Biology

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History Of Agriculture

There are unique opportunities that plant breeding and agriculture offer the historian of biology, and unique ways in which the historian of biology can inform the history of plant breeding and agriculture (Harwood, 2006. Phillips and Kingsland, 2015).

There are also of course questions and challenges that the study of agricultural sites share with the study of other biological sites, such as those in medicine (Wilmot 2007. Woods et al. 2018), the environment (Agar and Ward 2018), and non-agricultural industries (Bud 1993).

Indeed, in some instances the agricultural, medical, environmental, and biologically industrial will be one and the same. This is to say nothing of what agricultural sites share in common with histories of science beyond biology, but that is a broader discussion I can only mention in passing (Parolini 2015).

This chapter will first address what agriculture has in common with themes that cut across this handbook, before turning in Part 2 to issues, problems, and questions that stem from agriculture’s particular features, ending in Part 3 with paths for future work.

The chapter therefore treats the intersection of biology and agriculture as demanding its own integrated attention, the two parts making up a larger historiographical whole. There are a number of reasons to give agricultural sciences and technologies this kind of autonomy from the historiography of biology at large.
First, it reminds us to question the nature, direction, and extent of influence that biological science and agriculture have had on one another.

Second, it promotes a more symmetric understanding of the knowledges that have mattered for biological science and agriculture. This is particularly important because so much of the history of biological science in agriculture has been about establishing the authority of scientific expertise over agriculture, often in competition with other kinds of expertise distributed throughout farming.

If we did not approach agricultural contexts symmetrically we might end up recapitulating the very arguments we are meant to be analysing. Third, it establishes a healthier and more distant vantage point for the historian, keeping the existing historiography of biology at arms length, allowing us to better observe its deficiencies and assumptions.

Aside from giving autonomy to the agricultural in histories of biology, there is another broad historiographical point to make. Historians of biology and agriculture have to strike a balance between which historiographical lineage they dedicate their work to, or indeed, whether they see themselves contributing to both histories of biology and agriculture simultaneously.

In some respects this issue is itself unique to agriculture, for if we look at the other topics in this handbook only one or two other chapters are asked to compete with completely different sets of scholarly lineages in their telling, these including Tracy Teslo on Race and Ethnicity, Marsha Richmond on Women, and Ana Barahona on the transnational.

Yes, other kinds of historian and scholar may make important interventions on the history of eugenics, Darwinism, and biotechnology, but when it comes to these topics nobody is in a position to outbid the historian of biology.

Agriculture is different, both in content, thanks to the variety of experts that it enrols across a very wide range of potential specialist areas, and also in terms of the historiographical landscape in which it sits, because agriculture has indeed belonged to whole other kinds of historian, be they social historians, economic historians, or historians of agriculture and the environment.

Ultimately all my talk of ownership and bidding is petty, and of course even in those topics that seem primarily the concern of the historian of biology other historical traditions and branches of scholarship are constantly being drawn in.

What I mean to convey is that: historians of biology have been late to agriculture; their insights have not always been understood as relevant or complementary to the history of agriculture; historians of agriculture seem to be getting on all too well without the historian of biology; and that if the recent growth in interest amongst historians of science into the agricultural is to be maintained and consolidated then interdisciplinary awareness is essential.

Here historians of biology offer a suite of valuable opportunities for historians of agriculture, be it through all the techno-imagining that goes into broader agricultural debate, or the chance to rethink social and economic relations on the farm, the meanings embodied in agricultural spaces, organisms, and communal practices, or as Jonathan Harwood has so brilliantly shown, through the issue of global food security (Harwood 2012).

But agriculture also demands a sensitivity and humility from the historian of biology, to know when multiple epistemologies are in play, multiple historiographies, and therefore how to translate any new historical understanding into a form that matters for defined audiences. These audiences should include not only historians of science but also those working on and in agricultural industries.

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Origin Of Agriculture and Its Types

Archeological evidence for earliest record of agriculture is found in the fertile crescent region in and around Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, approximately about 12,000 years ago. The earlier Greek and Roman naturalists like Thophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny the elder and Galen laid down the scientifi foundation in understanding origin and domestication of cultivated plants.

Farming started in the predynastic period at the end of the Paleolithic, after 10,000 BC. Staple food crops were grains such as wheat and barley, alongside industrial crops such as flax and papyrus. In India, wheat, barley and jujube were domesticated by 9,000 BC, soon followed by sheep and goats.

Scientists believe that agriculture was established first in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East about ten or eleven thousand years B.C.E. The region was home to a variety of edible and easily cultivated crops: wheat and barley among the cereal crops, and lentils, peas, and chickpeas among the vegetables.

Humans invented agriculture between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago, during the Neolithic era, or the New Stone Age. There were eight Neolithic crops: emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, hulled barley, chickpeas, and flax. The Neolithic era ended with the development of metal tools.

Types of Agriculture

• Nomadic Herding.
• Shifting Cultivation.
• Intensive Subsistence Agriculture.
• Commercial Dairy Farming.
• Commercial Grain Cultivation.
• Livestock Ranching.
• Mediterranean Agriculture.
• Mixed Farming.

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Domestication Of Plants

Domestication is the process of bringing a plant species under the control of humans and gradually changing it through careful selection, genetic alteration and handling so that it is more useful to people. The domesticated species are renewable sources that have provided food and other benefis to human.

The possible changes in the plant species due to domestication are listed below;

• Adaptation to a greater diversity of environments and a wider geographical range.
• Simultaneous / uniform flwering and fruiting.
• Lack of shattering or scattering of seeds.
• Increased size of fruits and seeds.
• Change from a perennial to annual habit.
• Change in breeding system.
• Increased yield.
• Increased resistance for disease and pest.
• Developing seedless parthenocarpic fruit.
• Enhancing colour, appearance, palatability and nutritional composition.

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Relationship Between Human and Plants

From the very early times, human beings have co-existed with plants which played a vital role in their survival. Though a long process of trial and error, our ancestors have selected hundreds of wild plants from the various parts of the world for their specific use. The knowledge of the plants and its applications have led to the development of the humans and their civilization in many ways.

People depend on plants for food, clean air, water, fuel, clothing, and shelter. Nearly all food webs begin with plants, the primary producers. During photosynthesis, green plants use sunlight to change carbon dioxide from the air and water into simple sugars made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.

Plants such as trees, on the other hand, can take in this carbon dioxide, which is unusable for humans, and use it to produce their own energy. In a way, they are a cycle – plants help humans breathe by providing us with oxygen, and humans help plants “breathe” by providing them with carbon dioxide.

There are numerous examples of symbiosis in agriculture. Agriculture in a broad sense involves a symbiotic relationship between humans and plants or animals. Humans plant, fertilize, control weeds and pests, and protect crops. Humans also nurture, feed, and protect livestock.

Humans, of course, benefit greatly from their mutualisms with agricultural plants, through the provision of crops of food, fiber, and other products. Similarly, agricultural animals live in a symbiotic mutualism with humans. Even the keeping of animals as pets represents a type of mutualism.

An exploration of the relationship between plants and people from early agriculture to modern-day applications of biotechnology in crop production. Plants and People: Origin and Development of Human-Plant Science Relationships covers the development of agricultural sciences from Roman times through the development of agricultural experiment stations in the United States.

To the rise of agri-business. It underscores the symbiotic relationship and mutuality that define the intertwined histories of plants and people. It does not merely present the latest science but puts the sciences themselves in the context of history.

The book provides the science, chronology, and history that undergird the relationships between humans and plants. It discusses plant anatomy, physiology, and reproduction; evolution of plants and people; early uses of plants; the rise of agriculture in both Old and New Worlds; creation of land grant universities and agricultural experiment stations; the Green Revolution; plant biotechnology; and the future of plant sciences in feeding the growing human population.

The agricultural sciences were not a product of the nineteenth century but of the careful observation and advice of Roman writers who lived some 2000 years ago. This book reveals the malleability of the sciences, the people who practice them, and the plants that are the focus of scientific research.

The author is careful to distinguish between basic and applied science while recognizing that the agricultural sciences pursue both. He also challenges the traditional notion that basic research necessarily yields practical results. The book demonstrates how plants and the agricultural sciences have shaped the everyday world we inhabit.

Learninsta presents the core concepts of Biology with high-quality research papers and topical review articles.

Carbon Capture And Storage (CCS)

Carbon capture and storage is a technology of capturing carbondioxide and injects it deep into the underground rocks to a depth of 1 km or more and it is an approach to mitigate global warming by capturing CO₂ from large point sources such as industries and power plants and subsequently storing it instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

Various safe sites have been selected for permanent storage in various deep geological formations, liquid storage in the Ocean and solid storage by reduction of CO₂ with metal oxide to produce stable carbonates. It is also known as Geological sequestration which involves injecting CO₂ directly into the underground geological formations (such as declining oil fields, gas fields saline aquifers and unmineable coal have been suggested as storage sites).

Carbon Sequestration

Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing CO₂ which reduces the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere with a goal of reducing global climate change. Carbon sequestration occurs naturally by plants and in ocean. Terrestrial sequestration is typically accomplished through forest and soil conservation
practices that enhance the storage carbon.

As an example microalgae such as species of Chlorella, Scenedesmus, Chroococcus and Chlamydomonas are used globally for CO₂ sequestration. Trees like Eugenia caryophyllata, Tecoma stans, Cinnamomum verum have high capacity and noted to sequester carbon. Macroalgae and marine grasses and mangroves are also have ability to mitigate carbon-di-oxide.

Carbon Foot Print (CFP)

Every human activity leaves a mark just like our footprint. This Carbon foot print is the total amount of green house gases produced by human activities such as agriculture, industries, deforestation, waste disposal, buring fossil fuels directly or indirectly. It can be measured for an individual, family, organisation like industries, state level or national level. It is usually estimated and expressed in equivalent tons of CO₂ per year. The burning of fossil fuels releases CO₂ and other green house gases.

In turn these emissions trap solar energy and thus increase the global temperature resulting in ice melting, submerging of low lying areas and inbalance in nature like cyclones, tsunamis and extreme weather conditions. To reduce the carbon foot print we can follow some practices like

1. Eating indigenous fruits and products
2. Reducing use of electronic devices
3. Reduce travelling
4. Avoid buying fast and preserved, processed, packed foods.
5. Plant a garden
6. Reducing consumption of meat and sea food. Poultry requires little space, nutrients and less pollution compared cattle farming.
7. Reducing use of Laptops (when used for 8 hours, it releases nearly 2 kg. of CO₂ annually)
8. Line drying clothes. (Example: If you buy imported fruit like kiwi, indirectly it increases CFP. How? The fruit has travelled a long distance in shipping or airliner thus emitting tons of CO₂)
   

Biochar

Biochar is another long term method to store carbon. To increase plants ability to store more carbon, plants are partly burnt such as crop waste, waste woods to become carbon rich slow decomposing substances of material called Biochar.

It is a kind of charcoal used as a soil amendment. Biochar is a stable solid, rich in carbon and can endure in soil for thousands of years. Like most charcoal, biochar is made from biomass via pyrolysis.

(Heating biomas in low oxygen environment) which arrests wood from complete burning. Biochar thus has the potential to help mitigate climate change via carbon sequestration. Independently, biochar when added to soil can increase soil fertility of acidic soils, increase agricultural productivity, and provide protection against some foliar and soil borne diseases.

It is a good method of preventing waste woods and logs from getting decayed and instead we can convert them into biochar thus converting them to carbon storage material.