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Abstract The importance of physicals properties of soil has an appreciable influence on their functions, water quality, climate control, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity, among others. These provide more ecosystem functions than just the nutritional contribution to agricultural production. Currently, the soil is under management pressure to the food production energy and raw material, which has led to its physical deterioration and degradation. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of bulk density and soil aggregate size silvopastoral systems (from tropical dry forest pastures) on the growth of guinea grass (Megathyrsus maximus) cv. Mombasa. To this end, two separate experiments were carried out under greenhouse conditions, by establishing increasing values of each variable through exerting mechanical forces (bulk density: 0.93-1.80 Mg m-3) and sieved (average size of aggregates: 0.125-7.15 mm) and then grass seeds were sown and allowed to grow for 30 days. Two functional models are found which relate the biomass of grass roots with the value of bulk density and with the average size of soil aggregates. It is concluded that for both variables, quadratic regression models are detected, namely, of optimal point; being these optimal values for the apparent density of 1.0 Mg m-3 and of aggregate size of 1.5-2.0 mm. These parameters could be used as physical indicators in the diagnosis of soil health in the Rio Sinú Valley region.

Abstract Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a major staple crop across Africa, Asia, and South America, where it supports the livelihoods of millions of people. However, the availability of improved planting material is constrained due to low seed propagation rates, compelling farmers to rely on local cultivars that often exhibit low yield potential and high susceptibility to diseases. Developing reliable seed multiplication techniques is therefore essential to increase the availability of improved varieties and boost cassava production. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Multiple Shoot Removal Technique (MSRT) for the multiplication of improved cassava varieties in Tanzania. Six varieties were assessed using a completely randomized design. Growth parameters, including shoot formation, root induction, acclimatization, and field establishment, were recorded and analyzed using R statistical software. MSRT significantly increased the cassava multiplication ratio by up to five-fold compared to conventional methods. The TARRICASS4 variety showed a substantially higher multiplication rate (1:80) than the other varieties. Plantlet production efficiency was positively influenced by the shoot number and regeneration rate following ratooning, root number, and length during induction, and the survival rate of shootlets across the multiplication stages. These findings support the use of MSRT as a viable approach to enhance the availability of high-quality cassava planting materials and improve cassava production. Further research is recommended to optimize the application of plant growth regulators for improving shoot regeneration and ratoon growth performance.

ABSTRACT To improve fruit quality, application of plant growth regulators as gibberellic acid (GA3) has emerged as a significant cultivation and management method. In the study, different concentrations of GA3 solutions (25, 50, 75, and 100 mg L-1) were sprayed on Sichuan-pepper (Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim.; Rutaceae) ‘Dahongpao’ trees at fruit setting and enlargement stages. Spraying 75 mg L-1 GA3 was most effective at both stages: vertical diameter, transverse diameter, hundred-grain weight, and number of oil sacs on the peel increased by 12%, 5%, 12%, and 42%, respectively, at fruit setting stage; and the aforementioned indexes increased by 14%, 11%, 12%, and 35%, respectively at fruit enlargement stage. Spraying 100 mg L-1 GA3 at fruit setting stage, the content of total volatile oil, pungent compounds, non-volatile ether extracts, and total flavonoids significantly increased by 28%, 6%, 10%, and 3%, respectively; spraying 75 mg L-1 GA3 at fruit enlargement stage, the indexes increased by 33%, 27%, 13%, and 11%, respectively. The comprehensive evaluation results based on Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) indicated that GA3 treatment in a concentration of 75 mg L-1 could improve the quality of ‘Dahongpao’ fruits, thereby providing novel insights for the cultivation and management of such plant. Although spraying GA3 may change fruit quality of Z. bungeanum, influencing mechanism of GA3 treatments on the external and internal quality of Z. bungeanum fruits remains unclear.

The agri-food system is facing a range of social-ecological threats, many of which are caused and amplified by industrial agriculture. In response, numerous sustainable agriculture narratives have emerged, proposing solutions to the challenges facing the agri-food system. One such narrative that has recently risen to prominence is regenerative agriculture. However, the drivers for the rapid emergence of regenerative agriculture are not well understood. Furthermore, its transformative potential for supporting a more sustainable agri-food system is underexplored. Through a genealogical analysis of four prominent sustainable agriculture narratives; organic agriculture, conservation agriculture, sustainable intensification, and agroecology; we consider how regenerative agriculture’s growing momentum can be contextualised within existing narratives and explore the implications this might have for its transformative potential. This analysis reveals that the genealogies of these sustainable agriculture narratives have led to a number of contestations and complementarities which have coalesced to drive the emergence of regenerative agriculture. We also find that, in contrast to agroecology, regenerative agriculture shares with other Global North narratives a limited scope for offering transformative pathways for agricultural production. This is largely due to their inadequate consideration of power and equity issues in the agri-food system. We argue that regenerative agriculture therefore risks inhibiting deeper agri-food system transformations that address both social and ecological challenges and is not the unifying sustainable agriculture narrative it claims to be. Nonetheless, regenerative agriculture could contribute towards a broader plurality of sustainable agriculture narratives that collectively might enable a transformation to a more sustainable, diverse, and just agri-food system.

Intelligent robots for fruit harvesting have been actively developed over the past decades to bridge the increasing gap between feeding a rapidly growing population and limited labour resources. Despite significant advancements in this field, widespread use of harvesting robots in orchards is yet to be seen. To identify the challenges and formulate future research and development directions, this work reviews the state-of-the-art of intelligent fruit harvesting robots by comparing their system architectures, visual perception approaches, fruit detachment methods and system performances. The potential reasons behind the inadequate performance of existing harvesting robots are analysed and a novel map of challenges and potential research directions is created, considering both environmental factors and user requirements.

Background Oil palm,  Elaeis guineensis , is by far the most important global oil crop, supplying about 40% of all traded vegetable oil. Palm oils are key dietary components consumed daily by over three billion people, mostly in Asia, and also have a wide range of important non-food uses including in cleansing and sanitizing products. Main body Oil palm is a perennial crop with a > 25-year life cycle and an exceptionally low land footprint compared to annual oilseed crops. Oil palm crops globally produce an annual 81 million tonnes (Mt) of oil from about 19 million hectares (Mha). In contrast, the second and third largest vegetable oil crops, soybean and rapeseed, yield a combined 84 Mt oil but occupy over 163 Mha of increasingly scarce arable land. The oil palm crop system faces many challenges in the 2020s. These include increasing incidence of new and existing pests/diseases and a general lack of climatic resilience, especially relating to elevated temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall patterns, plus downstream issues relating to supply chains and consumer sentiment. This review surveys the oil palm sector in the 2020s and beyond, its major challenges and options for future progress. Conclusions Oil palm crop production faces many future challenges, including emerging threats from climate change and pests and diseases. The inevitability of climate change requires more effective international collaboration for its reduction. New breeding and management approaches are providing the promise of improvements, such as much higher yielding varieties, improved oil profiles, enhanced disease resistance, and greater climatic resilience.

Despite the benefits of sustainable innovations in the agricultural sector being widely recognized, their adoption rate remains below the level designated by the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. To understand the reasons behind this phenomenon, the current systematic literature review (SLR) provides a comprehensive overview of factors affecting farmers’ innovation adoption behavior in developed countries. A total of 44 studies, published since 2010, were identified, analyzed, and summarized. The analysis revealed that specific innovation characteristics foster the innovation adoption process, together with individual psychological and socio-demographic features. It emerged that the path to adopting sustainable innovations can be driven by environmental values; for example, when comparing organic and conventional farming, organic farmers have a stronger environmental view and are more likely to take less into account economic gains. On the contrary, complexity of innovation, a high degree of innovation aversion, and a low perceived control over innovation are among the core barriers to the innovation adoption. Findings provide important insights on potential research avenues that could further depict farmers’ adoption dynamics of sustainable innovations.

Agriculture is both the site of development of important new technologies and a key area of application of technologies developed elsewhere. It is little wonder, then, that many thinkers believe that progress in the science and engineering of robotics may soon change the face of farming. This paper surveys the prospects for agricultural robotics, discusses its likely impacts, and examines the ethical and policy questions it may raise. Along with the environmental and economic impacts of robots, political, social, cultural, and security implications of the introduction of robots that have received little attention in the larger literature on agricultural robotics are considered. Key policy choices necessary to meet the ethical challenges likely to arise as agricultural robots start to become used more widely, and to maximise the social, environmental, and economic benefits of robotics in agriculture, are highlighted.

The demand for intelligent agriculture is increasing due to the continuous impact of world food and environmental crises. Focusing on fruit detection, with the rapid development of object detection technology, it is now possible to achieve high efficiency and high accuracy in fruit detection systems. However, detecting fruit with high precision in unstructured orchard environments remains particularly challenging. Such environments, which are composed of varying illumination conditions and degrees of occlusion, can be mitigated by certain strategies. To our knowledge, this is the first time that optimization strategies used in fruit detection have been reviewed. This review aims to explore methods for improving fruit detection in complex environments. First, we describe the common types of complex backgrounds found in outdoor orchard environments. Subsequently, we divide the improvement measures into two categories: optimization before and after image sampling. Next, we compare the test results obtained before and after the application of these improved methods. Finally, we describe the future development trends of fruit detection optimization technology in complex backgrounds. We hope that this review will inspire researchers to design their optimization strategies and help explore lower-cost and more robust fruit detection systems.

Regenerative agriculture refers to a suite of principles, practices, or outcomes which seek to improve soil health, biodiversity, climate, ecosystem function, and socioeconomic outcomes. However, recent reviews highlight wide heterogeneity in how it is defined. This impedes our ability to understand what regenerative agriculture is and has left the movement open to strategic repurposing by diverse stakeholders. Furthermore, the conceptual franchising of the regenerative agriculture debate by Western culture has omitted discussions surrounding social justice, relational values, and the contribution of Indigenous and local knowledge that does not align with Western-centric producer-consumer frameworks. This is a continuation of injustice by creating barriers to representation and participation, and its confrontation will ultimately be necessary for regenerative agriculture to achieve its transformative potential. This article demonstrates that the farming techniques associated with the regenerative agriculture movement today have been practiced for centuries, and in some cases millennia, by Indigenous and local communities around the world. We propose that current Western academic attempts to define regenerative agriculture have resulted in long lists of practices, principles, and outcomes which fall short of describing the whole, because they lack the relational values component that is so integral to these Indigenous and local knowledge systems. We take an urgently needed, Indigenous-informed approach to defining regenerative agriculture, which confronts current epistemic injustice and prioritizes sociocultural and relational values. Finally, we propose an anti-colonial definition that draws on diverse knowledge systems including Indigenous ecophilosophies and published scientific analyses.