How do biotic and abiotic factors affect crop production

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications. Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers. Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal. Dear Colleagues, There is an urgent need for an increase in the quantity and the quality of global crop production. Two main categories of factors that have gr...

• Engineering and Architecture • Computer Application and IT • Pharmacy • Hospitality and Tourism • Competition • School • Study Abroad • Arts, Commerce & Sciences • Management and Business Administration • Learn • Online Courses and Certifications • Medicine and Allied Sciences • Law • Animation and Design • Media, Mass Communication and Journalism • Finance & Accounts Crop production can go down due to: Biotic factorssuch as insects, nematodes, and diseases reduce crop production. Insectsfeed on the crop thus destroying it. Abiotic factorsarenatural factors like temperature, salinity, waterlogging which also reduces crop production. Different crops require a different range of temperature, hence, the wrong temperature can cause thee crop production to go down.

Demissew Tesfaye Teshome 1, Godfrey Elijah Zharare 2 and Sanushka Naidoo 1 * • 1Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa • 2Department of Agriculture, University of Zululand, KwaDlangezwa, South Africa Plants encounter several biotic and abiotic stresses, usually in combination. This results in major economic losses in agriculture and forestry every year. Climate change aggravates the adverse effects of combined stresses and increases such losses. Trees suffer even more from the recurrence of biotic and abiotic stress combinations owing to their long lifecycle. Despite the effort to study the damage from individual stress factors, less attention has been given to the effect of the complex interactions between multiple biotic and abiotic stresses. In this review, we assess the importance, impact, and mitigation strategies of climate change driven interactions between biotic and abiotic stresses in forestry. The ecological and economic importance of biotic and abiotic stresses under different combinations is highlighted by their contribution to the decline of the global forest area through their direct and indirect roles in forest loss and to the decline of biodiversity resulting from local extinction of endangered species of trees, emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds, and reduction in the productivity and quality of forest products and services....

Biotic factors are living organisms that reduce cropproductivity due to eitlier directly feeding on them (e.g.,insects, rodents) or causing diseases (e.g., nematodes,my coplasmas, bacteria, viruses, fungi). Abiotic factors are non-living components of environment that affect growth of crop plants like excess of water (water-logging), scarcity of water (drought), salinity, heat, cold or frost. Water logging reduces aeration of soil whichis harmful to growth and functioning of roots. In drought, water is not available to meet the requirement ofthe plantsfor transpiration, growth and photosynthesis. Frost, cold and heat reduce or inhibit metabolic activities and are, therefore, harmful.

Open Access is an initiative that aims to make scientific research freely available to all. To date our community has made over 100 million downloads. It’s based on principles of collaboration, unobstructed discovery, and, most importantly, scientific progression. As PhD students, we found it difficult to access the research we needed, so we decided to create a new Open Access publisher that levels the playing field for scientists across the world. How? By making research easy to access, and puts the academic needs of the researchers before the business interests of publishers. We are a community of more than 103,000 authors and editors from 3,291 institutions spanning 160 countries, including Nobel Prize winners and some of the world’s most-cited researchers. Publishing on IntechOpen allows authors to earn citations and find new collaborators, meaning more people see your work not only from your own field of study, but from other related fields too. Plants are subjected to a variety of environmental stresses, which reduces and limits agricultural crop productivity. Environmental stresses that affect plants are of two types: biotic and abiotic stresses. Abiotic stress includes temperature, ultraviolet radiation, salinity, floods, drought, heavy metals, etc., which results in the loss of important crop plants globally, while biotic stress refers to damage caused by insects, herbivores, nematodes, fungi, bacteria, or weeds. Plants respond to all these environmental factors b...

Abiotic or non-infectious diseases: These diseases are caused by conditions external to the plant, not living agents. They cannot spread from plant to plant, but are very common and should be considered when assessing the health of any plant. Examples of abiotic diseases include nutritional deficiencies, soil compaction, salt injury, ice, and sun scorch (Figure 61). Figure 61. Frost injury on soybean seedlings. Biotic or infectious diseases: These diseases are caused by living organisms. They are called plant pathogens when they infect plants. For the purposes of discussing plant pathology, only plant disease pathogens will be discussed. Pathogens can spread from plant to plant and may infect all types of plant tissue including leaves, shoots, stems, crowns, roots, tubers, fruit, seeds and vascular tissues (Figure 62). Figure 62. Soybean plants dying from Sclerotinia infection. Collectively, fungi and FLOs cause the most plant disease than any other group of plant pathogens. These organisms cannot make their own food, lack chlorophyll, have filamentous growth, and may or may not reproduce by spores. Fungi and FLOs are able to overwinter in soil or on plant debris. However, some fungi and FLOs cannot overwinter in northern climates because of low winter temperatures. These pathogens overwinter in southern climates and then are transported by air currents back to northern climates. Disease movement from southern to northern climates can be monitored during the growing season...

Demissew Tesfaye Teshome 1, Godfrey Elijah Zharare 2 and Sanushka Naidoo 1 * • 1Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa • 2Department of Agriculture, University of Zululand, KwaDlangezwa, South Africa Plants encounter several biotic and abiotic stresses, usually in combination. This results in major economic losses in agriculture and forestry every year. Climate change aggravates the adverse effects of combined stresses and increases such losses. Trees suffer even more from the recurrence of biotic and abiotic stress combinations owing to their long lifecycle. Despite the effort to study the damage from individual stress factors, less attention has been given to the effect of the complex interactions between multiple biotic and abiotic stresses. In this review, we assess the importance, impact, and mitigation strategies of climate change driven interactions between biotic and abiotic stresses in forestry. The ecological and economic importance of biotic and abiotic stresses under different combinations is highlighted by their contribution to the decline of the global forest area through their direct and indirect roles in forest loss and to the decline of biodiversity resulting from local extinction of endangered species of trees, emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds, and reduction in the productivity and quality of forest products and services....

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications. Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers. Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal. Dear Colleagues, There is an urgent need for an increase in the quantity and the quality of global crop production. Two main categories of factors that have gr...

Open Access is an initiative that aims to make scientific research freely available to all. To date our community has made over 100 million downloads. It’s based on principles of collaboration, unobstructed discovery, and, most importantly, scientific progression. As PhD students, we found it difficult to access the research we needed, so we decided to create a new Open Access publisher that levels the playing field for scientists across the world. How? By making research easy to access, and puts the academic needs of the researchers before the business interests of publishers. We are a community of more than 103,000 authors and editors from 3,291 institutions spanning 160 countries, including Nobel Prize winners and some of the world’s most-cited researchers. Publishing on IntechOpen allows authors to earn citations and find new collaborators, meaning more people see your work not only from your own field of study, but from other related fields too. Plants are subjected to a variety of environmental stresses, which reduces and limits agricultural crop productivity. Environmental stresses that affect plants are of two types: biotic and abiotic stresses. Abiotic stress includes temperature, ultraviolet radiation, salinity, floods, drought, heavy metals, etc., which results in the loss of important crop plants globally, while biotic stress refers to damage caused by insects, herbivores, nematodes, fungi, bacteria, or weeds. Plants respond to all these environmental factors b...

More • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Biotic factors A variety of biotic factors such as pests, nematodes, diseases, etc. can reduce the net crop production causing huge economic loss. • Pest – These cause damage to agriculture by feeding on crops. For example, boll weevil is a pest of cotton. It attacks the cotton crop, thereby reducing its yield. • Weeds – Weeds also reduce crop productivity by competing with the main crop for nutrients, light, and space. Abiotic factors • Abiotic factors such as salinity, temperature, etc. affect the net crop production. • Natural calamities such as droughts and floods are unpredictable and their occurrence has a great impact on crops, som...