Replacing fossil fuel with biofuel is environmentally viable from a climate change perspective only if the net greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of the system is reduced. The effects of replacing annual arable crops with perennial bioenergy feedstocks on net GHG production and soil carbon (C) stock are critical to the system-level balance. Here, we compared GHG flux, crop yield, root biomass, and ...

Body residues are often better estimates of the amount of a chemical at the sites of toxic action in an organism than ambient soil concentrations, because bioavailability differences among soils are explicitly taken into account in considerations of body residues. Often, however, insufficient attention is paid to the rate and extent at which tissue concentrations respond to soil concentrations ...

The response of soil microbial communities following changes in land-use is governed by multiple factors. The objectives of this study were to investigate (i) whether soil microbial communities track the changes in aboveground vegetation during succession; and (ii) whether microbial communities return to their native state over time. Two successional gradients with different vegetation were stu...

The culturability of microorganisms in a 10 cm core of an Australian pasture soil was investigated using a minimal agar medium with xylan as the growth substrate. Culturability decreased with increasing depth, from a maximum of 19% of the total microscopically countable cells in the 0-2 cm section to 2.4% in the 8-10 cm section. Seventy-one isolates from the core were identified by comparative ...

Over a period of three years, microbial communities in acidified soil with high sulfur content were analyzed. In soil water extracts ureolytic, proteolytic, oxidoreductive, and lipolytic activity were detected. The presented results indicate that the enzymatic activity of soil microbial communities varied considerably over time. Isolated 26 (80%) bacterial strains belonged to genus Bacillus sp....

Agricultural sustainability has become a major concern in arid regions of China. In order to better understand the influence of continuous cropping on soil quality, six experimental fields were established in the Alar Oasis of Xinjiang, including uncultivated land (as a zero year treatment duration) and five different continuous cropping years on cotton fields, with different cropping durations...

The Loess Plateau lies in the North of China and is one of the most serious regions of soil erosion in the world. Severe loss of soil and water not only has its devastating effect on farming, forestry, stock-breeding and ecological environment of the area concerned, but also is the root of poverty for local people. The Loess Plateau has a long cultivation history, hence population growth, veget...

BACKGROUND Environmental as well as cultivation factors may greatly influence the chemical composition of plants. The main factors affecting the chemical composition of foodstuff are level and type of fertilizer (conventional and organic cultivation systems), location or soil type, and year of harvest. Organic foods are defined as products that are produced under controlled cultivation conditio...

knowledge of the phosphorus (p) forms is essential for understanding the behavior of phosphorus. the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of wheat cultivation on different inorganic p forms of soil. a greenhouse factorial experiment in a completely randomized design was carried out with three replications in 20 soil types and plantation at two levels (with and without plantation). th...

Fallow management is a common practice of traditional shifting cultivation in Southeast Asia and it survives throughout the region for many centuries (Spencer 1966). The systems are often found among the ethnic minorities in the region but governments, on the other hand, see the system as a primitive form of agricultural production, destruction to the forests and watersheds, wasteful and unprod...