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Monoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time. Polyculture, where more than one crop is grown in the same space at the same time, is the alternative to monoculture.〔https://books.google.com/books?id=O2eh7vyvuscC&printsec=frontcover&dq=crop+ecology+loomis+connor&hl=en&sa=X&ei=whxAVZ3ZOI-sogSy9YHICQ&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=crop%20ecology%20loomis%20connor&f=false〕 Monoculture is widely used in modern industrial agriculture and its implementation has allowed for increased yields in planting and harvest, but the practice has increasingly come under fire for its environmental effects and for putting the food supply chain at risk. Continuous monoculture, or monocropping, where the same species is grown year after year,〔http://www.cropscience.org.au/icsc2004/symposia/2/1/1128_cookrj.htm〕 can lead to the quicker buildup of pests and diseases, and then rapid spread where a uniform crop is susceptible to a pathogen. Diversity can be added both in space, as with a polyculture, or time, with a crop rotation or sequence. Oligoculture has been suggested to describe a crop rotation of just a few crops, as is practiced by several regions of the world.〔http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9777.html〕 The term monoculture is frequently applied for other uses to describe any group dominated by a single variety, e.g. social Monoculturalism, or in the field of musicology to describe the dominance of the American and British music-industries in Western pop music, or in the field of computer science to describe a group of computers all running identical software. ==Land Use== The term is mostly used in agriculture and describes the practice of planting the same crop species and cultivar in a field. Examples include wheat fields or apple orchards or grape vineyards. Because each species has the same growing requirements and habits, planting, maintenance (including pest control), and harvesting can be standardized, resulting in greater yields. It also is beneficial because a crop can be tailor-planted for a location that has special problems – like soil salt or drought or a short growing season. When a crop is matched to its well-managed environment, a monoculture can produce higher yields than a polyculture. In the last 40 years, modern practices such as monoculture planting and the use of synthesized fertilizers have reduced the amount of additional land needed to produce food. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Monoculture」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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