Climate Change And Sustainable Agriculture

The Anthropocene, the time of humans. Never has human influence on the functioning of the planet been greater or in more urgent need of mitigation. Climate change, the accelerated warming of the planet’s surface attributed to human activities, is now at the forefront of global politics. The agriculture sector not only contributes to climate change but also feels the severity of its effects, with the water, carbon and nitrogen cycles all subject to modification as a result. Crop production systems are each subject to different types of threat and levels of threat intensity. There is however significant potential to both adapt to and mitigate climate change within the agricultural sector and reduce these threats. Each solution must be implemented in a sustainable manner and tailored to individual regions and farming systems. This Special Issue evaluates a variety of potential climate change adaptation and mitigation techniques that account for this spatial variation, including modification to cropping systems, Climate-Smart Agriculture and the development and growth of novel crops and crop varieties.

Under ongoing climate changes, natural and cultivated habitats of major crops are being continuously disturbed. Such conditions impose and exacerbate abiotic and biotic stressors. Drought, salinity, flood, cold, heat, heavy metals, metalloids, oxidants, irradiation, etc. are important abiotic stressors, while diseases and infections caused by plant pathogens, such as fungal agents, bacteria and viruses, are major biotic stresses. In many instances, stresses have become the major limiting factor for agricultural productivity and exert detrimental role on growth and yield of the crops. To help feed an ever increasing world population and to ensure global food security, concerted efforts from scientists and researchers have identified strategies to manage and mitigate the impacts of climate-induced stresses. This book, summarizing their findings, is aimed at crop improvement beyond such kind of barriers, by agronomic practices (genetics, breeding, phenotyping, etc.) and biotechnological applications, including molecular markers, QTL mapping, genetic engineering, transgenesis, tissue culture, various 'omics' technologies and gene editing. It will cover a wide range of topics under environmental challenges, agronomy and agriculture processes, and biotechnological approaches. Additionally, fundamental mechanisms and applied information on stress responses and tolerance will be discussed. This book highlights problems and offers proper solutions for crop stress management with recent information and up-to-date citations. We believe this book is suitable for scientists, researchers and students working in the fields of agriculture, plant science, environmental biology and biotechnology.

This book to comprehensively present the standard methodologies for studying the impacts of climate change on agriculture, measuring and developing inventories of greenhouse gas emission, and analyzing the vulnerabilities and mitigation options.

Sustainability covers environmental, social and economic dimensions, and requires a multi-disciplinary approach in order to examine, explore and critically engage with issues and advances in its related areas. As we are aware, climate change is a certainty and it affects many economic sectors, including agriculture, particularly production of crop and livestock enterprises. Vast regional differences in these impacts are expected for various parts of the world, culminating in changes in trade patterns, and perhaps eventually even threatening the food security in certain parts of the world. Agricultural sustainability may be especially threatened by climate extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, and floods. However, not all changes induced by climate change would be negative; some may even be positive. Undoubtedly, there would be winners and losers within a nation, as well as among countries. Achieving sustainability would require changes in the way we manage agriculture. Equally important in this discourse is to find solutions to achieve sustainability in the wake of climate change, one of the major threats to sustainability. This book is devoted to various aspect of sustainable agriculture and climate change and their interplay.

Global climate change threatens human existence through its potential impact on agriculture and the environment. Agriculture is climate-sensitive, and climate variability and climate change have net negative impact on it. Additionally, the agricultural landscape is affected by monoculture and agro-biodiversity loss, soil fertility depletion and soil loss, competition from biofuel production, crop yield plateaus and invasive species. Nevertheless, the global agricultural production system has to meet the food demands from the growing human population, which is set to exceed 10 billion by 2050. This book discusses the impacts of climate change on agriculture, animal husbandry and rural livelihoods. Further, since agriculture, forestry and other land-use sectors contribute about 10–12 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent per year, it argues that agricultural policy must dovetail adaptation and mitigation strategies to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. This calls for a reformative and disruptive agricultural strategy like climate-smart agriculture, which can operate at all spatio-temporal scales with few modifications. The book also redefines sustainable agriculture through the lens of climate-smart agriculture in the context of the sustainability of Earth's life- support system and inter- and intra-generational equity. The climate-smart agriculture approach is gaining currency thanks to its inherent positive potential, and its goal to establish an agricultural system which includes "climate-smart food systems", "climate-proof farms", and "climate-smart soils". Climate-smart agriculture provides a pathway to achieve sustainable development goals which focus on poverty reduction, food security, and environmental health.

The Anthropocene, the time of humans. Never has human influence on the functioning of the planet been greater or in more urgent need of mitigation. Climate change, the accelerated warming of the planet’s surface attributed to human activities, is now at the forefront of global politics. The agriculture sector not only contributes to climate change but also feels the severity of its effects, with the water, carbon and nitrogen cycles all subject to modification as a result. Crop production systems are each subject to different types of threat and levels of threat intensity. There is however significant potential to both adapt to and mitigate climate change within the agricultural sector and reduce these threats. Each solution must be implemented in a sustainable manner and tailored to individual regions and farming systems. This Special Issue evaluates a variety of potential climate change adaptation and mitigation techniques that account for this spatial variation, including modification to cropping systems, Climate-Smart Agriculture and the development and growth of novel crops and crop varieties.

Human activity is changing the global environment at an unprecedented rate while humanity faces a range of complex and interrelated challenges to local, regional and global development, human security and politics. Food security ranks high on the science, policy and development agendas. However, most research linking global change and food systems examines the impact of climate change on agricultural production, or the impact of agriculture on land use, pollution and biodiversity, overlooking interactions with other aspects of the food system – such as food processing, packaging, transportation and consumption and employment derived from these activities. This book demonstrates that new threats to food security which arise from environmental change require more than simply a focus on agricultural practices – what is needed is an integrated food system approach. The authors point out that the process of adapting food systems to global environmental change is not simply a search for technological solutions to increase agricultural yields. Tradeoffs across multiple scales among food system outcomes are a prevalent feature of globalized food systems. Within food systems, there are key underexplored areas that are both sensitive to environmental change and crucial to understanding its implications for food security and adaptation strategies. The authors assert that technical prescriptions alone will not efficiently manage the food security challenge. This book is their contribution to a new paradigm, which addresses food systems holistically by engaging researchers in multiple disciplines to understand the causes and drivers of vulnerability.

This book consists of 10 Chapters in 4 Parts. The first Part is an introduction and contains Chapter 1 to introduce the book chapters to the audiences. The second Part consists of two chapters under the name, Impact of Climate Change on Crop Production and the Physiological and Biochemical Basis for Crops Tolerance. The Chapter 2 focus on critical periods of crop plants to stress conditions and the expected impacts of climate changes mainly on the productivity and quality of field crops. While, Chapter 3 highlights the foundations of crop tolerance to environmental stress and plant traits relevant to stress tolerance. It is devoted to explain and discuss mechanisms of adaptation to environmental stress conditions and addresses various plant traits related to stress environmental tolerance i.e. phenological, morpho-physiological and biochemical traits which could be used as selection criteria for crops improvement. The third Part consists of 5 Chapters under the theme “Improve Crop Adaptability and Stability to Climate Change and Modern Technology". Chapter 4 highlights the most important strategic food grain crop (wheat), Chapter 5 focuses the important staple food crop (rice), while Chapter 6 deals with one of the most important food legume crops (faba bean). Chapter 7 and 8 discuss two important oil crops (sesame and sunflower). However, Chapter 9 focuses on cotton as one of the most important fiber crops. The author addresses these crops under the following headings: genotype x environment interaction and its relation to climatic change on yield production, performance of genotypes in response to environmental changes, adaptability and yield stability to environmental conditions, additive main effects and multiplicative interaction model, gene action, genetic behavior and heritability for traits related to environmental stress tolerance, role of recent approaches, biotechnology and nanotechnology. This is besides how can measure sensitivity of genotypes to environmental stress, and finally the appropriate agricultural practices to mitigate environmental stress on crops under attention. The book ends with Chapter No. 10 where the author presents an update of the book topics, present the most important conclusions and recommendations from all chapters. This book has been prepared and supported by recent references and statistics with coloured tables and illustrations for audiences interested in crop science,environment, plant breeding, genetics and biotechnology, as well as postgraduate students and researchers in universities and research centres.