Principles of Agronomy for Sustainable Agriculture

This updated second edition textbook explains the different technologies of agronomy to achieve a more sustainable agriculture, for undergraduate and graduate students of agronomy.

The first section gives an overview of the crop energy balance, which covers partitioning of net radiation, and their effect on the thermal environment of the canopy. Water balance, as one of the biggest concerns under a changing climate, will also be thoroughly discussed. For the second section, the authors prepare all relevant information on crop production in relation to crop phenology, radiation interception and resource availability. With that in mind, the different agricultural techniques are analyzed in the third section, with special emphasis on quantifying the inputs required for a given target yield under specific environmental conditions. For each technique, the chapters provide guidance on improving the ratio between productivity and resource use, while ensuring sustainability.

Francisco J. Villalobos is Professor of Agronomy at the University of Cordoba, Spain. He obtained his PhD at the University of Cordoba and then worked as a postdoc in the group of Joe T. Ritchie at Michigan State University. His teaching has been primarily on agronomy and on crop modelling. His research at the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (IAS-CSIC) has focused on crop simulation models (sunflower, olive) and agrometeorology (evapotranspiration, water balance). He has been the Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Agronomy for ten years.

Elías Fereres is Emeritus Professor of Agronomy at the University of Cordoba, Spain. He studied agronomy engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and got his PhD at the University of California, Davis, where he worked afterwards for six years. His teaching has been on agronomy, water relations and irrigation. His research at IAS-CSIC has covered various aspects of water-limited agriculture and irrigation management. He has been Chief Editor of the journal Irrigation Science, and President of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain.