Repositorio Nacional

To reduce agriculture's carbon, land and water footprint, the diffusion of conservation farming methods is one commonly cited proposition. Yet the process of translating available information on new conservation farming methods into farmers' practices is often a black box in many studies. This understanding is critical to inform strategies for scaling these complex, knowledge-intensive, but necessary practices for improving agriculture's resource and climate balance sheet. By implementing a series of mediation analysis using data from 700 households in Malawi and 930 households in Tanzania, this study examines how an improved understanding of conservation agriculture (CA) principles is an important mediator in the pathway from extension contact to the adoption of two of the CA practices examined. For the adoption of conservation tillage, the share of the mediated treatment effect was in the 31.5–34.4% range, while it was 31.6–46.9% for the adoption of soil cover (mulching). Our results suggest that unless learning from external sources strongly correlates with improved farmers' technical understanding of new farming practices, private learning by doing must be a critical adjunct to other avenues of learning. Beyond the basic promotional goals, improving farmers' technical know-how needs to be the centerpiece of holistic efforts in support of conservation farming and similar knowledge-intensive practices necessary for agriculture's sustinability goals.

Article

CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE SMALLHOLDERS AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES FIELD EXPERIMENTATION

Genome-wide association study presents insights into the genetic architecture of drought tolerance in maize seedlings under field water-deficit conditions

Ao Zhang (2023)

Article

Erratic Rainfall Adverse Impacts Traditional Breeding Genome-Wide Association Study Field Drought CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA DROUGHT TOLERANCE MAIZE SEEDLING STAGE SINGLE NUCLEOTIDE POLYMORPHISM

On-farm assessment of yield and quality traits in durum wheat

Facundo Tabbita Iván Ortíz-Monasterios Francisco Javier Pinera-Chavez Maria Itria Ibba Carlos Guzman (2023)

BACKGROUND: Durum wheat is key source of calories and nutrients for many regions of the world. Demand for it is predicted to increase. Further efforts are therefore needed to develop new cultivars adapted to different future scenarios. Developing a novel cultivar takes, on average, 10 years and advanced lines are tested during the process, in general, under standardized conditions. Although evaluating candidate genotypes for commercial release under different on-farm conditions is a strategy that is strongly recommended, its application for durum wheat and particularly for quality traits has been limited. This study evaluated the grain yield and quality performance of eight different genotypes across five contrasting farmers’ fields over two seasons. Combining different analysis strategies, the most outstanding and stable genotypes were identified. RESULTS: The analyses revealed that some traits were mainly explained by the genotype effect (thousand kernel weight, flour sodium dodecyl sulfate sedimentation volume, and flour yellowness), others by the management practices (yield and grain protein content), and others (test weight) by the year effect. In general, yield showed the highest range of variation across genotypes, management practices, and years and test weight the narrowest range. Flour yellowness was the most stable trait across management conditions, while yield-related traits were the most unstable. We also determined the most representative and discriminative field conditions, which is a beneficial strategy when breeders are constrained in their ability to develop multi-environment experiments. CONCLUSIONS: We concluded that assessing genotypes in different farming systems is a valid and complementary strategy for on-station trials for determining the performance of future commercial cultivars in heterogeneous environments to improve the breeding process and resources.

Article

Wheat Quality GGE Analysis Flour Yellowness CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA FLOURS WHEAT QUALITY YIELDS FIELD EXPERIMENTATION

High Throughput-Phenotyping at CIMMYT: Experiences and needs

Francisco Pinto (2021)

Conference object

CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y BIOTECNOLOGÍA BREEDING PROGRAMMES GENETIC GAIN CROSS-BREEDING TECHNOLOGY YIELD POTENTIAL FIELD EXPERIMENTATION

Modelado y acoplamiento de la conductividad eléctrica e hidráulica a partir de tomografía de rocas

Modeling and coupling of electrical and hydraulic conductivity from rock tomography

Miguel Ángel Martínez Rodríguez (2022)

En este trabajo se emplearon técnicas de modelado numérico para simular el flujo de corriente eléctrica y de fluido a través de medios porosos con el fin de determinar el factor de resistividad y la permeabilidad, así como la distribución de los campos de densidad de corriente eléctrica y velocidad de flujo. Para el modelado de flujo eléctrico se desarrolló un algoritmo basado en diferencias finitas, mientras que para el modelado hidráulico se empleó una librería reportada en la literatura, basada en el método de redes de Boltzmann. En ambos esquemas de modelado se establecieron condiciones en la frontera poro-grano para modelar los procesos físicos exclusivamente en el espacio poroso. Los valores estimados de factor de resistividad y de permeabilidad, así como la porosidad, se emplearon para estudiar las correlaciones entre estas propiedades a través de relaciones petrofísicas. Para esto, se propuso una expresión que relaciona la permeabilidad y la porosidad y, empleando una relación existente entre el factor de resistividad y la porosidad, se propuso también una relación directa entre la permeabilidad y el factor de resistividad. Las relaciones propuestas fueron aplicadas a los valores numéricos obtenidos para paquetes de esferas generados numéricamente y se encontró que se ajustan mejor a los datos en comparación con las relaciones más comúnmente utilizadas, especialmente para porosidades altas. Se mostró también que estas relaciones petrofísicas toman la forma de las relaciones más comunes conocidas cuando se trata con porosidades bajas. Valores obtenidos de imágenes digitales de un paquete de esferas sintético y una muestra de dolomita mostraron que las expresiones para porosidades bajas son suficientes para ajustar datos de medios porosos con porosidades menores a un valor entre 0.3 y 0.4. Finalmente, se analizaron el factor de resistividad, la permeabilidad, las relaciones petrofísicas, y las distribuciones espaciales y estadísticas de los campos vectoriales de flujo se analizaron para comparar los fenómenos de transporte eléctrico e hidráulico, encontrando que algunos factores, como la porosidad efectiva, son importantes en ambos fenómenos de flujo; mientras que otros, como la adherencia del fluido a las paredes del poro, son particularmente relevantes para el flujo hidráulico.

In this work, numerical modeling techniques were used to simulate the flow of electric current and fluid through porous media in order to determine the resistivity factor and permeability, as well as the distribution of electric current density and flow velocity fields. For electric flow modeling, an algorithm based on finite differences was developed, while for hydraulic modeling, a library reported in the literature, based on lattice Boltzmann method, was used. In both modeling schemes, pore-grain boundary conditions were established to model the physical processes exclusively in the pore space. The estimated values of resistivity factor and permeability, as well as porosity, were used to study the correlations between these properties through petrophysical relationships. An expression relating permeability and porosity was proposed and, using an existing relationship between the resistivity factor and the porosity, a direct relation between permeability and resistivity factor was also proposed. The proposed relations were applied to data obtained for numerically generated sphere packs and were found to fit the data better than the most commonly used relationships, especially for high porosities. It was also shown that these petrophysical relationships take the form of the most common relationships known when dealing with low porosities. Modeling data on digital images of a synthetic sphere pack and a dolomite sample showed that the expressions for low porosities are sufficient to fit data from porous media with porosities lower than 0.3 to 0.4. Finally, resistivity factors, permeabilities, petrophysical relationships, and spatial and statistical distributions of flow vector fields were analyzed to compare electrical and hydraulic transport phenomena, finding that some factors, such as the effective porosity, are important in both flow phenomena; whereas some other, such as the pore-wall adherence, are particularly relevant to hidraulic flux.

Master thesis

Física de rocas, modelado numérico, relaciones petrofísicas, fenómenos de transporte, factor de resistividad, permeabilidad, porosidad, tomografía de rocas, campos vectoriales, distribución estadística Rock physics, numerical modelling, petrophysical relations, transport phenomena, resistivity factor, permeability, porosity, rock tomography, vector fields, statistical distribution CIENCIAS FÍSICO MATEMÁTICAS Y CIENCIAS DE LA TIERRA CIENCIAS DE LA TIERRA Y DEL ESPACIO GEOFÍSICA GEOFÍSICA DE LA MASA SÓLIDA TERRESTRE GEOFÍSICA DE LA MASA SÓLIDA TERRESTRE