This book highlights recent efforts to sustain agricultural productivity in Tunisia under a stressed environment and aridity conditions. This book's authors gathered a unique set of applications and approaches, including techniques applied to increase yield and preserve the environment, such as organic farming and using biochar amendment and its effects on soils' physicochemical properties. This book also presents water resources management and water management practices for sustainable soil production, diagnosis, and new farming technologies to enhance water-use efficiency. The book also addresses current livestock strategies intended to maintain production sustainability, increase fish productivity, and initiatives for sustainable tourism development. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable guide for policy planners, decision-makers, stakeholders, researchers, and graduate students in Tunisia and neighboring countries with similarly stressed environmental conditions.

This book highlights recent efforts to sustain agricultural productivity in Tunisia under a stressed environment and aridity conditions. This book's authors gathered a unique set of applications and approaches, including techniques applied to increase yield and preserve the environment, such as organic farming and using biochar amendment and its effects on soils' physicochemical properties. This book also presents water resources management and water management practices for sustainable soil production, diagnosis, and new farming technologies to enhance water-use efficiency. The book also addresses current livestock strategies intended to maintain production sustainability, increase fish productivity, and initiatives for sustainable tourism development. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable guide for policy planners, decision-makers, stakeholders, researchers, and graduate students in Tunisia and neighboring countries with similarly stressed environmental conditions.

This report contains a collection of papers from a workshopâ€"Strengthening Science-Based Decision-Making for Sustainable Management of Scarce Water Resources for Agricultural Production, held in Tunisia. Participants, including scientists, decision makers, representatives of non-profit organizations, and a farmer, came from the United States and several countries in North Africa and the Middle East. The papers examined constraints to agricultural production as it relates to water scarcity; focusing on 1) the state of the science regarding water management for agricultural purposes in the Middle East and North Africa 2) how science can be applied to better manage existing water supplies to optimize the domestic production of food and fiber. The cross-cutting themes of the workshop were the elements or principles of science-based decision making, the role of the scientific community in ensuring that science is an integral part of the decision making process, and ways to improve communications between scientists and decision makers.

This report presents a comprehensive land cover map of Tunisia, highlighting cultivated land, olive trees, dates and orchards while integrating information on land water management practices. [Author] A land cover map was derived using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and stratified with water management data from currently existing data. [Author] Statistics illustrating the area of each class regionally and nationally were produced to provide accurate information on land cover classes distribution. [Author] Land cover information is essential to understanding the diverse range of ecosystems and agricultural land in Tunisia, particularly when looking to address climactic and socioeconomic challenges in the country. [Author] An accurate representation of agricultural land use is imperative when developing strategies for natural resource management and sustainable agricultural practices. [Author] Land cover mapping within the SolaWISe initiative facilities access to essential information on soil, land water and crop management, thus informing decision-making processes for enhancing agricultural productivity and sustainability. [Author] This land cover map provides a robust foundation for developing insights into natural resource management and agricultural practices across Tunisia. [Author] It empowers stakeholders at national, regional and local levels to make informed decisions for sustainable crop production in the context of a changing climate. [Author] There is no information on water management practices in the south of Tunisia; producing these datasets would significantly improve our understanding of crop management systems and agricultural water productivity. [Author] In the future land cover maps can be expanded to include more intricate irrigation and crop type information, allowing stakeholders to develop a more intricate understanding of spatial variation in crop suitability and productivity. [Author]

Leguminous crops have been found to contribute almost 27% of the world’s primary crop production. However, due to environmental fluctuations, legumes are often exposed to different environmental stresses, leading to problems with growth and development, and ultimately, decreased yield. This timely review explains the transcriptomics, proteomics, genomics, metabolomics, transgenomics, functional genomics and phenomics of a wide range of different leguminous crops under biotic and abiotic stresses, and their genetic and molecular responses. Amongst others the text describes the effect of nutrient deficiency, pesticides, salt, and temperature stress on legumes. Importantly, the book explores the physiobiochemical, molecular and omic approaches that are used to overcome biotic and abiotic constraints in legumes. It looks at the exogenous application of phytoprotectants; the role of nutrients in the alleviation of abiotic stress; and the microbial strategy for the improvement of legume production under hostile environments. Key features: demonstrates how to mitigate the negative effect of stress on leguminous crops, and how to improve the yield under stress the most up-to-date research in the field written by an international team of active researchers and practitioners across academia, industry and non-profit organisations. This volume is a valuable and much-needed resource for scientists, professionals and researchers working in plant science, breeding, food security, crop improvement and agriculture worldwide. In universities it will educate postgraduate and graduate students in plant science and agriculture; it will also benefit those in scientific institutions and in biotech and agribusiness companies, who deal with agronomy and environment.

This book addresses the impact of important climatic changes on plant pests (including weeds, diseases and insect pests), and their interactions with crop plants. Anthropogenic activities have seriously impacted the global climate. As a result, carbon dioxide (CO2) and temperature levels of the earth are on a continuous rise. The global temperature is expected to increase by a 3°C or more by the end of this century. The CO2 concentration was below 300 parts per million (ppm) before the start of the industrial era; however, recently it has exceeded 400 ppm. This is highest ever in human history. Other than global warming and elevated CO2 concentrations, anthropogenic activities have also disturbed the global water cycle, ultimately, impacting the quantity and distribution of rainfall. This has resulted in drought conditions in many parts of the world. Global warming, elevated CO2 concentration and drought are considered the most important recent climatic changes that are impacting global ecosystems and human societies. Among other impacts, the effects of climatic changes on pests, pest-crop interactions and pest control are important with relevance to global food security, and hence require immediate attention by plant scientists. This book discusses innovative and the most effective pest control methods under an environment of changing climate and elaborates on the impact of drought on plant pests and their control.

Unless action is taken now to make agriculture more sustainable, productive and resilient, climate change impacts will seriously compromise food production in countries and regions that are already highly food-insecure. The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015, represents a new beginning in the global effort to stabilize the climate before it is too late. It recognizes the importance of food security in the international response to climate change, as reflected by many countries prominent focus on the agriculture sector in their planned contributions to adaptation and mitigation. To help put those plans into action, this report identifies strategies, financing opportunities, and data and information needs. It also describes transformative policies and institutions that can overcome barriers to implementation. The State of Food and Agriculture is produced annually. Each edition contains an overview of the current global agricultural situation, as well as more in-depth coverage of a topical theme."