Sustainable agriculture in Egypt

Presented at the fifth international conference on irrigation and drainage, Irrigation and drainage for food, energy and the environment on November 3-6, 2009 in Salt Lake City, Utah.Includes bibliographical references.Water is characterized such as no alternative source can substitute it and it is not a commercial resource or commodity. The great challenge for the coming decades will be the task of increasing food production with less water particularly in basins with limited water resources. Molden et al. (2003) estimated that, by year 2020, approximately 75% of the world's population will live in areas experiencing physical or economic water scarcity. Most of these areas happen to be where most of the poor and food insecure people live. Meeting their food needs with locally produced food presents enormous challenge. Hence, the need is to increase water productivity of agricultural production systems in water scarce areas where the poor population is dependent on local production. Increasing the productivity in agriculture will play a vital role in easing competition for scarce resources, prevention of environmental degradation, and provision of food security. Crop water productivity depends on several factors including crop genetic material, water management practices, economic and policy incentives, and people's acceptance. In a broad sense, productivity of water refers to the benefits derived from the use of water and is most often given in terms of mass of product, or its monetary value, per unit of water. Therefore, the main goal of the current practical study is to assess water productivity for different crops, assist decision makers in developing sustainable agricultural policies for Egypt and maximize national water resources' productivity in different agricultural activities considering the supply and demand aspects and based on the efficient utilization of the water resource

REWORKED MESOZOIC RADIOLARIANS IN MIOCENE-PLIOCENE FORELAND SEDIMENTS IN THE ZAGROS BELT, IRAN

Micropaleontology can give important insights into the provenance and paleoenvironmental conditions in terrestrial sedimentary archives. For the current study, 84 samples representing a 2.6 km thick sedimentary profile from the SimplyFolded Zagros Mountain Belt were investigated. They span ca. 10.2 my from the late Middle Miocene (Serravallian) to the earliest Pleistocene (Gelasian), and comprised floodplain sediments and saline mudstones with an aeolian contribution. The mudstones revealed a unique Cretaceous radiolarian assemblage comprising largely of cryptothoracic Nassellarians and spherical spumellarians. This record highlights the reworking of sediments derived from Cretaceous Qulqula- Kermanshah radiolarian claystones and radiolarites in the Imbricated Zagros belt into the distal Neogene Zagros foreland sediments in Lurestan (Lurestan Arc). The high abundance of Holocryptocanium barbui (Dumitrica) and other cryptothoracic taxa compared to the Qulqula- Kermanshah radiolarian claystones and radiolarites potentially indicates a preferred erosion of softer units such as the Red Radiolarian Claystone Unit (RRCU) compared to harder radiolarian cherts. The observation of a reworked largely cryptothoracic assemblage might also point to additional sorting effects during fluvial and aeolian transport as well as during redeposition, depending on the morphology and hydrodynamic properties of individual radiolarian taxa

Age constraints for the Trachilos footprints from Crete.

We present an updated time frame for the 30 m thick late Miocene sedimentary Trachilos section from the island of Crete that contains the potentially oldest hominin footprints. The section is characterized by normal magnetic polarity. New and published foraminifera biostratigraphy results suggest an age of the section within the Mediterranean biozone MMi13d, younger than ~ 6.4 Ma. Calcareous nannoplankton data from sediments exposed near Trachilos and belonging to the same sub-basin indicate deposition during calcareous nannofossil biozone CN9bB, between 6.023 and 6.727 Ma. By integrating the magneto- and biostratigraphic data we correlate the Trachilos section with normal polarity Chron C3An.1n, between 6.272 and 6.023 Ma. Using cyclostratigraphic data based on magnetic susceptibility, we constrain the Trachilos footprints age at ~ 6.05 Ma, roughly 0.35 Ma older than previously thought. Some uncertainty remains related to an inaccessible interval of ~ 8 m section and the possibility that the normal polarity might represent the slightly older Chron C3An.2n. Sediment accumulation rate and biostratigraphic arguments, however, stand against these points and favor a deposition during Chron C3An.1n