AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE Edited by Godwin Aflakpui Contents Preface IX Section 1 Crop Improvement 1 Chapter 1 Impact of Epistasis in Inheritance of Quantitative Traits in Crops 3 Bnejdi Fethi and El Gazzeh Mohamed Chapter 2 Genetic Diversity Analysis of Heliconia psittacorum Cultivars and Interspecific Hybrids Using Nuclear and Chloroplast DNA Regions 11 Walma Nogueira Ramos Guimarães, Gabriela de Morais Guerra Ferraz, Luiza Suely Semen Martins, Luciane Vilela Resende, Helio Almeida Burity and Vivian Loges Section 2 Crop Production 23 Chapter 3 Concepts in Crop Rotations 25 H. Arnold Bruns Chapter 4 Texture, Color and Frequential Proxy-Detection Image Processing for Crop Characterization in a Context of Precision Agriculture 49 Cointault Frédéric, Journaux Ludovic, Rabatel Gilles, Germain Christian, Ooms David, Destain Marie-France, Gorretta Nathalie, Grenier Gilbert, Lavialle Olivier and Marin Ambroise Section 3 Crop Response to Water and Nutrients 71 Chapter 5 Spatial Patterns of Water and Nitrogen Response Within Corn Production Fields 73 Jerry L. Hatfield Chapter 6 Long-Term Mineral Fertilization and Soil Fertility 97 Margarita Nankova Chapter 7 Effect of Mixed Amino Acids on Crop Growth 119 Xing-Quan Liu and Kyu-Seung Lee Section 4 Crop Response to Temperature 159 Chapter 8 Plant Temperature for Sterile Alteration of Rice 161 Chuan-Gen Lű Section 5 Crop Protection 183 Chapter 9 Infrared Spectroscopy Applied to Identification and Detection of Microorganisms and Their Metabolites on Cereals (Corn, Wheat, and Barley) 185 Cécile Levasseur-Garcia Chapter 10 Insect Pests of Green Gram Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek and Their Management 197 R. Swaminathan, Kan Singh and V. Nepalia Section 6 Agriculture and Human Health 223 Chapter 11 The Agricultural Landscape for Recreation 225 Erik Skärbäck, John Wadbro, Jonas Björk, Kim de Jong, Maria Albin, Jonas Ardö and Patrik Grahn Section 7 Animal Nutrition 243 Chapter 12 Performance and Heat Index of West African Dwarf (WAD) Rams Fed with Adansonia digitata Bark (Baobab) as Supplement 245 Idayat Odunola Agboola Preface The whole world needs agriculture because agriculture does not only feed the entire human race but also produces fibre for clothing, feed for livestock and bio-energy. In the developing world agriculture contributes significantly to the gross domestic product, leads the way in reducing poverty and accounts for the lion’s share of employment opportunities especially for women. Agriculture also has one of the highest potentials for reducing carbon emissions and helping vulnerable people adapt to climate change. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Bank have indicated that: 100% of the global population depends on agriculture for nutrition 40% of the global population relies on agriculture for employment 70% of worldwide withdrawal of water is for the purposes of agriculture 30% proportion of greenhouse gas emissions is related to agriculture 70% increment in food production is needed to feed a global population of 9 billion by 2050. These figures by the FAO and the World Bank indicate that without agriculture, the world economy would not be what it has been and what it is today. For agriculture to continuously contribute to food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunities by driving the rural and national economic development with well targeted investments, it is imperative that the research and development agenda which is based on the science behind agriculture must be pursued vigorously. It is in this context that this book, Agricultural Science has been written with multiple authors compiling some important state-of-the art contributions on the subject in recent years. The contributions of chapters in the book are divided into seven sections: Crop Improvement, Crop Production, Crop Response to Water and Nutrients, Crop Response to Temperature, Crop Protection, Agriculture and Human Health, and Animal Nutrition. The sections vary in the number of chapters which was largely due to the number of authors who contributed chapters to publish the book. The chapters in each section and in the book in general vary in scope and the way they attempt to manipulate resources and variables to improve on productivity and also to link agricultural landscape to recreation and therefore human health, albeit remotely. I acknowledge the authors for willingly contributing their chapters without which we could not have published this book. I am equally grateful to Ms Jana Sertic, the Publishing Process Manager for the able assistance she provided and to the Information Technology Department for providing the requisite framework that greatly enhanced the work of putting together the chapters in the book. The Technical Editors deserve commendation for preparing the online publication and print versions of the book. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to the Scientific Board of the INTECH OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHER for the trust reposed in me to edit this book. I am most grateful to be of service to the scientific community. Dr. Godwin Aflakpui Rector, Wa Polytechnic, Wa, Upper West Region, Ghana, West Africa