The influence of environmental factors on forage quality of temperate and tropical grasses has been reviewed by several authors, who summarized how light, temperature, drought and soil nutrients influence chemical composition, and digestibility of forages grown in contrasting areas of the world. The effects of season of the year on forage growth, grazing behavior and animal performance have als...

This paper describes the suitability of application of expert system technology in agriculture and propose the development of a rule-based expert system, named KISAN, for the nutrients management of he soil. The proposed system uses the knowledge of visual deficiency symptoms, evident in the plants, to diagnose the nutrients deficiency/excess in the soil. This system has been developed in the B...

Water deficiencies are one of the most serious challenges to crop productivity. To improve our understanding of soil moisture stress, we performed RNA-Seq analysis using roots from 4-week-old rice seedlings grown in soil that had been subjected to drought conditions for 2-3 d. In all, 1,098 genes were up-regulated in response to soil moisture stress for 3 d, which causes severe damage in root d...

BREED, R. S., MURRAY, E. G. D., AND HITCHENS, A. P. 1948 Bergey's manual of determinative bacteriology. 6th ed. The Williams & Wilkins Co., Baltimore, Md. FRED, E. B., AND WAKSMAN, S. A. 1928 Laboratory manual of general microbiology. McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc. New York. HOOVER, MINTON E. 1952 The action of some herbicides upon the microflora of the soil. M. S. Thesis, Louisiana State Universit...

Soil contamination is a worldwide problem. Soil remediation is often carried out to reduce the risks posed by contaminants in the soil to human health and environment. Contaminant concentration is typically the only soil quality aspect maintained in remediation projects. However, emerging regulatory requirements on soil protection has introduced the soil function concept and demand that other c...

Polarimetric decomposition techniques and inversion algorithms are developed and applied on the OPAQUE data set acquired in spring 2007 to investigate their potential and limitations for soil moisture estimation. A three component model-based decomposition is used together with an eigenvalue decomposition in a combined approach to invert for soil moisture over bare and vegetated soils at L-band...

BACKGROUND Global food insecurity is associated with micronutrient deficiencies and it has been suggested that 4.5 billion people world-wide are affected by deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and iodine. Zinc has also been identified to be of increasing concern. The most vulnerable are young children and women of childbearing age. A pilot study has been carried out in Southern Malawi, to attempt t...

The dynamic soil model SAFE was calibrated and validated in a small hardwood forest of southern Quebec as a function of its ability to reproduce current soil chemistry and similar pre-industrial soil conditions despite the difference in forest history. SAFE was relatively accurate for reproducing soil chemistry, but comparison of pre-industrial soil conditions between unburned and burned stands...

Calcium Absorbed form the soil as the cation, Ca. Most calcium uptake occurs near the root tip. Poorly translocated within the plant. Deficiencies of Ca first affect the growing points of plants, including root tips. Calcium is important for cell wall formation and the integrity of cell membranes. Sensitive crops to Ca deficiency and characteristic symptoms. Crop Symptoms Peanuts Old leaves hav...

Optimal plant growth is crucial in research experi ments as well as in nursery operations. Two major factors that influence plant growth are soil mix and fertilizer. Use of com mercial soil mixes would be desirable for smaller operations which often lack facilities for mixing and sterilization. Several commercial potting mixes were compared to the UC (Universi ty of California) mix for growing ...