360 articles
24 epibrassinolide
24-Epibrassinolide, also known as EBR, is a naturally occurring C28H48O6 brassinosteroid, a plant hormone widely used in laboratory studies and approved for use in crop production.
Aerial application
Aerial application is the delivery of pesticides, fertilizers, or seeds onto crops from aircraft or drones, treating about 71 million US acres and nearly all forest protection products.
Aeroponics
Aeroponics: soilless growing of plants with roots suspended in air and misted with nutrient solution. Developed with NASA funding in the 1980s; used for space experiments and fivefold seed potato production gains; ROI 3–7 years commercially.
Afforestation
Afforestation: establishing forest on land long without forest, distinct from reforestation. FAO definition, carbon and water trade-offs, measured ecosystem service effects in China, Tibet, and boreal lands.
Agricultural extension
Agricultural extension: nonformal advisory services transferring information, skills, and technologies to farmers; institutionalized by the 1914 Smith-Lever Act, now pluralistic and increasingly digital, with meta-analyses showing positive average impacts.
Agricultural lime
Agricultural lime (aglime): ground calcitic or dolomitic limestone and similar calcium/magnesium carbonates, oxides, or hydroxides used to neutralize soil acidity and raise pH; quality measured by CCE and fineness (ECCE).
Agricultural planning
Agricultural planning allocates land, water, capital, and labor to farming activities from farm to national scale, using methods from allocation budgeting and linear programming to participatory modeling, trade-off analysis, and land capability classification.
Agricultural practices
Agricultural practices are the methods used to grow crops and livestock, from tillage and irrigation to named systems like conservation agriculture, organic farming, and agroecology, whose measured environmental gains and adoption gaps define sustainable farming.
Agricultural product
Agricultural product: goods from crops and livestock, including processed derivatives. Defined differently by WTO (HS Chapters 1-24 minus fish, plus wool, cotton), FAO's FCL/CPC classifications, and FAOSTAT data for 245+ countries.
Agricultural science
Agricultural science applies biology, economics, engineering, and data science to food and fiber production. Key facts: Green Revolution yields, CGIAR system, 40–50% social returns to research, impact assessment gaps, climate adaptation.
Agricultural waste
Agricultural waste (odpady rolnicze): waste from farming operations, including manure, crop and harvest residues, slaughterhouse waste, fertilizer runoff, and pesticide residues; managed by composting, anaerobic digestion, biochar, and energy recovery.
Agriculture
Agriculture: cultivation of plants and rearing of animals for food, fibre and fuel. Also called farming; part of agrifood systems. Uses 72% of freshwater withdrawals; Near East origins at least 11,500 cal BP; 645 million undernourished in 2025.
Agriculture in Australia
Agriculture in Australia: crop, livestock, and horticulture production across about 439 million hectares, exporting roughly 71% of output, worth about $100 billion with fisheries and forestry in 2024-25, and forecast to ease in 2026-27 on drier conditions.
Agriculture in China
Agriculture in China: crop, livestock, and aquaculture production on ~9% of world cultivated land; 2025 record grain output 714.88 Mt; household contract farming on 0.6 ha family farms since 1978 reforms.
Agriculture in India
Agriculture in India: monsoon-dependent crop and livestock sector employing about 46.1% of the workforce, with the world's largest irrigated area, 115.6 million small holdings, Green Revolution legacy, and record foodgrain output of 376.56 million tonnes.
Agriculture in Israel
Agriculture in Israel: intensive farming under water scarcity, known for drip irrigation (90% efficiency), reuse of over 87% of wastewater effluent, kibbutz and moshav settlement, declining total factor productivity since 2010-19, and wartime labor and feed disruptions.
Agriculture in Pakistan
Agriculture in Pakistan: Indus Basin farming sector, 23.54% of GDP, 37% of labor force; wheat, cotton, rice, sugarcane; 18 million ha irrigated; salinity and groundwater challenges.
Agriculture in the United Kingdom
Agriculture in the United Kingdom: farming across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland; 17 million hectares (69% of land), 209,000 holdings, 453,000 workers, £4.9 billion in 2025 support payments post-CAP.
Agriculture in Ukraine
Agriculture in Ukraine: large-scale farming on chernozem black-earth soils making Ukraine a top exporter of wheat, maize, barley, and sunflower oil; covers Soviet collectivization, post-1991 agroholdings, land reform, and wartime export disruption since 2022.
Agroforestry
Agroforestry systems (agrisilvicultural, silvopastoral, agrosilvopastoral) deliberately integrate trees with crops and/or livestock; found on over 43% of global agricultural land, they sequester carbon, improve soil health, and buffer climate extremes.
Agronomy
Agronomy: the agricultural science applying biology, chemistry, soil and water science, genetics, and economics to field crops like wheat, rice, corn, and soybean; rooted in 19th-century chemistry under Justus von Liebig and now spanning water efficiency and precision agriculture.
Air layering
Air layering, also called marcotting or marcottage, is a plant propagation technique in which roots form on an aerial stem while it remains attached to the parent plant.
Alan Titchmarsh
Alan Titchmarsh, CBE VMH DL, British gardener, broadcaster and author; Kew-trained, presenter of Gardeners' World, Ground Force and ITV's Love Your Garden; RHS Vice President and Victoria Medal of Honour recipient.
Alfalfa
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa), also called lucerne, is a perennial forage legume grown as hay and pasture for livestock; ancient crop domesticated in southwest Asia, deep-rooted nitrogen fixer, 50.2 million tons of US hay in 2025.
Alpinia galanga
Alpinia galanga (greater galangal, Siamese-ginger), a Zingiberaceae rhizomatous herb native to South China to Malesia; Southeast Asian spice (kha) and Ayurvedic/Unani medicine; marker constituents ACA, 1,8-cineole, galangin.
Amaranthus hypochondriacus
Amaranthus hypochondriacus (prince's feather, alegría, amaranto) is an annual grain amaranth native from central USA to Mexico, grown for its light seeds, yielding 800-1200 kg/ha, a pre-Columbian Mexican crop.
Ancient grains
Ancient grains: cereals and pseudocereals such as einkorn, emmer, spelt, teff, millet, sorghum, and quinoa, largely unchanged by modern breeding; no official definition, higher nutrients but lower yields than modern wheat.
Angola coffee boom
The Angola coffee boom was the expansion of coffee growing in Portuguese Angola, from African smallholders and settler plantations to 210,000 tons and fourth place worldwide by 1974.
Annual growth cycle of grapevines
Annual growth cycle of grapevines (Vitis vinifera): dormancy, budburst, shoot growth, flowering, fruit set, veraison, harvest, leaf fall; two-year reproductive cycle, 14–15 months, tracked via Eichhorn-Lorenz phenology stages.
Apple
Apple (Malus domestica), the domesticated apple tree of the rose family, domesticated from Malus sieversii in Central Asia and spread along the Silk Road; over 7,500 cultivars including Fuji, Gala, and Honeycrisp, propagated by grafting, requiring cross-pollination, and a leading global fruit crop.