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The challenge of agricultural land depletion as a result of the pressure driven by the ever-growing population has brought about a renewed focus on the need for sustainable practices in agricultural production. Biochar is the solid carbonaceous product obtained when plant and/or animal biomass is subjected to pyrolysis. This chapter reviews the properties of biochar and its impacts when incorporated into the soil. Relative to its original organic form, this chapter iterates the benefits of biochar as a more sustainable organic approach towards improving agricultural soil qualities and hence crop yield due to its stability and duration in soils for hundreds of years. The impacts of biochar on soil physical, chemical and biological properties through the enhancement of soil nutrient and water-holding capacity, pH, bulk density and stimulation of soil microbial activities are by improving aggregation, porosity, surface area and habitat for soil microbes in biochar-amended soils. It is therefore recom‐ mended that biochar be used as soil amendment, especially to a degraded soil for a large and long-term carbon sink restoration.

© 2012 Aladele et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Science of Plant Tissue Culture as a Catalyst for Agricultural and Industrial Development in an Emerging Economy

© 2012 Lameed and Adetola, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Species-Diversity Utilization of Salt Lick Sites at Borgu Sector of Kainji Lake National Park, Nigeria

For global food security, the agricultural sector of the world economy must achieve a production level that ensures adequate food supply to feed the increasing population as well as provides raw materials for the industries. This is particularly so as the energy sector is vigorously pursuing research into the use of grains and root crops as sources of starch for conversion into bio-fuels. Coincidentally, these crops (maize, rice, millet, sorgum, soybeans, cowpeas, sugarcane, groundnuts, e.t.c.) are the stable foods in most parts of the developing countries of the world such as Africa, South America and Asia. In addition to the above new development in the industrial utilization of these crops, they are frequently and vigorously attacked by herbivorous insects and other pests such as phytopathogens and mollusks. In fact the loss due to pests and diseases is about 35% on the field and 14% in storage, giving a total loss of about 50% of agricultural crops annually. Thus the world food production is adversely affected by insects and pests during crop growth, harvest and storage [1]. Apart from the farm environment insects and pests constitute serious menace in the home, gardens and bodies of water, and transmit a number of diseases by acting as hosts to some disease-causing parasites. Thus elimination of these insects and pests or mitigation of their activities will go a long way in reducing world food crisis as well as improve human and animal health.

Agricultural development has been a major concern to most developing countries within the last two decades. It represents a cluster of six related but separate concepts; agricultural expansion; increased production per acre of cropped land or per head of livestock; agricultural growth; a situation characterized with agricultural products per agricultural worker, rising income per person employed and agricultural transformation.

Zoonoses have affected human health throughout times, and wildlife has always played a role. Wildlife has long been recognized as potential sources for infectious diseases in humans and domestic animals. Diseases of wildlife have historically gained attention primarily when they were considered a threat to agricultural systems and the economic, social, or physical health of humans (Andrew et al, 2009). Today, zoonoses with wildlife reservoirs constitute a major public health problem, affecting all continents. The importance of such zoonoses is increasingly recognized, and the need for more attention in this area has to be addressed (Kruse et al., 2004). Wildlife can be defined as free-roaming animals such as mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians living in a natural undomesticated state.

Deforestation is a complex phenomenon as there is little agreement about the components and the processes involved in it. FAO, (2001a) defined deforestation as ‘the conversion of forest to another land use or the long-term reduction of the tree canopy cover below the minimum 10 percent threshold’. The world’s original forest area, estimated at about 6 billion hectares, has declined steadily and about one-third of the forests have been lost during the past few hundred years (Sharma et al., 1992). The forests and woodlands of North Africa and the Middle East, for example, declined by 60 percent; those of South Asia by 43 percent; of tropical Africa by 20 percent; and of Latin America by 19 percent (Houghton et al. in WRI, 1987). Although the world’s forest area has been declining for centuries, it is in the last half of 20th century that the process was accelerated to an alarming rate (Osemeobo, 1991; Federal Environmental Protection Agency, 1992; Jaiyeoba, 2002). Since the 1960s, there has been a major change in the rate at which the forests are cleared. FAO, (1997) reported annual rates of deforestation in developing countries at 15.5 million hectares for the period 1980-1990 and 13.7 million hectares for the period 1990 1995. The total forest area lost during the 15-year period was more than 220 million hectares, much larger than the total land area of Mexico. Between 1950 and 1983, the area of Africa’s woodlands and forests declines by 23% from 901 to 690 million hectares. Between 1981 and 1985 tropical African countries such as Nigeria, Cote d’lvoire, Sudan and Zaire were losing their forest at annual rates of 4.0%, 2.5%, 5.0% and 3.7%, respectively (IBRD/World Bank, 1992). In absolute terms, tropical forests in Africa are being lost at the rate of 3.7 million hectare a year with over half of the deforestation in West Africa alone (UNEP, 2002). The rate of deforestation in Nigeria in the 1980s was of the order of 400,000 ha yearly, while afforestation was a mere 3,200 ha. At such rates, Nigeria’s remaining forest area would disappear by 2020 (Jaiyeoba, 2002). Deforestation and forest degradations are now widely recognized as one of the most critical environmental problems facing the human society today with serious long term economic, social and ecological consequences. This issue has received much attention from policy makers to general public in recent years with vivid images of cleared forests and burning trees around