12 Complex relationships exist between different components of the organic farm and 13 the quantity and quality of the end products depend on the functioning of the whole 14 system. As such, it is very difficult to isolate soil fertility from production and 15 environmental aspects of the system. Crop rotation is the central tool that integrates 16 the maintenance and development of soil fertil...

The effect of 10-year continuous saffron cultivation on physical and chemical properties of a silty clay loam soil was investigated in a research farm of College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz (52 º 33ʹ E Longitude and 29º 36ʹ N latitude), Iran. This farm was irrigated with different regimes (100% of saffron's potential evapotranspiration (ETp), 75%ETp, 50%ETp) including rain fed tre...

Tracing of heavy metal pollution sources is a current hot issue of agricultural soil quality management. Land utilization is one of the important factors which affect the heavy metal contents of regional soil. In order to model the relationship between soil heavy metal contamination and land utilization, this paper adopts a novel positive and negative association rule method in order to effecti...

It is fairly evident that control of the ordinary tobacco mosaic disease {tobacco virus 1) (4)^ may be accomplished with considerable success through the application of all of a number of precautionary measures that have been recommended for the purpose. These measures are directed chiefly against introduction of the virus into the field from various sources where it may be harbored for long pe...

Knowing spatial patterns of functional microbial guilds can increase our understanding of the relationships between microbial community ecology and ecosystem functions. Using geostatistical modeling to map spatial patterns, we explored the distribution of the community structure, size, and activity of one functional group in N cycling, the denitrifiers, in relation to 23 soil parameters over a ...

Exploring the relationship between agricultural nitrogen (N) loading on a dairy farm and groundwater reactive N concentration such as nitrate (NO3) is particularly challenging in areas underlain by thin soils and karstified limestone aquifers. The present study on such a site aims to relate changes in detailed paddock specific agronomic N-loading, hydrogeological and geological site characteris...

The status and the distribution of arsenic in soils from a disused cattle dip were determined. Elevated total arsenic levels (1,033-1,369 mg/L) were detected in the soils. Significant difference (p < 0.05) between the values for the soils obtained from the contaminated sites and control site (0.15 mg/L) was observed. The level of total arsenic decreased with increase in depth. The peak total ar...

nematicide, D-D(1,2-dichloropropane1,3dichloropropene), resulted in the greatest flowering with the controls giving the lowest (Table 2). The less effective nematicide, ethoprop (O-ethyl S,S-dipropyl phosphorodithioate), had an intermediate effect on flowering. In these tests, flowering was positively correlated with yield and negatively related to soil nematode populations and root-gall indice...

Heavy metal contamination of the soil has become a serious problem confronting both scientists and regulators around the world. The occurrence and accumulation of these heavy metals in farm soils has far reaching implications on human health as humans occupy a key position on the food chain. Within the last ten years, studies on heavy metal accumulation in food crops and agricultural soils cond...