Crop alternatives

Worthington, V. (1998). Effect of agricultural methods on nutirtional quality A comparison of organic with conventional crops , Alternative Therapies, 4(1), 58-69. 

In the Northeast alone, biomass accounts for over 1 billion in the economy and almost 100,000 jobs. Biomass production offers crop alternatives and the potential for increased income to farmers. Fields that are not used in winter can produce biomass, and varying crops in the same fields can help protect soil quality. 

Now that many induced volatile blends have been identified, artificial mixtures could be composed that are effective in attracting natural enemies and could be used in crops. Alternatively, crops could be sprayed with jasmonic acid to induce volatile production that should lead to the increased presence of natural enemies. Occasionally, an example exists in which this approach has been unsuccessful (29), and several authors have expressed the feeling that this approach should fail in the long term, as the presence of the volatile cue and a prey are uncoupled. 

On perennial crops alternate with unrelated fungicide... 

Another factor stipulating the recent (speculative) price development of castor compared to other oil crops (such as soy bean, rape seed or palm oil - prices not shown) is castor oil s consistently high concentration of C18 fatty acid. This makes replacement with other oil crops difficult for existing industries based on this chemistry as there are no realistic crop alternatives. 

An alternative procedure is to leave the syrupy residue in a vacuum desiccator over anhydrous calcium chloride and siUca gel, and to Alter ofl the successive Crops of crystals as they separate. These are washed with light petroleum, b.p. 40-60°, spread on a porous tile and recrystallised. 

The problems with jojoba as a commercial crop are the usual ones of domestication and cultivation. It is a slow-growing plant, available only in the wild and therefore has very wide genetic variabiUty. Efforts are underway to select the most promising variants and cultivate these as a crop in the southwestern United States deserts (7). A possible alternative for producing jojoba oil is to culture plant embryos in bioreactors (see Cell culture technology). 

A food processing establishment in a facility processes crops grown at the facility in a separate establishment. The facility could base the value of the products of each establishment on the total production value of each establishment. Alternatively, the facility could determine the value of the crops grown at the agricultural establishment. Then, to calculate the contribution of the food processing establishment, the facility would subtract the crop value from the total value of the product shipped from the processing establishment. 

This analysis has demonstrated that pesticide use in the world could be reduced by approximately 50% without any reduction in crop yields (in some cases increased yields) or the food supply. This effort would require applying pesticides only-when-necessary plus using various combinations of the nonchemical control alternatives currently available (34). Although food production costs might Increase slightly (0.5% to 1%), the added costs would be more than offset by the positive benefits to public health and the environment (15). 

From a technological view, measures to stabilize betalains during the production process need to be elaborated. Some approaches have been described in the earlier literature, mainly for red beets and only recently for alternative crops such as cactus... 

The processing trial should be conducted close to or in conjunction with one of the standard RAC trials. In this way, the residue data from the RAC trial will help confirm the validity of the data obtained in the processing trial. Alternatively, the processing trial could simply be considered as one of the RAC trials, and an additional, larger sample could be harvested for the processing portion of the study. The crop for a processing study should be grown exactly the same as for a normal field residue trial. 

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