Abstract

The biosphere of the earth is not only about to overpass the limit to meet the food demand of the world but also the stability of its food production has been also jeopardized by the disasters and pests, especially by the unpredictable weather disasters. In addition the agricultural and industrial pollution against biosphere aggravates the unstability of agricultural production and constitutes a threat in securing the food of the world. In Korea the yield level of crops has been greatly enhanced by the improved agrotechnologies and varietal improvement, but the yield variability due to unfavorable weather events and pests remained unchanged with the change in time. Among weather-related disasters the drought and flood damages has occurred most frequently and impacted most greatly on the agricultural production and its stability. During last decade (1970-l980) the rice production experienced the average annual loss of 0.544 million metric ton which was composed of 0.21 million M/T by climatic disaster, 0.21 million M/T by disease and 0.12 million M/T by insects, and the annual loss of upland crop production from climatic disasters amounted to 0.06 million metric tons. Especially in 1980, the global climatic disasters due to cold or hot temperature endangered the agricultural production all over the world and also the rice production of Korea recorded the unprecedented yield reduction of about 30 percent due to cool summer weather. Nowadays, the unusual weather conditions are prevaling throughout the world, and agro-meteologists predict that the unpredictable cool summer and drought will often attack the rice and other crops in 1980's. To meet the coming weather unstability and to secure the stable crop production, multilateral efforts should be rendered. Therefore, the Korea Society of Crop Science, which commemorates the 20th anniversary of its founding, prepared the symposium on Meteological Stress in Crop Production and its Countermeasures to discuss the decrease in agricultural production due to weather-related disasters and to devise the multilateral counter-measures against the unfavorable weather events.

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