Crop rotation British Agricultural Revolution. The rotation between arable and ley is sometimes called ley farming. George Washington Carver (1860s–1943) studied crop-rotation methods in the United States, teaching southern farmers to rotate soil-depleting crops like cotton with soil-enriching crops like peanuts and peas. In the Green Revolution of the mid-20th century the traditional practice of crop rotation gave way in some parts of the world to the practice of supplementing the chemical inputs to the soil through topdressing with fertilizers, adding (for example) ammonium nitrate or urea and restoring soil pH with lime. Such practices aimed to increase yields, to prepare soil
Water-use efficiency Water-use efficiency Water-use efficiency (WUE) refers to the ratio of water used in plant metabolism to water lost by the plant through transpiration. Two types of water-use efficiency are referred to most frequently: Increases in water-use efficiency are commonly cited as a response mechanism of plants to moderate to severe soil water deficits, and has been the focus of many programs that seek to increase crop tolerance of drought. However, there is some question as to the benefit of increased water-use efficiency of plants in agricultural systems, as the processes of increased yield production and decreased transpirational water loss (that