Table Of ContentSustainable Agriculture Reviews 39
Eric Lichtfouse Editor
Sustainable
Agriculture
Reviews 39
Sustainable Agriculture Reviews
Volume 39
Series Editor
Eric Lichtfouse
Aix-Marseille University
CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Coll France, CEREGE
Aix-en-Provence, France
Other Publications by Dr. Eric Lichtfouse
Books
Scientific Writing for Impact Factor Journals
https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=42242
Environmental Chemistry
http://www.springer.com/978-3-540-22860-8
Sustainable Agriculture
Volume 1: http://www.springer.com/978-90-481-2665-1
Volume 2: http://www.springer.com/978-94-007-0393-3
Book series
Environmental Chemistry for a Sustainable World
http://www.springer.com/series/11480
Sustainable Agriculture Reviews
http://www.springer.com/series/8380
Journal
Environmental Chemistry Letters
http://www.springer.com/10311
Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a
sustainable way for humans and their children. Sustainable agriculture is a discipline that
addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, poor-nation
starvation, rich-nation obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control, and
biodiversity depletion.
Novel, environmentally-friendly solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge
from sciences as diverse as agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology,
ecology, economy, and social sciences. Indeed, sustainable agriculture decipher mechanisms
of processes that occur from the molecular level to the farming system to the global level at
time scales ranging from seconds to centuries. For that, scientists use the system approach
that involves studying components and interactions of a whole system to address scientific,
economic and social issues. In that respect, sustainable agriculture is not a classical, narrow
science. Instead of solving problems using the classical painkiller approach that treats only
negative impacts, sustainable agriculture treats problem sources.
Because most actual society issues are now intertwined, global, and fast-developing,
sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world. This book series gathers
review articles that analyze current agricultural issues and knowledge, then propose
alternative solutions. It will therefore help all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers
and politicians who wish to build a safe agriculture, energy and food system for future
generations.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8380
Eric Lichtfouse
Editor
Sustainable Agriculture
Reviews 39
Editor
Eric Lichtfouse
CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Coll France, CEREGE
Aix-Marseille University
Aix-en-Provence, France
ISSN 2210-4410 ISSN 2210-4429 (electronic)
Sustainable Agriculture Reviews
ISBN 978-3-030-38880-5 ISBN 978-3-030-38881-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38881-2
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
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Contents
1 Crop Protection for Agricultural Intensification
Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Alain Ratnadass
2 Coffee Diversity and Conservation in Ethiopia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Kifle Zerga and Birhanu Tsegaye
3 Phytochemistry, Toxicity and Pharmacology
of Pistacia lentiscus, Artemisia herba-alba
and Citrullus colocynthis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Mohamed Amine Gacem, Aminata Ould El Hadj-Khelil,
Badreddine Boudjemaa, and Hiba Gacem
4 Role of Osmolytes in the Mechanisms of Antioxidant
Defense of Plants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Shaghef Ejaz, Shah Fahad, Muhammad Akbar Anjum,
Aamir Nawaz, Safina Naz, Sajjad Hussain, and Shakeel Ahmad
5 Basmati Rice Production and Research in Pakistan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Muhammad Akhter and Zulqarnain Haider
6 Site-Specific Fertilizer Nitrogen Management in Cereals
in South Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Bijay-Singh, Varinderpal-Singh, and Ali M. Ali
7 Materials and Methods for Biodiesel Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Soham Chattopadhyay and Ramkrishna Sen
v
About the Editor
Dr. Eric Lichtfouse is geochemist and professor of
scientific writing at Aix-Marseille University, France,
and Visiting Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University,
China. He has discovered temporal pools of molecular
substances in soils, invented carbon-13 dating and
published the book Scientific Writing for Impact factor
Journals. He is Chief Editor, founder of the journal
Environmental Chemistry Letters, and the book series
Sustainable Agriculture Reviews and Environmental
Chemistry for a Sustainable World. He has awards in
analytical chemistry and scientific editing. He is World
XTerra Vice-Champion.
vii
Chapter 1
Crop Protection for Agricultural
Intensification Systems in Sub-Saharan
Africa
Alain Ratnadass
Abstract Pests, diseases and weeds are major constraints to cropping system
intensification in sub-Saharan Africa. Four major intensification systems to achieve
sustainable agriculture have been identified: conventional with high input, organic,
agroecological and eco-technical ‘sustainable intensive’. Those systems display
advanced crop protection. Here we review the performance of those systems in the
context of sub-Saharan Africa. The major points are: (1) Unlike economies of
Europe and North America following World War 2, and of Asia and Latin America
following the Green Revolution, sub-Saharan Africa rural economies were not
transformed by conventional intensification involving cultivation of cash crops for
export and over-reliance on pesticides. Genetically modified crops were used only
to a limited extent at the regional level. (2) Most staple food-based cropping systems
are de facto organic due to the unavailability of synthetic inputs. Organic systems
are thus developing for some export cash crop sectors, with synthetic pesticides
are being substituted by non-chemical pesticides. (3) Agroecological crop protec-
tion focuses on biological pest regulations such as the replacement of chemical
inputs, thus implying the re-design of cropping systems. (4) For crop protection, the
eco-technical pathway, which is based on principles of integrated pest management
and ecological intensification, is more flexible and pragmatic than the other sys-
tems. In this review we compare the different systems, notably their contribution to
six ecosystem services connected with crop protection issues: biomass production,
pest and disease regulation, maintenance of water quality, biodiversity conserva-
tion, pollination and climate change mitigation. We then identify research needs in
the context of food security, urbanization, trade globalization and climate change.
Keywords Agroecology · Biodiversity · Biological control · Climate change ·
Conservation agriculture · Conventional agriculture · Diseases · Ecosystem
A. Ratnadass (*)
CIRAD, UPR HortSys, Saint-Pierre, Réunion, France
HortSys, Univ Montpellier, CIRAD, Montpellier, France
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1
E. Lichtfouse (ed.), Sustainable Agriculture Reviews 39, Sustainable Agriculture
Reviews 39, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38881-2_1
2 A. Ratnadass
services · Environment · Farming systems · IPM · Organic agriculture · Pesticides ·
Pests · Sustainability · Weeds.
Abbreviations
4F food, feed, fiber and fuel
Bt Bacillus thuringiensis
CA Conservation agriculture
CARBAP African Research Centre on Banana and Plantain
CICES Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services
CIRAD Agricultural Research for Development
CSA Climate-smart agriculture
ES Ecosystem services
FFS Farmer field school
GM Genetically modified (crop/plant)
ICIPE International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology
IITA International Institute of Tropical Agriculture
IPM Integrated pest management
IRM Insecticide resistance management
NARS National agricultural research systems
UN United Nations
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
WAFFI West African Fruit Fly Initiative
WHO World Health Organization
1.1 Introduction
Throughout proto-history and history, African farmers like those of other conti-
nents, have been faced with crop damage and loss due to pests, diseases and weeds,
a situation which is particularly exacerbated under tropical climates. Since the end
of World War 2, world agriculture has been characterized by an intensification of
practices, in view of meeting significantly increased crop production needs. This
trend is particularly marked in Northern countries, but has also affected developing
countries in the Southern Hemisphere, as further promoted by the Green Revolution
concept, advocating massive use of mostly external non-renewable inputs (mineral
fertilizers, chemical pesticides, fossil fuels), along with improved crop cultivars and
irrigation (Pingali 2012). However, while Green Revolutions transformed rural
economies of many Asian and Latin American countries during the last four decades
of the twentieth century, the transfer of the same strategies to sub-Saharan Africa
(SSA) had limited success (Dawson et al. 2016).
1 Crop Protection for Agricultural Intensification Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa 3
The sustainable agriculture movement started about a decade later, mainly with
a view to counteracting pesticide misuse and abuse (mainly a crop protection issue).
Integrated pest management (IPM) was probably the first among the several con-
cepts that emerged during the second half of the last century as a pathway toward
sustainable agriculture, based on the perceived need to break away from the domi-
nant paradigm that gave rise to an intensive type of agriculture associated with arti-
ficial conditions, biodiversity reduction and reliance on non-renewable and toxic
inputs (Ratnadass and Barzman 2014). However, in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA),
where family farming is dominant, pesticides are seldom used on staple food crops
(but with the notable exception of cowpea and irrigated rice) but instead are reserved
for high value cash crops, particularly cotton (Deguine et al. 2008), cocoa (Ayenor
et al. 2004), and fruits and vegetables (Ahouangninou et al. 2011; de Bon et al. 2014).
Crop pests are still a major constraint to the intensification of agricultural crop-
ping systems, especially in tropical areas. In SSA, they notably restrict the adoption
of improved crop cultivars that are higher yielding but generally more susceptible to
biotic stresses than conventional varieties, unless pesticides are used. The recently
concluded PROIntensAfrica initiative (Sourisseau et al. 2016; Windmeijer et al.
2017) identified four major pathways toward sustainable agriculture for SSA,
including the high-input (or conventional) pathway, the organic pathway, the agro-
ecological pathway, and the eco-technical (or sustainable intensive agriculture)
pathway.
With reference to the recent review by Thérond et al. (2017), the high-input/
conventional and the organic pathways respectively correspond to chemical input-
based and biological input-based farming systems. On the other hand, both the agro-
ecological and eco-technical/sustainable agriculture pathways roughly correspond
to biodiversity-based farming systems, due to overlaps in terms of definitions, prin-
ciples and practices (Wezel et al. 2015). The major difference between the latter two
pathways is the mainstreaming of cultural and social perspectives in the agroeco-
logical concept. The eco-technical concept lacks these perspectives, while it shares
ecological intensification principles with the agroecological concept (but in a nar-
rower sense, i.e. closer to that expressed by Cassman (1999) or Tittonell and Giller
(2013), than by Doré et al. (2011) and Bonny (2011)), but combined with some
options of the high-input/conventional concept.
Based on the three category-based typology proposed by Dupré et al. (2017), the
“high-input/conventional” pathway clearly falls within the “synthetic inputs” cate-
gory, and the agroecological pathway within the “alternative on-farm inputs” cate-
gory. On the other hand, the organic pathway falls in-between the “alternative
off-farm inputs” and the “alternative on-farm inputs” categories, while the “eco-
technical/sustainable agriculture” pathway cuts across all three categories, being
more biased towards the “alternative on-farm inputs” category though.
More specifically, all four identified pathways have well-developed crop protec-
tion dimensions (Gurr et al. 2004; Zehnder et al. 2007; Deguine and Penvern 2014;
Ratnadass and Barzman 2014; Deguine et al. 2017). They share several manage-
ment options, including the use of chemical pesticides and genetically modified
plants (with the notable exceptions of the organic pathway for both options, and of
the agroecological and organic pathways for the latter). On the other hand, IPM
