Environment Control for Plants & Animals
Environmental Factors Affecting Plant Growth
Plant growth and geographic distribution are greatly affected by the environment. If any environmental factor is less than ideal, it limits a plant’s growth and/or distribution. For example, only plants adapted to limited amounts of water can live in deserts.
Either directly or indirectly, most plant problems are caused by environmental stress. In some cases, poor environmental conditions (e.g., too little water) damage a plant directly. In other cases, environmental stress weakens a plant and makes it more susceptible to disease or insect attack.
Environmental factors that affect plant growth include light, temperature, water, humidity, and nutrition. It is important to understand how these factors affect plant growth and development. With a basic understanding of these factors, you may be able to manipulate plants to meet your needs, whether for increased leaf, flower, or fruit production. By recognizing the roles of these factors, you also will be better able to diagnose plant problems caused by environmental stress.
Environmental impact on production
Weather and climate influence both farm animal production and agronomic production. There are many differences, some obvious and some subtle, in the way animals and plants respond directly and indirectly to given environments, however. It explores the applications of weather and climate information to sustain or improve on-farm animal performance, such as survival, growth, reproduction, and milk and wool production. Management intervention is needed not only to improve the genetic potential of the animals, but also to help overcome the constraints on production set by the climate, the physical environment and the health hazards in a region. On-farm decisions usually involve selection, design and management of production facilities, while the collective impacts may guide regional or national policy, determine responses to potential large-scale changes, or influence other decisions. The case for understanding the implications of regional and local climates affecting those decisions is self-evident, as is the need for timely forecasts to trigger management anticipation and response to adverse conditions.
Background
- Thermoneutral ranges of environmental variables for important classes of livestock in the light of weather and seasonal variations that can occur. Past weather data (both conventional and derived climate data) should be analysed and interpreted for the specific purpose of establishing risks and probabilities;
- Evaluation of detailed energy budgets for individual animals and groups of animals, which can indicate imbalances. Responses of animals to potential environmental stressors that can influence performance and health:
- Intensity
- Duration
- Animal response
- Normal function
- Disrupted behaviour
- Impaired immune status
- Potential environmental stressor
- Animal Feedback
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- Impaired physiology
- Behaviour
- Immunology
- Physiology
- Coping
- Reduced performance or health
- Impaired function
- Conditioning, adaptation, nutrition, life stage, genetics, etc.
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- Development of an understanding, preferably quantitative, of how environmental variables affect the heat budget of animals. The heat budget, which is based on heat exchanges that depend on factors should suggest how the ambient environment might be manipulated by natural and man-made shelter against wind, sun and precipitation; by site selection to increase or decrease exposure; and by artificial aids that would directly provide additional heating or cooling;
- The possibility that animal housing offers improved animal and economic performance. A plan to change the external macroenvironment into an acceptable microenvironment also calls for an energy budget approach, with the house and its animals as the unit, and ventilation (natural or fan assisted) as the primary control variable;
- The weather dependency of disease and parasitism, especially the timing and scale of the problem; whether exposure to a new infection results in disease depends, among other factors, on the number of infectious organisms taken in and the occurrence of.
- – Environment Control for Plants & Animals
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