamic and cost effective animal production system on pastures over other countries. The pursuit for more productive forages that will result in higher quality beef at a lower cost is then justified. Brachiaria is the most important forage genus utilised in Brazil, thus an intense search for new cultivars amongst collected and introduced ecotypes from Africa is underway. Following agronomic evaluation of this material in plots, 8 pre-selected Brachiaria ecotypes were tested under intermittent grazing in paddocks (Euclides et al., 2001). Continuing on the process of cultivar development, two out of …

Development Of A Bahiagrass Paspalum Notatum Flugge With Increased Short-Day Biomass, P. Mislevy, Ann R. Blount, T. R. Sinclair

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Low herbage productivity of subtropical grasses during the short-day winter months of October through to March can place a severe burden on livestock producers in Southeastern U.S. Researchers at the University of Florida (Sinclair et al., 2001) hypothesised that the decrease in forage production might result from physiological dormancy induced by short day length. A study using artificial lights to extend the day length demonstrated that maintaining the day length at 15 hr during the short-day length period increased 'Pensacola' bahiagrass P. notatum Flugge saure Parodi forage yield 122% when compared with normal photoperiod (Mislevy et al., 2001). …