Crop evapotranspirative cooling across spatio-temporal scales

Plants experience heat stress when exposed to high temperatures. High temperature events have caused shocks to food production in some of the world's most important growing regions, and global heating is expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of such events. Evapotranspirative cooling is a mechanism of heat avoidance at plant, farm and regional scale. In this thesis, the importance of evapotranspirative cooling is explored at all three of these scales. At the plant scale, thousands of observations of leaf temperature are used to explore the magnitude of heat avoidance from transpirational cooling and its connection to heat tolerance. At the farm scale, the ORYZA crop model is used to test the importance of transpirational cooling in modelling the trade-off between saving water and heat avoidance in irrigated rice. At the regional scale, large spatial data sets of irrigated rice area are used in combination with observed temperature data to examine the impact of landscape wide irrigation on heatwaves in India over the historical period. The results of this thesis show that evapotranspirative cooling is an important heat avoidance mechanism in common bean. The first empirical evidence demonstrating a connection between transpirational cooling and heat tolerance in common bean is presented. At the farm scale, evapotranspirative cooling is shown to explain a far greater share of variability in yield than changes in irrigation strategy. Modelling of evapotranspirative cooling is shown to be a key uncertainty in efforts to understand the trade-off between saving water and resilience to heat stress in a warming climate. Finally, region-wide irrigation is shown to reduce the frequency and duration of heatwaves in India

Agricultural Meteorology and Climatology

Agricultural Meteorology and Climatology is an introductory textbook for meteorology and climatology courses at faculties of agriculture and for agrometeorology and agroclimatology courses at faculties whose curricula include these subjects. Additionally, this book may be a useful source of information for practicing agronomists and all those interested in different aspects of weather and climate impacts on agriculture. In times when scientific knowledge and practical experience increase exponentially, it is not a simple matter to prepare a textbook. Therefore we decided not to constrain Agricultural Meteorology and Climatology by its binding pages. Only a part of it is a conventional textbook. The other part includes numerical examples (easy-to-edit worksheets) and recommended additional reading available on-line in digital form. To keep the reader's attention, the book is divided into three sections: Basics, Applications and Agrometeorological Measurements with Numerical Examples

CGIAR Research Program on Rice

This program, also known as GRiSP, is designed to increase rice productivity and value for the poor, and improve the sustainable management of water and other resources on which rice production depends. Through a single strategic plan and new alliance that involves more than 900 partners worldwide, GRiSP will deploy rice genetic diversity, while promoting simultaneous revolutions in rice agronomy, processing, and policy. The partnership will harness the genetic diversity of rice to improve productivity, quality, and health; accelerate development, delivery, and adoption of improved rice varieties; and extract more value from rice harvests through improved quality, processing, markets, and new products

Irrigation Systems and Practices in Challenging Environments

The book Irrigation Systems and Practices in Challenging Environments is divided into two interesting sections, with the first section titled Agricultural Water Productivity in Stressed Environments, which consists of nine chapters technically crafted by experts in their own right in their fields of expertise. Topics range from effects of irrigation on the physiology of plants, deficit irrigation practices and the genetic manipulation, to creating drought tolerant variety and a host of interesting topics to cater for the those interested in the plant water soil atmosphere relationships and agronomic practices relevant in many challenging environments, more so with the onslaught of global warming, climate change and the accompanying agro-meteorological impacts. The second section, with eight chapters, deals with systems of irrigation practices around the world, covering different climate zones apart from showing casing practices for sustainable irrigation practices and more efficient ways of conveying irrigation waters - the life blood of agriculture, undoubtedly the most important sector in the world

Course Manual Winter School on Structure and Functions of Marine Ecosystem: Fisheries

Marine ecosystems comprises of diverse organisms and their ambient abiotic components in varied relationships leading to an ecosystem functioning. These relationships provides the services that are essential for marine organisms to sustain in the nature. The studies examining the structure and functioning of these relationships remains unclear and hence understanding and modelling of the ecological functioning is imperative in the context of the threats different ecosystem components are facing. The relationship between marine population and their environment is complex and is subjected to fluctuations which affects the bottom level of an ecosystem pyramid to higher trophic levels. Understanding the energy flow within the marine ecosystems with the help of primary to secondary producers and secondary consumers are potentially important when assessing such states and changes in these environments. Many of the physiological changes are known to affect the key functional group, ie. the species or group of organisms, which play an important role in the health of the ecosystem. In marine environment, phytoplankton are the main functional forms which serves as the base of marine food web. Any change in the phytoplankton community structure may lead to alteration in the composition, size and structure of the entire ecosystem. Hence, it is critical to understand how these effects may scale up to population, communities, and entire marine ecosystem. Such changes are difficult to predict, particularly when more than one trophic level is affected. The identification and quantification of indicators of changes in ecosystem functioning and the knowledge base generated will provide a suitable way of bridging issues related to a specific ecosystem. New and meaningful indicators, derived from our current understanding of marine ecosystem functioning, can be used for assessing the impact of these changes and can be used as an aid in promoting responsible fisheries in marine ecosystems. Phytoplantkon is an indicator determining the colour of open Ocean. In recent years, new technologies have emerged which involves multidisciplinary activities including biogeochemistry and its dynamics affecting higher trophic levels including fishery. The winter school proposed will provide the insights into background required for such an approach involving teaching the theory, practical, analysis and interpretation techniques in understanding the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems from ground truth measurements as well as from satellite remote sensing data. This is organized with the full funding support from Indian council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) New Delhi and the 25 participants who are attending this programme has been selected after scrutiny of their applications based on their bio-data. The participants are from different States across Indian subcontinent covering north, east, west and south. They are serving as academicians such as Professors/ scientists and in similar posts. The training will be a feather in their career and will enable them to do their academic programmes in a better manner. Selected participants will be scrutinized initially to understand their knowledge level and classes will be oriented based on this. In addition, all of them will be provided with an e-manual based on the classes. All selected participants are provided with their travel and accommodation grants. The faculty include the scientists who developed this technology, those who are practicing it and few user groups who do their research in related areas. The programme is coordinated by the Fishery Resources Assessment Division of CMFRI. This programme will generate a team of elite academicians who can contribute to sustainable management of marine ecosystem and they will further contribute to capacity building in the sector by training many more interested researchers in the years to come

The Nature, Causes, Effects and Mitigation of Climate Change on the Environment

This book examines global warming and climate change over the past five decades in mainly subtropical and tropical countries. The amount and types of changes in these countries vary with the environment but are often less than those occurring in the Arctic and northern countries. Chapters address such topics as the controversy surrounding global warming, the effects of climate change on agriculture, changes in land use and hydrology, and more