A field experiment was conducted to study the effect of deficit irrigation and mulch levels on soil physical properties and growth and yield of maize crop. The experiment comprised of two irrigation levels, i.e. I1: 558.8 mm and I2: 711.2 mm while two mulch levels, i.e. M0: no mulch and M15: 15 Mg ha. Soil samples were collected from 0-10, 10-20, and 20-30 cm depths before sowing and at crop ha...

Soil hydraulic principles suggest that post-infiltration hypoxic conditions would be induced in the plant root-zone for drip-irrigated tomato production in small pots filled with natural soil. No previous study specifically examined the response of tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum) at different growth stages to low soil aeration under these conditions. A 2 × 6 factorial experiment was conduc...

Both rainfed and irrigated soybean production are important in Nebraska (western US Corn Belt), accounting for a respective 48 and 52% of the state’s soybean production of 7 Mt on a respective 55 and 45% share of the state soybean area of 1.9 Mha. To date, no assessment of factors that may account for regional and inter-annual variation in yield and irrigation amount has been performed. To acco...

Combining ability, gene action and heterosis was studied for no. of days to 50% tasseling, no. of days to 50% silking, flag leaf area, plant height, no. of rows/ear, no. of grains/row, 300-grain weight and grain yield/plant in a Factorial Mating in Randomized Completely Randomized Design conducted separately in spring and autumn sowing dates, 2013 through hybridization between three parents of ...

In the Plain of Reeds (Mekong delta, Viet Nam), water and soil characteristics show a high temporal variability which can be explained by changes in relative soil/water levels. Acid, aluminium and iron concentrations in canal water increase (pH drops from 6 to less than 3.5) when the annual river ̄ood water recedes and the drainage/ ̄ushing of the acid sulphate soils begins. The high intra-annua...

Conventional seedbed preparation for spring sown crops in Sweden includes 3±4 harrowings followed by sowing, but there is a great interest among farmers to reduce this tillage. Since the soil is normally at ®eld capacity after winter, the conventional system implies a major risk of soil compaction and the farmer has to wait for the soil to dry before seedbed preparation can be started. A new te...

Inspired by the behavior of dandelion sowing, a new novel swarm intelligence algorithm, namely, dandelion algorithm (DA), is proposed for global optimization of complex functions in this paper. In DA, the dandelion population will be divided into two subpopulations, and different subpopulations will undergo different sowing behaviors. Moreover, another sowing method is designed to jump out of l...