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© 2006 Plant Management Network.
Accepted for publication 30 January 2006. Published 28 February 2006.

Forward to the Proceedings

William J. Wiebold, Professor, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia 65211

Corresponding author: William J. Wiebold. wieboldw@missouri.edu

Wiebold, W. J. 2006. Plant arrangement in fields to maximize productivity: Forward to the proceedings. Online. Crop Management doi:10.1094/CM-2006-0227-01-RV.

Plant Arrangement in Fields to Maximize Productivity was a symposium presented at the 2004 meeting of the Crop Science Society of America in Seattle, Washington. The purpose of the symposium was to thoroughly examine all aspects of plant arrangements in fields, but the primary focus was row spacing. Invited speakers represented many disciplines including crop physiology, plant pathology, weed science, and agronomy.

Jethro Tull (1674-1741) was born in Berkshire (England) and he studied law in Oxford and London. Although open to question, Tull is considered by many to be the originator of row-crop agriculture. Crop agriculture in England during the late 1600s consisted of broadcast seeding on to tilled ground. Tull and others observed that this seeding method wasted seed, resulted in poor depth control, and made mechanical weed control difficult. Planting seeds in rows with a properly designed seeder would ameliorate these three problems.

The names of the inventors for the drill and the cultivator (horse-drawn hoe) may never be resolved, but Tull has been credited with both. Whether or not he is the originator of row crop agriculture, Tull did publish The New Horse Houghing Husbandry: An Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation in 1733. This book contained Tull's observations and thoughts about plant growth and crop culture.

Planters and drills have undergone many refinements since Tull's era, but they still perform the same basic functions: opening the soil in rows, placing seed at a specific depth, and covering the seed with soil. The science of row-crop agriculture has studied the effects of changing the distance between neighboring rows on plant responses, micro-climate within the plant canopy, pest management, and yield. This science was the focus of the Plant Arrangement in Fields to Maximize Productivity symposium and the following manuscripts.