STRATEGIC RESEARCH JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND NATURAL RESOURCES
Year:2016 | Volume:1 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:6

The present state and date, sweet orange, mandarin, grapefruit, olive, pomegranate, fig and kiwi production in Iran was investigated in 2010-2011. Based on the statistics published by Ministry of Agricultural Jihad, important fruit producing provinces and a few cities in each province were determined andusing a questionnaire, pertinent information was collated from these centers. Provinces selected were Boushehr, Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, Fars, Golestan, Isfahan, Kerman, Kermanshah, Kohgiluieh and Boyerahmad, Khuzistan, Lorestan, Markazi, Mazandaran, North Khorasan, Qazvin, Qom, Guilan, Razavi Khorasan, Semnanm, Sistan and Baluchestan, South Khorasan, Tehran, Zanjan, and Yazd.The analysis of data showed that average yield per hectare were 4900 kg for date, 14000 kg sweet orange, 12800 kg for mandarin, 12270 kg for grapefruit, 15200 kg for olive, 10860 kg for pomegranate, 5900 kg for fig and 22500 kg for kiwi. In this investigation all measured characters were analysed and discussed. Also, suggestions were made for improving quality and quantity of these crops.

Holocene era that has nourished human civilization for the last ten thousand years, has given its way to a warming planet which is over populated, its forests are depleting and its fertile soils are rapidly destroyed due to increasing human activities in our time. Hence the word Anthropocene is being used for this era. Soils can sequester or release a large mass of carbon, maintain nutrients or flow them to the rivers where it may have impact on fishing industry. Sediment from soil erosion could affect power generation. Presently technology has advanced with such a pace that can lead to great changes in the soils. In this paper different scenarios are discussed for the future of the soils.They focus on how technology may have consequences on the condition of soils in the future.However, the greatest global processes that consume. The highest energy consumptions are related to geological events. We are encountered a new sphere developed through combined activities of man and technology, called techno sphere. Technology effect on pedosphere is long lasting.Therefore, in far future, experiencing soils with great changes and interesting properties would not be out of expectations. This will take us to the discussion of smart soils. In a world that miniaturized computers are uniformly distributed, sensors and activators can be used to collect and relay environmental information about the state of the soil (temperature, moisture, relative motion of near particles) and coordinate with instructions relayed back from central computers.Considering cost reduction and increasing ability of computer chips, one can expect that what we now know as soil, land, water and vegetation management, will reach to a point that soils and other surface systems will be known as technological tools rather than natural systems.

Scientometric studies have induced numerous benefits and have been used for various purposes. Development in agricultural and natural sciences requires precise information as well as suitable methodologies. In this regard numerous approaches have been introduced. One of these approaches is “comparative study” which was used in this research project to compare the programs and performance of 12 selected countries with those of Iran in the fields of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The specific merit of this study was the establishment of “Benchmarking” for cross sectional comparison, as well as longitudinal studies in the future. In scientometric studies various indices and indicators are used, such as number of published articles and citations. In this study, two new indices were developed and applied. First the weighted ratio of scientific production value of each country to its human development index, and second the weighted ratio of number of scientific papers of each country to its weighted “Prosperity Index Ranking”. The results indicated that Iran’s rank among the 13 countries was 10 to 12 as far as the number of articles, citations, and total scientific production is concerned, but according to these two new indices Iran’s rank is 4, which is admirable. Thus despite of all economic shortcomings and sanctions, Iran has been able to conduct highly valued research projects and make considerable scientific contribution to agriculture and natural resources disciplines in the world.

Rangeland ecosystem management is encountered with potentially confusing terminology of resilience, robustness and vulnerability. This study was aimed to identify the concepts and uses of these terminologies. For the analysis of these defined concepts and theie applications used to manage rangeland ecosystems, suitable background for each of them was searched and some examples are given for Iran. According to the results, with increasing the disturbance ecosystem into operation situated in the robustness, vulnerability and resiliency of ecological position.Ecological resilience is useful when ecosystems risk losing the ability to recover and requires system modeling, and disaster step is the suitable time for using of this criterion. Also, this concept used for analysis of ecological-social networks when reducing the network self-adaption capacity.Ecological vulnerability can either be quantitative, measuring the ability of a system to remain above a critical threshold and used to evaluate the exposure of ecosystem to disturbance and attributes that confer adaptive capacity and sensitivity to disturbance. Vulnerability is very well to assessments of coupled social-ecological systems. Ecological robustness measures the ability of ecosystem to maintain itself within a narrow range of function and is ideally suited to problems that require careful setting of upper and lower bounds for ecosystem properties, such as optimal yield, and one step before than disaster the suitable time for using of this criterion. Ecological robustness is defined as the capacity of ecosystem to maintain a desired state despite fluctuations in the behavior of its component parts or its ecosystems, and two steps before than disaster the suitable time for using of this criterion. In other means, a strong ecological implications of the lack of flexibility, it also describes the ability of ecosystems for innovation and adaptation in anticipation of or in response to internal or external disturbance and turmoil is the right time to use this concept, two before the environment is critical.

Recent droughts, limitation of water resources and challenges of supplying water with acceptable quality have turned into a major concern for the society and the authorities. Continuation of droughts in many parts of the country has developed a situation, which is usually described by terms such as water crisis or post-water crisis. In the present paper, while an overall review of the existing water resources is done, drought events are explained as a natural phenomenon, so that realistic understanding of problems associated with water resources management can be achieved.The need for water resources planning as a multi-dimensional problem is proposed and the system approach is discussed as an appropriate method to define the problem at hand. Application of the system approach by identifying problems of water resources management can be instrumental toward achievement of useful and practical solutions. Next, integrated water resources management (IWRM) and risk management and crisis management strategies are discussed as some of the available and applicable methodologies. Some of the viewpoints and relevant research taken placed in Iran are also discussed.

Global climate has changed since pre-industrial time. Atmospheric CO2 a major greenhouse gas has increased by nearly 30% and temperature has risen by 0.3-0.6oC. It is predicted that with current emission scenario, global mean temperature would rise between 0.9 and 3.5oC by the year 2100. The impact of climate change would be felt in three areas: in losses from plant diseases, efficacy of disease management strategies and in the geographical distribution of plant diseases.Climate change would have positive, negative or no impact on individual plant diseases. Doubling CO2 has been shown to increase crop yield by 30% but whether these benefits would still be realized in the presence of pests and disease is unknown. Climate change has great effect on overwintering and over summering of the pathogen, pest and vectors. This will affect on survival, movement and reproduction. In many cases temperature increases are predicted to lead to the geographic expansion of pathogen and vector distribution bringing pathogen into contact with more potential hosts and providing new opportunities for pathogen hybridization. The effect of climate change on plant diseases has not been studied much and most of the information is from recent years. In this review attempts were made to collect recent information on pathogen-host -interaction due to climate change. New strategies will be required for disease management under climate change. If consumption of fossil fuel continues and results in CO2 accumulation and also land use by deforestation, we expect more detrimental effects on climate change in the future.