The objective of this study was to determine whether reconstituting field-dried and early-harvested sorghum grain affected the fermentation characteristics and feed value of the ensiled grain when fed to feedlot heifers. In Trial 1, sorghum grain was harvested at 14% moisture, rolled, and reconstituted to 25, 30, or 35% moisture, then ensiled in laboratory-scale silos. Lactic acid concentration...

Increased whole grain intake has been shown to reduce the risk of many non-communicable diseases. Countries including the USA, Canada, Denmark and Australia have specific dietary guidelines on whole grain intake but others, including the UK, do not. Data from 1986/87 and 2000/01 have shown that whole grain intake is low and declining in British adults. The aim of the present study was to descri...

In crystalline materials, plastic deformation occurs by the motion of dislocations, and the regions between individual crystallites, called grain boundaries, act as obstacles to dislocation motion. Grain boundaries are widely envisaged to be mechanically static structures, but this report outlines an experimental investigation of stress-driven grain boundary migration manifested as grain growth...

Twenty multiparous Holstein cows, 4 of them surgically fitted with ruminal cannulas, were used in a replicated 4 x 4 Latin square to compare the effects of whole-plant silage and grain produced from NutriDense (ND), leafy NutriDense (LND), or a conventional yellow dent (YD) hybrid on ruminal fermentation, total tract nutrient digestibility, and performance of lactating dairy cows. On a DM basis...

The aim of this study was to determine nature and extent of variability parameters and their utilization in barley breeding programme. A total of 45 F1s along with their parents and F2 populations were evaluated in a randomized block design with 3 replications during Rabi (winter season) 2014. The various traits measured were days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, flag leaf area...

Understanding of various charging processes of dust grains is important in many different industrial applications as well as in the space research and theoretical studies of charging. An impact of energetic ions onto a dust grain leads to transfer of charge to the grain. This effect increases the charge of the dust grain until an equilibrium value is reached. After charging, the ion beam is swi...

When load is applied to fcc nanograins, leading partial dislocations nucleate at grain boundary steps and propagate into the grain, leaving stacking faults behind. The extent to which these faults expand before a trailing partial is emitted generally does not equal the equilibrium separation distance of the corresponding full dislocation. Here we use a density functional theory – phase field di...

For important food crops such as wheat and rice, grain yield depends on grain number and size. In rice (Oryza sativa), GW2 was isolated from a major quantitative trait locus for yield and encodes an E3 RING ligase that negatively regulates grain size. Wheat (Triticum aestivum) has TaGW2 homologues in the A, B, and D genomes, and polymorphisms in TaGW2-A were associated with grain width. Here, t...

Grain size is an important yield component in rice, however, genes controlling the trait remain poorly understood. Previously, we have shown that an antagonistic pair of basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) proteins, POSITIVE REGULATOR OF GRAIN LENGTH 1 (PGL1) and ANTAGONIST OF PGL1 (APG), is involved in controlling rice grain length. Here, we report the involvement of another atypical bHLH protein ge...