Post-harvest losses by rodents are estimated to be similar as for pre-harvest losses; somewhere from 0.25% to 25% or more, but generally considered to average around 5-10%, which is similar to the level of post-harvest losses caused by insects. There have been very few studies measuring post-harvest rodent damage and losses. The main pests are the widespread commensal rodent species. Rodents cause direct losses by consuming grain, but they also spoil grain (contamination with hair, urine and faeces), and expose grains to further mould or insect damage. There is a risk of transfer of diseases and zoonoses to humans and livestock. Rodents damage infrastructure such as the warehouses and stores themselves, but also cables and water pipes. There is little information about the ecology of the main rodent pest species in grain stores. Therefore, this remains an important research topic to improve management recommendations about the timing and location of control strategies.

Smallholder farmers constitute the bulk of staple grain producers in developing countries but there is inadequate support in the postharvest management (PHM) phase of the food supply chain. Several effective PHM technologies have been developed to tackle food grain losses. However, minimum impact has been realised mainly because the technologies have not been widely adopted for various reasons. This chapter analyses PHM practices, available technologies and delivery models, and examines factors causing non- or poor adoption of the technologies in developing countries. Missing parts of the PHM jigsaw puzzle are identified and possible practical solutions offered. The chapter proposes strategies to support smallholders in building sustainable and robust PHM interventions to enhance technology uptake for effective reduction of postharvest loss in quantity and quality. There is no “silver bullet” in addressing the diverse and complex grain postharvest challenges faced by smallholder farmers, and associated service-providers in developing countries.

Understanding the genetics underlying quantitative traits and identifying the causal genes and polymorphisms that are causal to these traits is hard at the best of times, but in the case of behaviour, the more modest heritabilities and repeatabilities involved make these tasks even more challenging. Understanding the genetics of behavioural traits can have large ramifications for not only welfare (to try and reduce maladaptive stress responses to the domestic environment) but also production (where certain behavioural traits are associated with either an increase or decrease in productivity). Traditionally, linkage and linkage disequilibrium based techniques have been used to identify the genetic architecture of behavioural traits in poultry. More recently, more advanced transcriptomic tools such as expression QTL mapping and even transgenic birds have increased both the potential for identifying causal genes and polymorphisms that underpin variation in these traits.

This chapter discusses the role of ecosystem services (ESS) in enhancing recreational and amenity services of tropical forests. It outlines the relationship between forests, recreation and tourism, including the concepts and issues involved in policy making. This chapter discusses the challenges involved and examples of failures in managing ESS sustainably in relation to recreation to show how they might be better managed in the future.

This chapter discusses definitions of SFM to promote clarity about the avoidable and unavoidable tradeoffs associated with SFM. The chapter reviews about spatial scales for SFM and for the expansion of the scale at which sustainability is considered from stands up to forested landscapes. We review expanding the scope of SFM from individual stands, to which many definitions of SFM pertain, to the scale of forested landscapes, in keeping with other efforts towards comprehensiveness of land use planning.

This chapter reviews the status and trends of tropical forest governance, how it is manifested in sustainable forest management (SFM), and what can improve it. The chapter starts by drawing attention to the development ambitions which provide a context for efforts to preserve or sustainably manage tropical forests. It then reviews a range of research on the state of governance in tropical forests, initiatives to strengthen governance, and evidence of progress or otherwise. It discusses drivers behind favoured approaches to governance, as well as limitations to fulfilment of governance ambitions, including capacity constraints and lack of integration into the fabric of tropical societies. It ends with key messages on possible ways forward.

This chapter reviews recent developments in assessing and mapping tropical forests. It discusses the planning of inventories, assessment procedures and statistical evaluation. It discusses the use of remote sensing techniques to identify changes in land use such logging and deforestation. It also looks at the role of in-situ assessment and how this data can be integrated with remote sensing data. Particular attention is paid to cost efficiency and quantification of uncertainty in inventories.

This chapter reviews some of the main pressures on tropical forests, starting with an overview of recent rates of deforestation. The drivers of this loss of tropical forests are summarised, and the main ones – clearance of forests for agriculture, often linked to global trade flows, and, to a lesser extent, logging for timber – are analysed in more detail. The key underlying problems of weaknesses in forest governance and law enforcement are discussed, and the chapter concludes with a summary of international efforts to tackle these and to eliminate deforestation from global supply chains.

Secure tenure rights are fundamental to the sustainable management of the world’s tropical forests. By determining the depth of rights and consequent decisions actors can make, tenure regimes allow present-day considerations of future values, thus incentivising investments in the sustainable use and management of forests, including their conservation and restoration. While legally recognized community forests tend to have lower rates of deforestation, store more carbon and benefit more people than forests managed by either public or private entities, over two-thirds of forestlands remain locked in the hands of governments—a significant portion of which is contested by the communities that traditionally use, govern and protect these ecosystems. Using longitudinal tenure data and analysis of global trends in forest ownership developed by the Rights and Resources Initiative, this chapter details the distribution of statutory forest rights across the world’s most forested low- and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Bananas were among the first crops cultivated by man and continue to be important for the livelihoods of millions of people throughout the tropics and subtropics. Yet many cultivars and landraces are susceptible to biotic and abiotic stresses. Genetic resistance to diseases and pests is the best form of crop protection and it is imperative to develop new cultivars that perform well across a variety of changing environments. Currently, the production of improved cultivars with relevant gains in resistance to diseases and pests and other preferred agronomic traits has been accomplished through both conventional and non-conventional breeding. This chapter reviews the various genetic improvement strategies used to develop new banana cultivars and discusses the strategies that have been employed over the last one hundred years. They include hybridization approaches, mutation breeding, genetic transformation and marker assisted selection. The role of genomics and more recent molecular breeding approaches are also discussed.

The value of Crop Wild Relatives as sources of new genes that can help secure crop production is increasingly recognized. In banana (Musa spp.), past collecting and conservation efforts focused mainly on the two direct ancestors of cultivated bananas, M. acuminata Colla and M. balbisiana Colla. However, more than 70 taxa of wild Musa species exist in the wild and hold through their diversity and the different habitats they occupy high capacity for adaptation. This chapter presents how much wild banana diversity has been underexplored in the past and how the clonal propagation of the banana crop has prevented the efficient collecting and conservation of wild Musa species. The change in focus from the collection of single clonal individuals to seed populations are presented and practical issues linked to collecting populations are discussed within the scope of wild Musa species reproductive biology.

Sustainable agriculture is possible when smallholder farmers overcome economic barriers to establish profitable farm businesses. This chapter outlines key economic factors of land, labour, capital and inputs which impact the production costs. Access to markets influences the farmer’s ability to effectively sell their products and affects both the distribution costs and the revenue. These economic factors are combined as inter-related constraints in the farmers mind as decisions about what crops to produce, how to optimize production and where to sell it. Solutions to these barriers that smallholder farmers face within these economic factors are context dependent and may include policy changes, adoption of new technologies, temporary incentives to stimulate market growth and building capacity of actors that results in structural changes. A case study is presented based on the authors’ work with smallholder farmers building a cassava seed system in Tanzania.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to experience food insecurity underpinned by low crop productivity. Yields for cereal crops in smallholder farming systems are typically less than 30% of attainable yields and low use of fertilizer and other nutrient resources are recognized as the one of the major limiting factors. Improved crop nutrition depends fundamentally on optimizing soil health. This chapter review the principles and use of integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) as a path towards sustainable intensification. It addresses the challenges of improving uptake and accounting for the huge variability in smallholder systems.

This chapter discusses the role of seed systems particularly as a channel to supply smallholder farmers with new traits and combinations of traits through improved hybrids or varieties. This chapter looks at issues surrounding the development of more economically-sustainable and predominantly “formal” seed systems.

This chapter discusses key issues and challenges in public extension services for smallholders and how challenges have been addressed. The discussion is made with particular reference to experiences in disseminating Conservation Agriculture-based technologies and practices generated from the Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume cropping Systems in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA) Project between 2010 and 2018. This is followed by a case study on extension support for Kenyan smallholders growing tea.

This chapter aims to show how small-scale farmers can use water more efficiently, productively and sustainably in rainfed production. We will first discuss general aspects of how water use in crop and livestock production may be improved – measures that are important and useful in both rainfed as well as in irrigated agricultural production. Then we will focus specifically on rainfed agriculture and describe numerous practical options to help smallholder farmers use precipitation water more efficiently and productively. We will discuss ways of upgrading rainfed agricultural production and important broader issues regarding water and agriculture that have to be considered to assure that we will have enough water to feed the world in future.

In this chapter root anatomical traits and trait states, and nutrient acquisition mechanisms, along with the environmental issues affecting nutrient acquisition are summarized. Then, the whole range of adaptations of root anatomical traits, and its impact on nutrient acquisition are discussed. Combinations of anatomical traits lead to suggestions of root ideotypes potentially capable of supporting agricultural productivity under different edaphic constraints. Spatiotemporal aerenchyma formation in the various root types of maize under nitrate, phosphate or sulfate deprivation is discussed in a case study.

At a global scale, phosphorus (P) deficiency comprises a large area of cropland, while P has also been used in excess of crop requirements in many other regions. Improved crop P-acquisition efficiency would allow lower target critical soil P values and provide savings in P-fertiliser use. At the same time, it would reduce P lost through erosion, leaching and/or soil sorption. This chapter summarises the progress in research on root traits associated with P acquisition, including root morphology, architecture, biochemistry, colonisation by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and fine root endophytes, and the trade-offs among all these traits. Farming-management practices to improve P acquisition under current intensive agricultural systems are also discussed. The chapter summarises breeding progress in improving P-acquisition efficiency. In the face of soil P deficiency or legacy P globally, the chapter suggests future directions to improve P acquisition in five key areas.

Plant roots have evolved with the presence of rhizobacteria that can colonise the surface or interior of the plant. Some of these rhizobacteria are actively recruited by the plant and carry out particular functions, in particular in nutrient acquisition. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria form associations with many plant species, either as external associations or as symbiotic endophytes. The symbiosis between legumes and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia has been studied in most detail and is the most important contributor to nitrogen fixation in agriculture. This chapter highlights our current understanding of the molecular determinants of legume nodulation as well as challenges for improvements of biological nitrogen fixation in legumes and non-legumes. There is a need for connecting out knowledge of the molecular regulation of nodulation with field-based studies that take into account the interaction of nodulation with biotic and abiotic constraints. In addition, current approaches for engineering new symbioses are discussed.

This chapter reviews assessing emotions in pigs, specifically focusing on the ways of determining negative and positive mental states. It begins by examining behavioural indicators of emotion such as behavioural tests, qualitative behaviour assessment, vocalisations, play behaviour, defence cascade responses and facial expression and body posture. The chapter also assesses cognitive indicators of emotion in pigs and judgement bias. This is followed by a discussion of neurophysiological indicators of emotion in pigs, focusing specifically on the physiology of negative and positive emotions.

Optimising welfare in the farrowing and lactation environment involves resolving the concerns regarding continued use of close confinement systems, such as the farrowing crate for the sows and the lack of provision of environmental enrichment to provide for behavioural needs. For piglets the main welfare and health issues surround high levels of piglet mortality and the pre-disposing risk factors associated with them. Some of these risk factors, such as low birth weight, have been exacerbated by narrow breeding goals focussed on production traits such as increasing litter size. This chapter concentrates on managerial and environmental interventions that attempt to reconcile the behavioural and physiological needs of both the sow and piglets to optimise their welfare whilst appreciating stockperson concerns with how best to implement them.

The objective of this chapter is to describe the most common soilless culture system (SCS) irrigation and fertigation methods. The chapter summarizes common types of irrigation/fertigation system and types of management system. It then discusses the shift to real-time plant-based sensing and monitoring systems together with models to analyze this data and translate it into irrigation management decisions. A case study is included to illustrate these systems in practice. The chapter concludes by identifying new directions in the application of internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence and phyto-sensing technologies to optimize input use.

There are two types of soilless cultivation. Liquid systems are the growing of plants in the nutrient solution or under the mist of nutrient solution without a solid substrate. Solid-medium systems use inorganic, or organic materials for the plant roots. The chapter reviews a number of liquid systems: deep water culture (DWC), nutrient film technique (NFT), floating system, deep flow technique (DFT), aeroponics and dry hydroponics. Solid systems described include: gravel culture, sand culture, bag culture, container culture and trough culture. The chapter also assesses aquaponics, bioponics and vertical farming systems. The chapter discusses open and closed nutrition systems before looking at ways of optimising water and nutrient supply: growing medium and solution volume per plant, root zone temperature, oxygen enrichment and plant density. The chapter concludes with a case study on rocket production in liquid and solid medium systems.

In closed-loop soilless culture systems (SCS), ion concentration and ionic balance are important factors to be considered for stable management of nutrient solutions. For maintaining appropriate ion concentration and ion balance, various techniques of nutrient analysis and prediction are required. Through nutrient management modelling, nutrient variations in the closed-loop soilless culture systems using nutrient replenishment methods can be better understood and predicted. Deep learning algorithms could be a methodology to predict ion concentrations using environments and growth data. A trained deep learning model has been found to accurately estimate ion concentration and balance in closed-loop SCS. Applications of theoretical modelling and artificial intelligence can thus be useful for the nutrient management of closed-loop SCS in greenhouses and vertical farms.

Chemical properties exert a considerable influence on the behavior of growing media, particularly in regulating the composition of the nutrient solution. This effect depends on the nature of components: mineral growing media are chemically inert and weakly affect the nutrient solution only in the first days of cultivation. Organic growing media constantly release and immobilize elements, playing a key role in controlling plant availability of nutrient and toxic ions. The most important chemical characteristics of growing media are cation exchange capacity (CEC), salinity, and acidity. These can be changed using amendments. The chapter examines these chemical properties of growing media and growing media components, describes how they can influence soilless cultivation and analyzes latest trends in their management. Finally, a case study on the modification of pH, salinity and nutrient content during storage of two growing media is reported.