Field and greenhouse studies have confirmed that wattle brush ash may cause marked increases in yield . when sugarcane is grown in certain midland soils. This effect was associated with the following factors: (i) decreased soil acidity (ii) increased P and K uptake by the plant (iii) increased soil exchangeable Ca, Mg, P, K and base saturation values (iv) reduced soil levels of A1 and Mn (v) re...

Introduction Quantitative analysis shows that sucrose is the major organic constituent of phloem exudates in mlost plants (6, 8). When leaves are allowed to photosynthesize in C140, for short periodls nmost of the translocatedl radioactiv,ity is generally found in sucrose (6, 8). With respect to the nature of the transit compound in these plants there are 3 possible hypotheses whiclh are consis...

Partial forest harvesting is known to modify both above- and belowground resource availability and may result in direct and indirect stress to the residual trees as a result of machinery traffic and sudden changes in irradiance. We studied sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) trees in stands that had undergone a selection harvest 11 years before sampling to verify whether sudden increases in lig...

In the next decade, India is likely to witness changes in its cotton and textile sectors as many of the constraints on production, marketing, and trade of cotton and textile products are set to be eliminated. Some of the internal constraints include export constraints on yarn, government fixing of cotton ginning and pressing fees, and subsidization of raw cotton production. Similarly, one of th...

The sorption of three basic dyes, named basic violet 10, basic violet 1, and basic green 4, from aqueous solutions onto sugarcane dust was studied. The results revealed the potential of sugarcane dust, a waste material, to be a low-cost sorbent. Equilibrium isotherms were analyzed using the Langmuir, the Freundlich, and the three-parameter Redlich-Peterson isotherms. In order to determine the b...

Sugarcane is a unique crop with the ability to accumulate high levels of sugar and is a commercially viable source of biomass for bioelectricity and second-generation bioethanol. Water deficit is the single largest abiotic stress affecting sugarcane productivity and the development of water use efficient and drought tolerant cultivars is an imperative for all major sugarcane producing countries...

The “staples thesis” argues that institutions in a given region could be explained by the nature of production of its prevailing staples, whereby slavery is likely to emerge in “slave-conducive” crops, such as cotton, rice, and sugarcane. This paper evaluates the thesis using a unique natural experiment from nineteenth-century rural Egypt, the cotton boom that occurred because of the American C...

A laboratory in situ composting study was conducted as a possible alternative method for the current practice of open air burning of post-harvest sugarcane residue by sugarcane farmers. In situ composting of the sugarcane residue by the indigenous bacteria and fungi was accelerated using molasses as an initial substrate. A one-time application of molasses boosted the soil microbial population. ...