Stephanie Walker's research while affiliated with New Mexico State University and other places

... The reproductive phase is particularly sensitive to stress, causing substantial yield reduction (Wilhelm et al., 1999;Fahad et al., 2016). Heat stress arrests cell differentiation and cell elongation and impairs meristematic activity leading to decreased total biomass (Lozada et al., 2022). ...

... This is consistent with the results of other studies (Locascio and Stall 1994;Sandhu et al. 2021;Wall et al. 2002), thus highlighting the importance of cultivation decisions, such as plant density and cultivar selection. Extensive research of cultivar selection has been conducted, resulting in the introduction of New Mexico pod-type green chile cultivars optimized for effective mechanical harvesting (Walker et al. 2021). We found that of the two cultivars we evaluated, NuMex Joe E. Parker had a higher proportion of harvested marketable green fruit. ...

... Research on chili pepper varieties for use in mechanical harvesting has been conducted [16]. Recently, to evaluate the suitability for harvest mechanization, previous research was conducted on the nutritional and physiological components of various varieties [17][18][19][20][21] as well as plant spacing, productivity, and quality [22][23][24] according to cultivation methods. ...

... More than 954 million hectares (ha) of land worldwide are salt-affected, and between 25% and 30% of irrigated lands are rendered unproductive due to salinity (Shahid et al., 2018). The increase in the world population is expected to expand salinization further through an array of processes, including an increase in treated wastewater reuse for irrigation (Farid et al., 2020;Ogunmokun and Wallach, 2021;Pedrero et al., 2020;Tanji, 1997), groundwater contamination due to percolated salts from irrigated lands (Foster et al., 2018;Merchán et al., 2020;Quinn, 2020), and an increase in the use of brackish or saline water for irrigation (Baath et al., 2020;Wang et al., 2020;Yuan et al., 2019). The consolidative nature of these processes suggests that salinity issues are inherent to crop production and agricultural water management strategies in many water-constrained regions. ...

... The compensatory effect of the crop under plot failure is another matter of consideration, since the plants adjacent to the failures generally have higher productivity owing to less competition for water, nutrients, and light. Although the compensatory effect varies among different crops [6,7], there are no published reports regarding its occurrence in Coffea plants and how it affects the accuracy of experiments with coffee crops. So, the stand correction methods must deal with reduction in plot bean yield due to lesser number of plants and the compensatory effect caused by the absence of one or more plants. ...

... Mechanical harvest efficiency is characterized as the percentage of machine-harvested fruit deemed marketable; a greater percentage of marketable fruit corresponds to heightened efficiency. Research conducted over the past two decades has demonstrated the ideal picking mechanism (Funk and Walker 2010) and plant architecture (Joukhadar et al. 2018;Palevitch and Levy 1984) for New Mexico pod-type green chile. The most efficient picking mechanism (an inclined double-openhelix picking head) coupled with the optimal plant architecture (tall, upright plants with fruit set higher on the plant and fewer basal branches) will increase mechanical harvest efficiency. ...

... This type of performance indicator is very useful under conditions of scarcity of water resources [6]. Prolonged drought conditions have demanded the use of lower-quality water to supplement irrigation in semi-arid regions [7]. Therefore, understanding plant responses to the couple abiotic stresses of water and salinity and the basic mechanisms of improving WUE from leaf to whole plant scale would be of vital importance to getting stable crop performance and production under both saline drought and conditions in a region subjected to climatic change. ...

... In 2021, only 51,000 tons of chiles were harvested, which is a drastic decline from the 2000s [1]. One of the main reasons is that green chile peppers are currently only hand-harvested [2]. Nevertheless, manual harvesting poses significant challenges due to the intense heat in NM. ...

... A previous study compared levels of biomass and glucosinolates among the following four mustard species and cultivars grown during fall in southern New Mexico: Arcadia broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica); Caliente 61 brown mustard; Caliente 199 brown mustard; and Pacific Gold brown mustard (Rudolph et al. 2015). Caliente 199 and Pacific Gold exhibited the most biofumigation potential because these brown mustard cultivars produced the most biomass and had the highest glucosinolate concentration (Rudolph et al. 2015). ...

... Denser planting in rows can influence plant height and height of the lowest fruit insertion, which may provide better plant suitability for mechanized harvest and, consequently, higher yield (Wall et al., 2003;Paroissien & Flynn, 2004;Funk & Walker, 2009;Uchanski & Blalock, 2013;Walker & Funk, 2014). Besides, higher density in spacing between plants in planting rows shows potential response to productive increase, especially under growing conditions in the dry season of Brazilian Planalto Central, where climatic conditions are not favorable for disease development, normally favored by populational density (Ribeiro, 2008). ...