Sustainable Summer Fodder: Production, Challenges, and Prospects

Increasing human population pressure, especially in developing countries, indicates a massive increase in the consumption of livestock products. Fodder crops are the primary and cheapest source of feed for livestock, but feed shortages or poor-quality fodder are particular constraints to the world's livestock sector. These shortages affect milk production, adult and calf health, calving rates, and livestock numbers. Summer crops including cereal, legume, grass, and tree fodder, provide an economical source of nutrients suitable for animal health as well as improve their breeding efficiency.

Sustainable Summer Fodder: Production, Challenges, and Prospects presents the unique opportunities and difficulties of supportable cultivation and growth of summer fodder crops and the various methods for enabling crop preservation. It details conventional modern approaches to sustainable production and advanced molecular approaches to develop high-yielding fodder crops.

FEATURES

• Contains information on cultivation, growth, productivity, and protection from pests and diseases of various summer fodder crops
• Presents approaches to sustainable production, summarizes fodder preservation methods; and details molecular approaches to develop high-yielding fodder crops
• Provides insights into agronomic aspects of cereal, legume, grass, and tree species cultivated as summer fodder worldwide
• Discusses the trends in insect pests and diseases, their field identification, and various control methods

This book is an essential resource for agronomists, horticulturalists, livestock farmers and practitioners, and students working in the field.

Dr. Imran Ul Haq, with a bright career in agriculture, plant pathology, and fungal molecular biology, has a postdoc from the University of California Davis, USA. He is currently serving as Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan. He has supervised more than 40 graduate students and established the Fungal Molecular Biology Laboratory Culture Collection (FMB-CC-UAF) and is an affiliated member of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC). He has published more than 60 articles, seven books, four laboratory manuals, and several book chapters. He has made colossal contributions in fungal taxonomy by reporting novel species of fungal pathogen in plants. His research interests are fungal molecular taxonomy and nanotechnology integration with other control strategies for sustainable plant disease management.

Dr. Siddra Ijaz, with a vibrant career in agriculture and biotechnology, has a postdoc from the Plant Reproductive Biology Laboratory, University of California Davis, USA. She is currently serving as Assistant Professor in the Center of Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. She has supervised more than 50 M.Phil and PhD students. She has published more than 60 articles, eight books, and several book chapters. Her research focus includes plant genome engineering using transgenic technologies, genome editing through CRISPR/Cas systems, nanobiotechnology, and exploration of genetic pathways in plant-fungus interactions.

Dr. Hayssam Mohamad Ali, is working at the Botany and Microbiology Department, College of Science, King Saud University. Dr. Hayssam Mohamad Ali has a "World Ranking of Top 2% Scientists" according to the Stanford Scientists' Ranking released by Stanford University in 2021 and 2022. He has more than 300 published papers, 10 published books, and he has reviewed more than 1000 papers in highly impacted journals. He is interested in studying plant physiology, biotic and abiotic stress, sustainability, molecular biology, environmental stresses, plant biotechnology, crop improvement, plant breeding, forestry, and plant biology.