Raul Gimenez

• Dr
• Fellow at Grupo de Estudios Ambientales IMASL/CONICET San Luis, Argentina

Reliable phenotyping is critical for crop improvement. Some traits such as herbicide tolerance are more likely to scale from plant to crop than others such as yield. Here we compared phenology, yield and its components in two arrangements - single rows and whole plots - for 10 chickpea and 10 lentil cultivars in 11 (chickpea) and 10 (lentil) Austra...

Understanding phenology and its regulation is central for the agronomic adaptation of chickpea. We grew 24 chickpea genotypes in 12 environments to analyse: the environmental and genotypic drivers of phenology; associations between phenology and yield; and phenotypes associated with allelic variants of three flowering related candidate loci: CaELF3...

Dryland salinity, a well-known challenge in Australia, is emerging as a novel threat in the South American Dry Chaco. Large-scale deforestation of native dry forests for agriculture has caused rising groundwater tables, jeopardizing crops with flooding and salinisation. This collaborative study between farmers and researchers explores the role of d...

Understanding phenology, its genetics and agronomic consequences, is critical for crop adaptation. Here we aim at (1) characterising lentil response to photoperiod with a focus on five loci: the lentil ELF3 ortholog Sn, two loci linked to clusters of lentil FT orthologs and two loci without candidates in chromosomes 2 and 5 (exp. 1: 36 lines, short...

Phenology is critical to crop adaptation. We grew 24 chickpea genotypes in 12 environments to analyse: the environmental and genotypic drivers of phenology; associations between phenology and yield; and phenotypes associated with allelic variants of three flowering related candidate loci: CaELF3a ; a cluster of three FT genes on chromosome 3; and a...

INTA-CFI. (2023). Cartografía de suelos y Evaluación de Tierras del sector Norte del departamento Belgrano - Santiago del Estero. Ed. Vizgarra LA; Mas LI. Disponible en: https://intainforma.inta.gob.ar/wp-content/uploads/Carta_Suelos_N_Belgrano_Informe-Final.pdf

Regional effects of farming on hydrology are associated mostly with irrigation. In this work, we show how rainfed agriculture can also leave large-scale imprints. The extent and speed of farming expansion across the South American plains over the past four decades provide an unprecedented case of the effects of rainfed farming on hydrology. Remote...

The Dry Chaco is a semi-arid ecoregion in South America that hosts one of the largest dry forests in the world, but expansion of dryland agriculture and cattle ranching led to gradual conversion of native vegetation to anthropogenic land cover. The potential impact of these newly established agricultural lands on the surrounding environment is of g...

Land-use change has been the strongest driver of vegetation cover change in the world. In the South American Dry Chaco (~1 M km²; PPT/ET0 < 0.65), native dry forests are experiencing high deforestation rates that tend to continue in the coming years. Here, we used a hydrological model (Hydrus 1-D) to analyze changes in the water balance triggered b...

We synthesize research on the magnitude and dynamisms of salt stocks in the Chaco-Pampas. While current soil maps characterize one-fourth of the region’s soils as saline; integrated soil-hydrology-vegetation studies show salinity to be more widespread and dynamic due to the presence of shallow and stagnant groundwater systems. Two salt retention me...

Over the last decades, the rapid replacement of native forests by crops and pastures in the Argentinean semiarid Chaco plains has triggered unprecedented groundwater level raises resulting from deep drainage increases, leading to the first massive waterlogging event on records (~25.000 Ha flooded in 2015 near Bandera, one of the most cultivated clu...

Machine learning has arisen with advanced data analytics. Many factors influence crop yield, such as soil, amount of water, climate, and genotype. Determining factors that significantly influence yield prediction and identify the most appropriate predictive methods are important in yield management. It is critical to consider and study the combinat...

Soil evaporation is a dominant water flux of flat dry ecosystems, reducing available water for plant transpiration. Vegetation plays a key role at controlling evaporation, especially by altering soil surface micro-meteorological conditions. Here we explored the vegetation cover effect on soil evaporation, differentiating the effects of canopy cover...

During the last century the massive conversion of Australian dry forests to crops and pastures triggered the massive soil and groundwater degradation process known as dryland salinity. Currently, South American Chaco's dry forests are undergoing a similar transformation, leading global deforestation rates. The goal of this study was to review exist...

Deforestation affects climate and the energy balance of the Earth not only through the release of greenhouse gases but also through shifts in the physical properties of the surface. These physical effects can be strongly dependent not only on the deforestation event but on the land use choices and management that follow it. Here we explored how the...

Vegetation plays an important part in regulating water fluxes in ecosystems, specially in dry regions where a large fraction of precipitation is evapotranspirated. Here, we assessed how the replacement of native dry forests by pastures, with the aim of increasing livestock production, affects water flux partition in the Arid Chaco plains. We charac...

The semiarid Chaco plains present one of the highest rates of forest clearing and agricultural expansion of the world. In other semiarid plains, such massive vegetation replacements initiated a groundwater recharge and salt mobilization process that, after decades, raised regional water tables and salts to the surface, degrading agricultural and na...

Vegetation plays an important part in regulating water fuxes in ecosystems, specially in dry regions where a large fraction of precipitation is evapotranspirated. Here, we assessed how the replacement of native dry forests by pastures, with the aim of increasing livestock production, affects water fux partition in the Arid Chaco plains. We characte...

In this paper we explored how aridity influences the regional deforestation and land-use patterns (i.e. crops/pastures) in South American Dry Chaco. To do this, we contrasted land use during last decade (2001–2012) with a spatially explicit aridity index, which we complemented with a crop water balance model. Land-use classifications were performed...

The Gran Chaco is South America’s second largest forest after the Amazon, and is one of the fastest developing agricultural frontiers on the planet. The dry forest is being converted for corn and soybean production in an effort to meet growing global demand. This landuse conversion is triggering hydrologic change in the Chaco of northern Argentina....

Like in other semiarid areas of the world, farming systems in semiarid Chaco tend to use water-conservative crop systems to minimize production risks associated to water stress. While this strategy aims to stabilize crop yields and farmers income, the underutilization of water resources in wet years may result in heavy deep drainage water losses wh...

En la Región Pampeana la lluvia, y su elevada variabilidad, es la principal determinante de la producción agropecuaria (Hall et al., 1992) que motoriza la economía de muchos municipios. En los sistemas de producción pampeanos, en los que el riego es aún una práctica poco común, la escasez de lluvias resiente a la producción y propaga sus efectos en...

The lifecycle of the facultative biennial oilseed-crop evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) is a major constraint for its commercial production under different growing conditions, as a variable proportion of plants fails to flower during the first season and remains as vegetative rosettes (biennial behavior). The aim of this work was to understand...