Agricultural science is a broad multidisciplinary field of biology that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences that are used in the practice and understanding of agriculture.
Ecology is a branch of biology concerning the spatial and temporal patterns of the distribution and abundance of organisms, including the causes and consequences. Topics of interest include the biodiversity, distribution, biomass, and populations of organisms, as well as cooperation and competition within and between species. Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and the non-living components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production, pedogenesis, nutrient cycling, and niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through an environment. These processes are sustained by organisms with specific life history traits.
Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Harpenden in the English county of Hertfordshire and is a registered charity under English law.
Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, like clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica and are found in most ecoregions of the Earth. Furthermore, grasslands are one of the largest biomes on earth and dominate the landscape worldwide. They cover 31-43% of the earth's surface. There are different types of grasslands: natural grasslands, semi-natural grasslands, and agricultural grasslands.
Horticulture is the agriculture of plants, mainly for food, materials, comfort and beauty for decoration. Horticulturists apply knowledge, skills, and technologies to grow intensively produced plants for human food and non-food uses and for personal or social needs. Their work involves plant propagation and cultivation with the aim of improving plant growth, yields, quality, nutritional value and resistance to insects, diseases and environmental stresses. They work as gardeners, growers, therapists, designers, and technical advisors in the food and non-food sectors of horticulture.
A meadow is an open habitat, or field, vegetated by grass, herbs and other non-woody plants. Meadows may be sparsely covered with trees or shrubs, as long as they maintain an open character. They may be naturally occurring or artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland. They can occur naturally under favourable conditions, but they are often maintained by humans for the production of hay, fodder or livestock. Meadow habitats, as a group, are characterized as 'semi-natural grasslands', meaning that they are largely composed of species native to the region, with only limited human intervention.
Bromus tectorum, known as downy brome, drooping brome or cheatgrass, is a winter annual grass native to Europe, southwestern Asia, and northern Africa, but has become invasive in many other areas. It now is present in most of Europe, southern Russia, Japan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, North America and Asia. In the eastern US B. tectorum is common along roadsides and as a crop weed, but usually does not dominate an ecosystem. It has become a dominant species in the Intermountain West and parts of Canada, and displays especially invasive behavior in the sagebrush steppe ecosystems where it has been listed as noxious weed. B. tectorum often enters the site in an area that has been disturbed, and then quickly expands into the surrounding area through its rapid growth and prolific seed production.
Phalaris arundinacea, or reed canary grass, is a tall, perennial bunchgrass that commonly forms extensive single-species stands along the margins of lakes and streams and in wet open areas, with a wide distribution in Europe, Asia, northern Africa and North America. Other common names for the plant include gardener's-garters in English, alpiste roseau in French, rohrglanzgras in German, kusa-yoshi in Japanese, caniço-malhado in Portuguese, and hierba cinta and pasto cinto in Spanish.
Panicum virgatum, commonly known as switchgrass, is a perennial warm season bunchgrass native to North America, where it occurs naturally from 55°N latitude in Canada southwards into the United States and Mexico. Switchgrass is one of the dominant species of the central North American tallgrass prairie and can be found in remnant prairies, in native grass pastures, and naturalized along roadsides. It is used primarily for soil conservation, forage production, game cover, as an ornamental grass, in phytoremediation projects, fiber, electricity, heat production, for biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and more recently as a biomass crop for ethanol and butanol.
The diversity of species and genes in ecological communities affects the functioning of these communities. These ecological effects of biodiversity in turn are affected by both climate change through enhanced greenhouse gases, aerosols and loss of land cover, and biological diversity, causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and extinctions of species and local populations. The current rate of extinction is sometimes considered a mass extinction, with current species extinction rates on the order of 100 to 1000 times as high as in the past.
A long-term experiment is an experimental procedure that runs through a long period of time, in order to test a hypothesis or observe a phenomenon that takes place at an extremely slow rate. What duration is considered "long" depends on the academic discipline. For example, several agricultural field experiments have run for more than 100 years, but much shorter experiments may qualify as "long-term" in other disciplines. An experiment is "a set of actions and observations", implying that one or more treatments is imposed on the system under study. Long-term experiments therefore contrast with nonexperimental long-term studies in which manipulation of the system studied is impossible or undesirable.
Push–pull technology is an intercropping strategy for controlling agricultural pests by using repellent "push" plants and trap "pull" plants. For example, cereal crops like maize or sorghum are often infested by stem borers. Grasses planted around the perimeter of the crop attract and trap the pests, whereas other plants, like Desmodium, planted between the rows of maize, repel the pests and control the parasitic plant Striga. Push–pull technology was developed at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Kenya in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, UK. and national partners. Research and development for the push-pull strategy was funded by a number of partners including the Gatsby Charitable Foundation of the UK, the Rockefeller Foundation, the UK’s Department for International Development, and the Global Environment Facility of the UNEP, among others. Additionally, research conducted jointly by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology and Rothamsted Research helped to identify effective companion plants to be used with this strategy and provided empirical evidence of the efficacy of push-pull pest management technology. This technology has further been taught to smallholder farmers through collaborations with universities, NGOs and national research organizations.
The Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) established an international long-term monitoring program and site-based network dealing with high-mountain vegetation and its biological diversity. Its purpose is the in-situ observation and comparative assessment of alpine biodiversity patterns under the impact of accelerating anthropogenic climate change. GLORIA involves sets of permanent plots established at pristine or near-natural sites set aside and monitored to observe the migration of plant species due to climate change. Founded in 2001, the program has grown to more than 120 sites around the world, distributed from the poles to the tropics."
George David Tilman, ForMemRS, is an American ecologist. He is Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in Ecology at the University of Minnesota, as well as an instructor in Conservation Biology; Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; and Microbial Ecology. He is director of the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve long-term ecological research station. Tilman is also a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.
Conservation grazing or targeted grazing is the use of semi-feral or domesticated grazing livestock to maintain and increase the biodiversity of natural or semi-natural grasslands, heathlands, wood pasture, wetlands and many other habitats. Conservation grazing is generally less intensive than practices such as prescribed burning, but still needs to be managed to ensure that overgrazing does not occur. The practice has proven to be beneficial in moderation in restoring and maintaining grassland and heathland ecosystems. The optimal level of grazing will depend on the goal of conservation, and different levels of grazing, alongside other conservation practices, can be used to induce the desired results.
The effect of organic farming has been a subject of interest for researchers. Theory suggests that organic farming practices, which exclude the use of most synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, may be beneficial for biodiversity. This is generally shown to be true for soils scaled to the area of cultivated land, where species abundance is, on average, 30% richer than that of conventional farms. However, for crop yield-scaled land the effect of organic farming on biodiversity is highly debated due to the significantly lower yields compared to conventional farms.
The Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve is an ecological research site located primarily in East Bethel, Minnesota in the counties of Anoka and Isanti on the northern edge of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. Encompassing 5,400 acres (22 km2) of native upland forests and prairie and lowland swamps and meadows, the site contains over 900 plots of long-term experimental research which evaluate plant competition and biodiversity. The herbivory research division examines animal and plant relationships. Led by prominent American ecologist G. David Tilman, the University schedules more than 130 faculty, post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, staff, and undergraduate researcher interns to the site as of 2006.
Winifred Elsie Brenchley OBE, DSc (Lond), FLS, FRES (1883–1953), an agricultural botanist who worked at the Rothamsted Research Station. Along with Katherine Warington, she demonstrated the role of boron as an essential micronutrient for plants. She was the first woman in the UK to break into the male-dominated sphere of agricultural science. She has been described as "perhaps Britain's leading authority on weeds in the early twentieth century".
Katherine Warington was a botanist and the first person to show that boron, as boric acid, was essential for the healthy growth of plants.
The Magruder Plots are experimental winter wheat field plots at Oklahoma State University established in 1892. They are the third longest-running such field trial in the United States, following the Morrow Plots established in 1876 at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the Sanborn Field established in 1888 at the University of Missouri. They are examples of long-term experiments.