This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resourc…
This book demonstrates the application of Life-cycle Cost Approach (LCCA) in the management of infrastructure and other investment projects in the context of developing countries. The main goal is to identify potential opportunities for the adoption LCCA in developing countries, with the help of case studies and best practices. The editors observe that developing countries are plagued with poor…
Drawing on an ambitious range of interdisciplinary material, including literature, musical treatises and theoretical texts, Music and the Queer Body explores the central place music held for emergent queer identities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Canonical writers such as Walter Pater, E. M. Forster and Virginia
This book focuses on the taxonomic diversity of the genus Tuber as economically important truffles. In contributions by internationally respected scientists, it examines truffle systematics, interactions with abiotic and biotic environments, strategies for spore dispersal, and molecular processes in truffles. Topics discussed include: evolutionary theories and phylogeny of Tuber species from As…
This book is a compilation of the most challenging and significant chapters on the diagnosis and management of important bacterial, fungal, viral, viroid, phytoplasma, non parasitic diseases and various physiological disorders, in various crops. The chapters have been contributed by eminent plant pathologists, having wide experience of teaching and research on various crops with different types…
Given the increasing global interest in Chinese culture, this book uses case studies to describe and interpret Chinese cultivation in contemporary Taiwanese schools. Cultivation is a concept unique to Chinese culture and is characterized by different attitudes towards teaching and learning compared to Western models of education. The book starts with a discussion of human nature in Chinese scho…
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 differ…
Increased awareness about environmental adverse effects of human activities has prompted the use of insecticides with low impact on systems associated to agriculture. Currently, the most successful biological products are based on protein toxins from the bacterial species Bacillus thuringiensis. Because of the remarkable properties of these proteins, their encoding genes were introduced into fa…
The monoculture systems that have been encouraged by governments since the 1960s have led to major socio-economic and environmental crises. Now the diversification of tree crop systems is advancing throughout the tropics. Why and when does diversification take place? What categories of farmers diversify? What obstacles do they have to overcome, and how do public and private policies interfere i…
This book focuses on the use of microorganisms in relation to agriculture, aquaculture and related fields, ranging from biofertilizers to poultry production. The latest innovations are also included to provide insights into the unlimited potentials of microorganisms in these areas. Individual chapters explore topics such as probiotics in poultry, biopurification of wastewater, converting agrow…