Maximizing Crop Yield and Adaptation under Less Favorable Growing Environments: The Roots of it!

Abstract

Sustaining the increase in crop production is the basic cornerstone of meeting the rising demands from population growth, changing dietary preferences and expanding biofuels use. The earlier strategy was simply to expand the area devoted to crop production. However, expanding the area for crop production is now limited and often associated with environmental concerns since it always involves the clearing of natural ecosystems, forests, and other fragile ecosystems. This has shifted to strategy such as the intensification of the crop yields of existing agricultural lands.