Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Keywords
Abiotic stress
·
Consumer trends
·
Deficit irrigation
·
Direct seeding
·
Drip irrigation
·
Drought
·
Genetics
·
Grafting
·
Irrigation management
·
QTL
·
Salinity
·
Trades
·
Traits
·
Transplanting
·
Water conservation
·
WUE
Introduction
The next 50 years represent huge challenges for worldwide horticulture. This is due
to a fast increase in population rates, rising bio-fuel demands and shrinking land
and water resources. Current trends show an increase of 70 million people per year,
and by 2050 the global population will rise to 9.5 billion, a 36 % increase (Silva and
Ryder
2011
). The productivity of major cereals is stagnating in certain regions of
the world (Ray et al.
2012
) while 868 million people are suffering from undernour-
ishment and 2 billion are affected by micronutrient deficiencies (Anon
2012d
). With
strong urban and industrial land demands, there are limited possibilities to increase
the use of fertile areas under crop production. Thus, farmers will have to adopt
precise, resource-efficient and environment-friendly production technologies. To
extend new production areas into marginal soils and marginal waters, varieties tol-
erant to region-specific abiotic and biotic stresses will have to be developed.
World vegetable production recorded 1.04 billion tons in 2010, a 33 % rise since
2000 (Fig.
3.1
). About 75 % of the total global vegetable production is taking place
in Asia, while China, India and USA are consuming 60 % of world vegetable pro-
duction (Anon
2012f
). Hundreds of diverse vegetable crops provide an efficient and
economically viable means to deliver crucial, human-health related phytochemi-
cals, minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, essential amino acids, fatty acids and car-
bohydrates (Galili et al.
2002
) in which other foods are deficient. In spite of the
increase in per capita availability of vegetables in the last decade, still 80 % of the
low-medium income families consume less than the minimum recommended levels
(Hall et al.
2009
). Therefore, the future economic growth and increased health
awareness are likely to cause an upsurge in global demand for vegetables (Silva
and Ryder
2011
).
&HUHDOV
9HJHWDEOHV
Fig. 3.1
World vegetable and cereal production (—) and area cultivated (…) 1970-2010
(Anon
2010
)
