2025 Mexico

Climate change and agricultural workers in the Michoacán avocado industry: Opportunities and trade-offs in coupling plant and human health for sustainability

Authors: Dhesi, SZ., Jolly, AR., Muñoz, R., Olson, V., Huxman, TE.

The rapidly expanding demand for avocado production places significant strain on agricultural communities and associated ecosystems. As temperature increases and water scarcity worsens, the avocado, a high-water demanding crop, faces declining yields and increased tree mortality. Deforestation, monoculture farming, and pesticide use further threaten interconnected landscapes, reducing biodiversity, degrading soil quality, and devaluing natural capital. Michoacán, Mexico, the largest producer of

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2025 Chile

Avocado drought stress alleviation through different soil amendments

Authors: Beyá-Marshall, Victor; Moraga, Felipe; Galaz, Bastián; Kremer, Cristián; Fichet, Thomas; Seguel, Oscar

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Under the uncertain scenario of water availability for irrigation, plants are often exposed to drought periods, which can negatively impact their vegetative growth and yield potential. To address this issue, various soil amendments including inorganic, organic, and biological treatments, have been investigated as solutions for mitigating water stress. However, comparative studies of different amendments are lacking. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of various soil amendments

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2025 Tanzania

Accessible drone image processing for sustainable resource management of 3D tree-like crops using unsupervised algorithms

Authors: Xia, Xizhi; Sachar, Jaydeep; Alibhai, Khail; Labelle, Jeannifer; Demin, Dmitry; Sulle, Emmanuel; Kim, Woo Soo

This study presents a novel AI-driven solution designed to enhance sustainable resource management and increase accessibility for farmers through visualized and digitalized tree information. The proposed methodology includes optimizing drone mapping for effective data coverage, capturing high-resolution imagery, and generating a 3D Point Cloud, with a particular emphasis on the integration of Weighted K-means, Density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN), and cluster separation

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2024 Spain

Water Relations and Physiological Response to Water Deficit of ‘Hass’ Avocado Grafted on Two Rootstocks Tolerant to R. necatrix

Authors: Moreno-Pérez, Ana ; Barceló, Araceli ; Pliego, Clara ; Martínez-Ferri, Elsa

Avocado (Persea americana Mill.) cultivation has spread to many countries from the tropics to the Mediterranean region, where avocado crops commonly face water shortages and diseases, such as white root rot (WRR) caused by Rosellinia necatrix. The use of drought- and WRR-tolerant rootstocks represents a potential solution to these constraints. In this research, water relations and the morpho-physiological response of avocado ‘Hass’ grafted on two selections of R. necatrix-tolerant rootstocks

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2024 Mexico

Functional leaf-trait variability and herbivory in oaks along a Mexican avocado agrosystem mosaic

Authors: Vaca-Sánchez, Marcela Sofía; Espírito-Santo, Mário M.; Maldonado-López, Yurixhi; Oyama, Ken; Pérez-Solache, Abel; Lopes de Faria, Maurício; Zazá Borges, Magno Augusto; Fernandes, G. Wilson; Cuevas-Reyes, Pablo

Land-use changes transforming forested landscapes to avocado orchards affect abiotic conditions and ecological processes. As a consequence, such changes can also affect leaf functional traits expression of co-occurring trees in orchards and related plant–insect interactions. Here, we evaluated changes in chemical soil properties and the effects of micro-climatic variables on leaf functional traits and herbivory in Quercus castanea and Q. obtusata in fragments occurring in a mosaic with avocado orchards.

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2018 California

Evaluation of leaf carbon isotopes and functional traits in avocado reveals water-use efficient cultivars

Authors: Acosta-Rangel, A.; Ávila-Lovera, E.; De Guzman, M.; Torres, L.; Haro, R.; Arpaia, M.L.; Focht, E.; Santiago, L.

Plant water-use efficiency (WUE) describes the ratio of carbon gain to water loss during photosynthesis. It has been shown that WUE varies among crop genotypes, and crops with high WUE can increase agricultural production in the face of finite water supply. We used measures of leaf carbon isotopic composition to compare WUE among 24 cultivars of Persea americana Mill (avocado) to determine genotypic variability in WUE, identify potentially efficient cultivars, and to better understand how breeding

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