Adjusting the sowing dates for wheat in eastern India will increase untapped potential production by 69%, new research shows, helping to ensure food security and farm profitability as the planet warms.
Adjusting the sowing dates for wheat in eastern India will increase untapped potential production by 69%, new research shows, helping to ensure food security and farm profitability as the planet warms.
“For several years, we’ve been building dense data sets with colleagues from the Indian Agricultural Research Council, which have allowed us to unravel complex farm realities through big data analytics, and to determine what agricultural management practices really matter in smallholder systems,” said Andrew McDonald ’94, M.S. ’98, Ph.D. ’03, associate professor of soil and crop sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “This process has confirmed that planting dates are the foundation for climate resilience and productivity outcomes in the dominant rice-wheat cropping systems in the eastern sector in India.”
McDonald is first author of “Time Management Governs Climate Resilience and Productivity in the Coupled Rice-Wheat Cropping Systems of Eastern India,” published July 21 in Nature Food with a consortium of national and international partners through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia, an initiative for sustainable development.
Read more at: Cornell University
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