A study was conducted to determine suitable soil properties as soil quality indicators, using factor analysis in order to evaluate the effects of land use change on loessial hillslope soils of the Shastkola District in Golestan Province, northern Iran. To this end, forty surface soil (0-30 cm) samples were collected from four adjacent sites with the following land uses systems: (1) natural fore...

Large scale microalgae cultivation actually represents a potential new source of renewable energy in the form of biofuel. Microalgae are individual plant cells which have the ability to photosynthesize and therefore utilize CO2, micronutrients and solar light to multiply and produce carbohydrates, lipids and proteins. Microalgae cultivation has several advantages over land grown crops. The majo...

Maize or Corn (Zea mays L.) is the most important cereal in the world after wheat and rice. It possesses high nutritive value and is important as a coarse grain. In Sri Lanka, this crop has cultivated, around 30,000ha and local consumption is around 200,000mt annually. Further, Maize is an easily grown crop and the cultivation has been popular among farmers as a cost effective crop with limited...

Large scale microalgae cultivation actually represents a potential new source of renewable energy in the form of biofuel. Microalgae are individual plant cells which have the ability to photosynthesize and therefore utilize CO2, micronutrients and solar light to multiply and produce carbohydrates, lipids and proteins. Microalgae cultivation has several advantages over land grown crops. The majo...

This research compared effects of the weed control practice, soil cultivation, and the conventional practice, glyphosate application on weed seedbank, in a vineyard system. The experiment was conducted in a commercial wine-grape vineyard in the Napa Valley of northern California from 2003 to 2005. The annual treatments were ‘‘winter–spring glyphosate,’’ ‘‘spring cultivation,’’ ‘‘fall–spring cul...

to compare the effects of different weed management methods on seed bank of weeds grown in sugar beet (beta vulgaris l.), a field experiment was conducted at the agricultural research station, ferdowsi university of mashhad, iran, during 2006, 2007 and 2008. the experiment designed as a complete randomized block with three replications. the treatments including: disk+ fhenmedifham, disk+ fhenme...

This work was designed to determine the effect of poultry droppings on diesel contaminated soil and evaluate its physiochemical properties. In this study, different ratios of diesel contaminated soil and poultry droppings have been used as raw materials. The mixture of diesel contaminated soil and poultry droppings were allowed to composting process for 40 days. The physicochemical parameters l...

A pot experiment was performed to study the effectiveness of remediation using different plant species and the enzyme response involved in remediating PAH-contaminated soil. The study indicated that species Echinacea purpurea, Festuca arundinacea Schred, Fire Phoenix (a combined F. arundinacea), and Medicago sativa L. possess the potential for remediation in PAH-contaminated soils. The study al...

The effective use of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal function to promote host plant phosphate uptake in agricultural practice requires the accurate quantitative evaluation of AM fungal infection potential in field soil or AM fungal inoculation material. The number of infection units (IUs), intraradical fungal structures derived from single root entries formed after a short cultivation period...

Soil compaction was identified as the cause of ‘growth stunting disease’ in sultana grapes and ‘red death’ in cotton at the Lower Orange River and Vaalharts irrigation schemes. In an experiment growth stunting disease was eradicated completely and yields of sultanas increased substantially by deep cultivation, which eliminated compacted soil layers. Ripping increased the quality of tobacco, and...