The importance of the Northern Guam aquifer as a source of drinking water for the tropical Pacific island of Guam has stimulated public interest in the impact of forest clearing and conversion to agriculture on the region’s environment. The objectives of this study were to determine the effects of land clearing, tillage, and fertilization of tropical secondary forest on soil organic and organic...

Roots of Vetiveria zizanioides Nash (Mae Hae; Thai ecotype) planted in three different cultivation systems (normal soil, normal soil with added microbes and semi- hydroponically) were extracted using a simultaneous steam distillation and solvent extraction (SDE) apparatus. Yields of the essential oils obtained were 0.27, 0.18 and 0.06%, respectively. The separation profiles obtained by comprehe...

Use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and sewage sludge in agriculture lands caused the increase of heavy metals concentration in the soils in many parts of the world. The purpose of this article is studying the impacts of agricultural activities on the accumulation of Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni and Pb in the soil. The soil samples were taken by systematic method from agriculture fields with cultivat...

Prevalence of keratinophilic fungi was observed in paddy field soil during different stages of cultivation viz., transplanting, tillering, milking and maturation. Out of total 76 soil samples, 65 soil samples were found to be positive for the keratinophilic fungi. Fourteen species belonging to a single genus Chrysosporium were isolated through out the cropping season. C. keratinophilum (17.1%) ...

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...

The objective of this work was to evaluate the effectiveness of ruzigrass (Urochloa ruziziensis) in enhancing soil‐P availability in areas fertilized with soluble or reactive rock phosphates. The area had been cropped for five years under no‐till, in a system involving soybean, triticale/black‐oat, and pearl millet. Previously to the five‐year cultivation period, corrective phosphorus fertiliza...

Soil microorganisms play vital roles in recovering and maintaining the health of ecosystems, particularly in fragile Karst ecosystems that are easily degraded after cultivation. We investigated the composition and diversity of soil bacterial communities, based on RFLP and 16S rDNA sequencing, in a cropland, a naturally revegetated land with former cultivation disturbance and a primeval forest i...

Traditional microbiological methods of cultivation recover less than 1% of the total bacterial species, and the culturable portion of bacteria is not representative of the total phylogenetic diversity. Classical cultivation strategies are now known to supply excessive nutrients to a system and therefore select for fast-growing bacteria that are capable of colony or biofilm formation. New approa...