The study of greenhouse gas emissions has become a global focus, but few studies have considered saline-alkali paddy fields. Gas samples and saline-alkali soil samples were collected during the green, tillering, booting, heading and grain filling stages. The emission fluxes of CO2, CH4, and N2O as well as the pH, soil soluble salt, available nitrogen, and soil organic carbon contents were detec...

Hyperaccumulation of Ni by plants is hypothesized to function as an elemental defense against herbivores and pathogens. Laboratory experiments have documented toxic effects to herbivores consuming high-Ni plant tissues, but this paper reports the first experiment to examine the defensive effectiveness of Ni hyperaccumulation under field conditions. The experiment was conducted at an ultramafic ...

Coexistence theory has often treated environmental heterogeneity as being independent of the community composition; however biotic feedbacks such as plant-soil feedbacks (PSF) have large effects on plant performance, and create environmental heterogeneity that depends on the community composition. Understanding the importance of PSF for plant community assembly necessitates understanding of the...

A greenhouse pot test was conducted to study the impacts of replacing mineral fertilizer with organic fertilizers for one full growing period on soil fertility, tomato yield and quality using soils with different tomato planting history. Four types of fertilization regimes were compared: (1) conventional fertilizer with urea, (2) chicken manure compost, (3) vermicompost, and (4) no fertilizer. ...

ABSTRACT The induction of disease-suppressive soils in response to specific cropping sequences has been demonstrated for numerous plant-pathogen systems. The role of host genotype in elicitation of the essential transformations in soil microbial community structure that lead to disease suppression has not been fully recognized. Apple orchard soils were planted with three successive 28-day cycle...

This study evaluated the effects of abattoir wastewater irrigation on plant growth and development. The soils used in this study were collected from Primo Smallgoods Abattoir (Port Wakefield, South Australia) at different sites such as currently irrigated (CI), currently not irrigated (CNI) and soil outside the irrigation area as control (CTRL). A completely randomised block design was employed...

Problem statement: Approximately 20% of sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is grown on sand soils in south Florida, USA. Sugarcane yields in the region linearly increased in last 33 years on organic (muck) soils, but not on sand soils. Water deficit during the formative growth phase on sand soils probably limits sugarcane yields. Approach: A greenhouse study was conducted in 2009 and 2010 to evaluate t...

While many ecosystem processes depend on biodiversity, the relationships between agricultural plant diversity and soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics remains controversial. Our objective was to examine how temporal plant diversity (i.e. crop rotation) influences residue decomposition, a key ecosystem function that regulates nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and soil organic matt...

Greenhouse experiments were done with two purposes: (1) to identify strains of rhizobia effective and acid-tolerant in symbiosis with Lablab purpureus, and (2) to determine whether soil acidity or the symbiotic condition increased the phosphate requirement for growth. Five rhizobia! strains were tested in one neutral soil, two acid soils, and the two acid soils limed to pH 6.6. In the neutral a...