For nearly a century, scientific advances have fueled progress in U.S. agriculture to enable American producers to deliver safe and abundant food domestically and provide a trade surplus in bulk and high-value agricultural commodities and foods. Today, the U.S. food and agricultural enterprise faces formidable challenges that will test its long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience. On its current path, future productivity in the U.S. agricultural system is likely to come with trade-offs. The success of agriculture is tied to natural systems, and these systems are showing signs of stress, even more so with the change in climate. More than a third of the food produced is unconsumed, an unacceptable loss of food and nutrients at a time of heightened global food demand. Increased food animal production to meet greater demand will generate more greenhouse gas emissions and excess animal waste. The U.S. food supply is generally secure, but is not immune to the costly and deadly shocks of continuing outbreaks of food-borne illness or to the constant threat of pests and pathogens to crops, livestock, and poultry. U.S. farmers and producers are at the front lines and will need more tools to manage the pressures they face. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 identifies innovative, emerging scientific advances for making the U.S. food and agricultural system more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. This report explores the availability of relatively new scientific developments across all disciplines that could accelerate progress toward these goals. It identifies the most promising scientific breakthroughs that could have the greatest positive impact on food and agriculture, and that are possible to achieve in the next decade (by 2030).

Advances in Rice Research for Abiotic Stress Tolerance provides an important guide to recognizing, assessing and addressing the broad range of environmental factors that can inhibit rice yield. As a staple food for nearly half of the world's population, and in light of projected population growth, improving and increasing rice yield is imperative. This book presents current research on abiotic stresses including extreme temperature variance, drought, hypoxia, salinity, heavy metal, nutrient deficiency and toxicity stresses. Going further, it identifies a variety of approaches to alleviate the damaging effects and improving the stress tolerance of rice. Advances in Rice Research for Abiotic Stress Tolerance provides an important reference for those ensuring optimal yields from this globally important food crop. - Covers aspects of abiotic stress, from research, history, practical field problems faced by rice, and the possible remedies to the adverse effects of abiotic stresses - Provides practical insights into a wide range of management and crop improvement practices - Presents a valuable, single-volume sourcebook for rice scientists dealing with agronomy, physiology, molecular biology and biotechnology

Sorghum is among the top five cereals and one of the key crops in global food security efforts. Sorghum is a resilient crop under high-stress environments, ensuring productivity and access to food when other crops fail. Scientists see the potential of sorghum as a main staple food in a future challenged by climate change. The contributors provide a comprehensive review of sorghum knowledge. The discussion covers genetic improvements, development of new hybrids, biotechnology, and physiological modifications. Production topics include water and nutrient management, rotations, and pest control. Final end uses, sorghum as a bioenergy crop, markets, and the future of sorghum are presented. IN PRESS! This book is being published according to the “Just Published” model, with more chapters to be published online as they are completed.

This book offers a state-of-the-art overview of on abiotic stresses in terms of the challenges; scope and opportunities; copping strategies for adaptation and mitigation using novel tools for building resilience in agricultural crops and livestock; as well as for policy implementation. Divided into four major parts: advances and prospects for understanding stress environments; adaptation and mitigation options; crop-based mitigation strategies; and mitigation options in animal husbandry, the book focuses on problem-solving approaches and techniques that are essential for the medium to long-term sustainability of agricultural production systems The synthesis and integration of knowledge and experiences of specialists from different disciplines offers new perspectives in the versatile field of abiotic stress management, and as such is useful for various stakeholders, including agricultural students, scientists, environmentalists, policymakers, and social scientists.

Crops experience an assortment of environmental stresses which include abiotic viz., drought, water logging, salinity, extremes of temperature, high variability in radiation, subtle but perceptible changes in atmospheric gases and biotic viz., insects, birds, other pests, weeds, pathogens (viruses and other microbes). The ability to tolerate or adapt and overwinter by effectively countering these stresses is a very multifaceted phenomenon. In addition, the inability to do so which renders the crops susceptible is again the result of various exogenous and endogenous interactions in the ecosystem. Both biotic and abiotic stresses occur at various stages of plant development and frequently more than one stress concurrently affects the crop. Stresses result in both universal and definite effects on plant growth and development. One of the imposing tasks for the crop researchers globally is to distinguish and to diminish effects of these stress factors on the performance of crop plants, especially with respect to yield and quality of harvested products. This is of special significance in view of the impending climate change, with complex consequences for economically profitable and ecologically and environmentally sound global agriculture. The challenge at the hands of the crop scientist in such a scenario is to promote a competitive and multifunctional agriculture, leading to the production of highly nourishing, healthy and secure food and animal feed as well as raw materials for a wide variety of industrial applications. In order to successfully meet this challenge researchers have to understand the various aspects of these stresses in view of the current development from molecules to ecosystems. The book will focus on broad research areas in relation to these stresses which are in the forefront in contemporary crop stress research.

Climate change is expected to have a drastic impact on agronomic conditions including temperature, precipitation, soil nutrients, and the incidence of disease pests, to name a few. To face this looming threat, significant progress in developing new breeding strategies has been made over the last few decades. The first volume of Genomics and Breeding for Climate-Resilient Crops presents the basic concepts and strategies for developing climate-resilient crop varieties. Topics covered include: conservation, evaluation and utilization of biodiversity; identification of traits, genes and crops of the future; genomic and molecular tools; genetic engineering; participatory and evolutionary breeding; bioinformatics tools to support breeding; funding and networking support; and intellectual property, regulatory issues, social and political dimensions. ​