Advanced Chemical Research

The case can be made that agronomists are inevitably broader in their thinking than breeders, soil scientists or pathologists in the sense that agronomists, either as scientists or practitioner, have to pull everything together for the farmer. The key spatial scale for an agronomist ranges from a square metre of crop to the field; agronomy’s hierarchical stretch goes from the individual plant organ via the individual plant to the plant population and, perhaps, plant community. The agronomic temporal scale ranges mainly from a day to a year and there is nothing so practical as a good idea – meaning that both theory and practice can game-change agronomy.