Malaysian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture (MJSA)

Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre (KATC) in association with small-scale farmers, has a vital role in fostering sustainable organic practices for sustainable agricultural development. A study was conducted to establish the alignment of sustainable agriculture practices at KATC, with that of the National agricultural policy and, how sustainable practices are implemented by the training institution. The qualitative case study involved seventeen (17) participants who were purposively selected from the target population. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews, observations, and a focus group discussion. A document review on SNAP’s sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) was conducted, and data were analysed using thematic content analysis. The study showed that KATC’s sustainable organic practices such as soil fertility management, soil and water conservation, and pest and disease management were aligned with policy objectives of, increasing crop production, food security, and nutrition, promoting sustainable management and use of natural resources. An integrated approach is essential in implementing SAPs aligned with policy objectives, to enable the effective adoption of SAPs by small-scale farmers and agricultural development. The study recommended specific policies and legislation on sustainable agriculture to influence the implementation of sustainability practices.

Sugarcane is a cash crop typically cultivated for sugar. Due to climate change, there is a rise in temperature, disruption in the rainfall patterns and cycle of seasons. Such changes in weather parameters affect sugarcane production as well as sugar recovery from the canes. The study was conducted in Uttar Pradesh, India using GIS (Geographic Information System) based models and statistical multiple linear regression from districtwise data on yield and climatic parameters over the study period (1986 to 2015). The GIS models reveal that climatic factors like rainfall, temperature and evapotranspiration changed significantly throughout the study.The multiple linear regression model shows that such changes in climatic parameters have a significant impact on the yield of sugarcane. Graphical analysis of yearly data on temperature and sugar recovery (%) showed that temperature affects the amount of sugar recovered from the canes. The study aims to illustrate the evidence of climate change and its impact on sugarcane production in Uttar Pradesh.

Studies conducted regarding goods and services exhibit a low willingness to pay (WTP) in developing countries. However, many scholars found that this may not be the preference for the good but the result of the choice of payment vehicle. Thus, low WTP for ecosystem conservation may not indicate a low welfare for the ecosystem service. There’s the argument that the choice of the payment vehicles may be needed to obtain exact welfare estimates where there is imperfect substitutability between money and labor. Otherwise, there might occur underestimating of the welfare benefit of ecosystem services. Thus, the ultimate objective of this study is to investigate the labor-as a payment-vehicle by using a CV method and estimating the factors influencing pastoralists’ decision to contribute labor for the rangeland improvement. This study demonstrates it through a rural pastoralists’ choice to elicit their willingness to contribute a labor for the rangeland improvement in Yabello District, southern Ethiopia. A total of 228 sample respondents were selected randomly from the two adjacent Kebeles. Logit model was used to identify the factors that influence pastoralists’ willingness to contribute the labor for the rangeland improvement. The result shows that the endowment of household’s active labor highly influence respondents’ willingness to contribute. In addition to that, variables like sex, age, dominant livelihood activities, livestock holding, perception towards the rangeland improvement, dependency ratio, and initial bid value were significantly influence pastoralists’ willingness to contribute the labor for the rangeland improvement. To sum up, the findings of this study suggest that, just like the monetary value, the labor value can also be used to evaluate the demand of community for the ecosystem services improvement. Thus, employing the labor as a means of payment vehicle for accurate welfare estimations might be a practical alternative, and also giving a chance for the respondents to indicate their willingness to contribute for rehabilitation of degraded ecosystem in developing countries.

Four Bangladeshi villages were chosen at random to represent a total of 64 home gardens.The study’s objective was to evaluate the variety of tree species and the carbon store in the tree biomass on Char Island, both above and below groun. The Shannon Wiener index was used to evaluate the variety of tree species, and allometric equations were used to estimate the carbon stock, with the assumption that the stock represented 50% of the carbon in the tree biomass. The findings indicated that home garden ecosystems could store an average of 18.00 Mg of carbon per hectare, ranging from 1.66 Mg of carbon per hectare to 58.93 Mg per hectare and tree species diversity ranged from 0 to 1.84 with a mean value of 1.05 where most abundant was Eucalyptus camaldulensis (44.21%) which stored the most C (33.62Mg ha-1) followed by Moringa oleifera (29.37 Mg ha-1) in tree biomass. The study provides a evidence of tree diversity and carbon storage in char island.

The purpose of this study was to examine the climate and non-climatic inputs influencing barley yield in Ethiopia. The study employed an augmented Cobb-Douglas production functional approach to model factors influencing barley yield. The results revealed that short-season rainfall and temperature variables showed a positive relationship with barley yield, having minimal impact on barley yield. Conversely, long-season rainfall showed negative impact on barley yield, mainly due to extreme rain events such as high rainfall above optimum requirement of the crop as well as scarcity of rainfall in some pocket areas. The result infers that cultivation of barley moderately depends on rainfall. Subsequently, irrigated land, fertilizer and barley seed quantities used exhibited positive impact on barley yield. Fertilizer and barley seed inputs demonstrated positively significant influence on barley yield, implying that barley yield is highly responsive to application of fertilizer and barley seed inputs and moderately responsive to irrigation input.

Intercropping of trees with crops on the same piece of land at a given time has been hypothesized to: enhance crop yield, increase land-use and improve land equivalent ratio (LER). To address this hypothesis, we evaluated two legumes faba bean, lentil and three cereals durum wheat, soft wheat and barley grown in olive (Olea europea) agroforestry during two growing seasons (Y) with contrasting weather (Y1: 2015-2016 and Y2: 2016-2017) under a Mediterranean climate of north western Morocco. We assessed the effect of annual crops on olive growth and yield; the effect of trees on annual crop growth, yield components, and final yields; finally, we calculated the land equivalent ratio (LER) of olive agroforestry to assess the productivity of the associations. Legumes had no effect on olive growth and yield, while cereals negatively affected shoot elongation and olive yield compared to olive in sole crop. Olive limited crop growth and yield of all associated crops and yield reduction was around 33 % for legumes and 47 % for cereals in agroforestry than sole crop. The magnitude of reduction was higher in Y1 than Y2. Similar responses were found when comparing crops at different distances from trees. Annual crops generally had lower biomass and yield, near the trees compared to the middle of tree inter-rows, causing significant spatial heterogeneity in crops. The LER reached 1.36 with lentil and 1.33 with faba bean, the lowest LER was recorded with durum wheat in both years with 1.01 in Y1 and 1.02 in Y2, and the highest LER with cereals was registered with soft wheat and reached 1.19 in Y1.

The faba bean crop is facing different biotic and abiotic factors that ultimately lower its production. One of the serious threats to faba beans production is the bruchid beetle (Bruchu rufimanus). The crop acts as a host plant, and the life cycle of bruchid beetles (Bruchus rufimanus) is based on faba bean crop. Studies reveal that there is a significant impact of different organic extracts on faba bean (Vicia faba L.) Production against the bruchid beetle, furthermore, essential oils and organic extracts bearing insecticidal compounds that counter the bruchid beetle infestation to an appropriate level. Globally, crops bear unstable yield which leads to an inadequate area under production and limited farmer expertise in relation to faba bean crop production. The ultimate result is inadequate experience and expertise of its management practices. Use of chemical insecticides has an adverse impact on the natural ecosystem and non-target insect pests. The review is based on different biological approaches that may counter the bruchid beetle (Bruchus rufimanus) infestation. There is a need to limit its attack at pre harvest stage to obtain quality seed and to boost the yield potential. There is very less literature available on pre harvest control of bruchid beetles (Bruchus rufimanus). Different plant based essential oil and extracts having insect repellent tendency with insecticidal compounds. Innovative approaches like Semiochemical based insect trap and nanosilica coating will prove a breakthrough to counter bruchid beetle (Bruchus rufimanus) infestation. This review paper represents the summary and overview related to the improved quality of faba beans (Vicia faba L.) crop with bio-control against bruchid beetle (Bruchus rufimanus). The data reveals the combined exposure of research papers and other literature that is available in terms of related aspects. This may lead to literature overview from previous research and present findings in a combined form. Further work is needed to counter bruchid beetle (Bruchus rufimanus) attack at pre harvest stage by using biological approaches.

The issue of ASEAN food security has led to chemical pesticides-driven policy directives as economic convention for protecting crop yields while concomitantly conferring an implicit ecological and health risk-based ‘trade-off’ that works to undermine SDG target indicators 2.4, 3.9, and 6.3. In this study the Pesticides Consumer-Environmental Indexing System (PCE-ISys), a conceptual heuristic ‘systems-based’ framework is proposed to explore needed policy-informing option(s) beyond the largely cost-externalising rubric of chemical crop protection management, by indexing (the potential for and magnitude of potential) pesticides exposure (EIR-IS) using a semi-quantitative tiered percentile-based, continuous-to-discrete variable transform that captures the stochastic distribution arising from the ‘generalisable’ interconnectivity of political governance, agricultural economy, and natural environment. 1990-2016 indexing results revealed ‘high’ EIR-IS levels for 52% and 63% of Asia-Pacific and ASEAN nations, respectively, with 28% of Asia-Pacific countries scoring at ‘highest’ indexing levels demonstrating pervasive and expansive pesticides-use and/or tonnage contrary to IPM sustainable agricultural practices.

The foraging of honeybees is one of the most well-organized and admirable behaviors that exists among social insects and being greatly influenced by nectarine sources and habitat adaptability. In Bangladesh, apiculture is mostly confined to rearing of European honeybee Apis mellifera L. despite of having the native A. cerana F. due to lack of information about comparative foraging efficiency and productibility of two species in Asian cropland ecosystem. The present study aimed to molecular characterization of two honeybee species in apiary and their foraging performance on litchi orchard. The genetic identity was revealed thorough phylogenetic analysis with >90% bootstrap value using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase sub unit- 1 (CO1) gene and nucleotide sequence data deposited to NCBI GenBank with accession number ON680900- ON680902 for A. mellifera and ON703291-ON703293 of A. cerana. Upon placing the identified bee hives in litchi orchard, the foraging efficiency were studied based on egression and ingression rate, number of bees visited flowers per minutes, and nectar and pollen collection efficiency in varied time series of the day. Principal component analysis (PCA) for measuring the contribution of different foraging parameters and the species wise PCA biplot revealed the better foraging efficiency by A. mellifera L. compared to A. cerana F. in litchi blooms. However, foraging efficiency of other nectarine sources should be analyzed for suggesting best performing bee species in apiculture.

The culture and growth performance of Spirulina platensis in three different concentrations (25, 50, and 75 percent) of digested rotten mango media (DRMM) and Kosaric medium (KM) as control were investigated. This study intended to examine DRMM as a low cost culture media for microalgae. For 16 days, optical density, cell weight, chlorophyll a concentration, and total biomass of S. platensis under various treatments were measured in every alternate day. The growth rate of S. platensis cultured in the supernatant of DRMM and KM was varied and the maximum cell weight, chlorophyll a content and total biomass of S. platensis were 0.085 mg/L, 0.08 mg/L and 4.824±0.021 mg/L at 50% in DRMM of the culture. This study showed that the growth performance of S. platensis was higher in the supernatant of 50% DRMM than 25 and 75% of DRMM which resulted satisfactorily compared with standard KM. In the supernatant of 50% digested rotten mango medium, large volume spirulina culture may be feasible.