EDITORIAL

A debt of thanks is owed to professor Gustavo Ligarreto for the work he carried out in recent years in order to improve the visibility, punctuality and categorization of Agronomia Colombiana, from a level secured by previous editors. The challenge is to continuously grow so that our audience can rest assure that their research results will be distributed in the better journals of the sector. The indexing systems of Scopus and ISI-SCIELO Citation Index will include Agronomia Colombiana in new databases, indices and formats in 2014. I hope that the offering of articles in this issue will be the most interesting one for our readers.

The current edition contains a study carried out in Cenicafe-FNC on copia retrotransposons in different coffee species, found in the "Plant breeding, genetic resources and molecular biology" section. Here, the presence, conservation and stability of this type of retroelement in the coffee genome are evidenced.

The "Propagation and tissue culture" section includes an anatomical characterization of the sugar apple seed (Annona squamosa), a species that has little published information but that is important to Colombian fruticulture.

Various challenges can be seen in the "Crop physiology" section that are related to our current, problematic agriculture. Drought conditions are addressed in the first article, in which different cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) genotypes were subjected to different levels of drought stress, followed by recuperation. Two genotypes were found to have a high degree of delayed foliar senescence during the drought period. In another species that is of importance in the leguminous group, the assimilatory efficiency in terms of photosynthetic tissue performance was determined in different bean ascensions from the germplasm bank of Colombia (at Corpoica) with noteworthy results from one Mesoamerican and two Andean cultivars. In another article on the rose cv. Charlotte, an analysis was carried out on the distribution of biomass in floral stems sowed in pots with soil and alternative substrates. Better results were found for the evaluated substrates. Finally, this section presents a physiological characterization of oil palm genotypes and their hybrids in order to reveal better field behaviors.

The "Crop protection" section contains a review of ant species found in the department of Antioquia and new observations of these species in Colombia. The African Palm crop is the subject of the "Postharvest physiology and technology" section in an article on the physiological processes of fruit maturation in the hybrids of this species.

With the aim of preserving natural resources and promoting sustainability in production systems, the "Soils, fertilization and management of water " section contains an article on the changes and implications of recirculating water drainage in terms of electrical conductivity and pH for the cultivation of the rose cv. Charlotte in a substrate. Finally, the "Economy and rural development" section presents a reflection on food security and sovereignty in the context of different international organizations and movements that have touched on this subject that is of great interest to Colombia.

I hope that, with the topics presented to our readers, the discussion on the local problems found in our tropical agriculture and our duty as agronomy professionals will continue.

Heliodoro Arguello Ph.D.
Editor