As a person working on different aspects of stress tolerance in crops, your
query
on coping with environmental variability is of great interest to me.
Certainly some research was done on this issue at the International Crops
Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), where I had previously
worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Some example of research include:
1. Predicting the length of growing season in Sahelian environments
depending on global weather changes in the preceding year. With this,
one can proably guess the time of start and end of rainy season, thereby
allowing us to choose the crops.
2. Choice of crops and cropping systems (mixed cropping, intercropping
strip cropping, etc.) that can withstand/minimize the negative effects of
changes in environment.
3. Insofar as perennial systems are concerned, some research was done at
the International Center for Research on Agroforestry (ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya.
Their research emphasized again on the choice of perennial trees and annual
crops to give reasonable, if not the best, yields in regions with unpredictable
weather.
If you get any additional information on these aspects, please share
with me.
Thank you.
Ancha Srinivasan
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* ANCHA Srinivasan, Ph.D. (Cantab.) *
* Japan International Research Center *
* for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) *
* Okinawa Subtropical Station *
* Maezato, Ishigaki, Okinawa 907 JAPAN *
* Tel: +81-9808-22306 Fax: +81-9808-20614 *
* E-Mail (Internet): ancha@jircas-os.affrc.go.jp *
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