It improves water retention, crop yield, nutrient value, taste, color, texture and disease resistance.
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Acute water shortages cause death through waterborne diseases, and dwindling water supplies reduce crop yields.
Sugar cane, which is planted in the summer, is a water-intensive crop and farmers may shift to other crops temporarily, industry executives said.
Usess of the Airware technology, which started shipping last November, so far include agricultural drones that use image analysis to decrease waste of water and increase crop yields.
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On Tuesday, the U.S. government said close to 10.0% of Iowa's corn crop is water-logged.
Aside from new varieties that have lower water requirements, pest- and disease-resistant gene-spliced crop varieties also make water use more efficient indirectly.
In any event, it should not come as a huge surprise to most cotton farmers that access to water is essential to crop performance.
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Farmers will be able to access real-time weather reports, water conditions, and crop prices, helping them be as competitive as possible in a global market.
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All over the world women are adapting to these changes, showing incredible resilience in the face of crop failures, water shortages and increases in environment-related diseases such as malaria.
Uzbekistan fears the dam will restrict water supplies to its main cash crop, cotton.
Across the great water is another city, another crop of modern-day skyscrapers.
The real problems are blight control, which are long term problems, trying to reduce chemical input into the crop, drought and water management.
Plant biologists have identified genes that regulate water use and transferred them into important crop plants.
Examples include vaccination, fluoridation of water, and the genetic engineering of crop plants.
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Using a herbicide to control weeds--especially in the initial growing stages--is vital to the health of a crop, because weeds usurp water, nutrients and space.
Where water is scarce, the development of crop varieties that grow under conditions of low moisture or temporary drought could boost yields and lengthen the time that farmland is productive.
The speaker also showed the correlation between irrigation management, crop growth, social benefits related to water and Eco-services.
The development of biofertilization techniques would also increase water use efficiency by promoting higher nutrient absorption and crop growth rates.
Increases in crop production and productivity, together with virtual-water trade, will mitigate the regional inequities of availability.
But the greatest boon of all to food security and to the environment in the long term may be the ability of new crop varieties to tolerate periods of drought and other water-related stresses.
This irrigation-efficient system, Khodpe was told, could double crop yields and save up to 60% of the water that flood irrigation methods consume.
This remains a very real concern, with much of the world suffering from increasing water scarcity, land erosion, drought intensity, stalled progress on crop productivity, declining groundwater aquifers, over-grazing of pasturelands, tropical deforestation, massive species extinction, over-fishing, and anthropogenic climate-change.
Texans in the rice business said they could probably stay afloat this year, thanks in part to crop insurance, but they worried about another year of interrupted irrigation water.
Innovative technologies will be needed to improve crop yields and drought tolerance and deliver more efficient ways of using fertilizer and water.
Investors are warming up to technology that promises to produce healthier crop efficiently and promote local consumption, given the challenge of managing the existing land, water and other resources to feed a growing population worldwide.
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