Berseem (Trifolium alexandrinum) is one of the main fodder crops of Punjab, India. But due to the heavy metal contamination of agricultural soils by anthropogenic activities, there is rise in metal bioaccumulation in crops like Berseem. In addition to human influence, heavy metal contents in soil are highly dependent on soil characteristics also. Therefore a study was conducted in areas having ...

In this study, the natural Cu background concentration and Cu natural and anthropogenic contamination in soil, water and crop were investigated systematically in Huangshi area. The results show that regional geology is the dominant factor controlling the natural Cu background concentration in soil and water, and that pH is important to control the vertical distribution of Cu in soil under the s...

The present study deals with the assessment of toxicity of distillery effluent on soil microorganisms and its quality improvement through bioremediation using Pseudomonas spp. Under lab scale experiment, different dilutions of distillery effluent i.e. 25%, 50%, 75% were used to examine effects on physico-chemical parameters of effluent and on soil microflora e.g. algae, bacteria, fungi and acti...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are key components of soil micro-flora and obviously interact with other microorganisms in the rhizosphere which is the zone of influence of plant roots on microbial populations and other soil constituents. Keeping in view the importance of AM fungi, the present study was undertaken for assessing the AM fungal spore population dynamics in the rhizosphere soil and it...

the fire as one of the ecological factor has positive or negative effects on ecosystems components. therefore, this study was evaluated the effect of fire on some soil physico-chemical properties in winter rangelands of behshahr. so that two burned sites were selected in rangelands and changed rangelands to wheat and barley with two control areas (unburned) in each of them. the soil sampling wa...

Rangeland degradation is one of the global concerns affecting the pastoralists and those who suffer from its negative environmental consequences. Grazing exclosure has been extensively used among the techniques implemented by the government to protect the fertility of threatened rangelands. The impact of exclosure has been a controversial issue; therefore, it is important to understand its effe...

The global terrestrial heterotrophic respiration is estimated at about 60 Gt C yr-1 (Schlesinger, 1991). Plant litter produced during senescence processes and plant residues left on site after harvest operations are the primary substrate for heterotrophic respiration in plant-soil ecosystems. They constitute both of aboveground and belowground plant parts. Substrate quality, together with the p...

The sand dunes and inter-dune zones of the hyper-arid central Namib Desert represent heterogeneous soil habitats. As little is known about their indigenous edaphic bacterial communities, we aimed to evaluate their diversity and factors of assembly and hypothesized that soil physicochemistry gradients would strongly shape dune/interdune communities. We sampled a total of 125 samples from 5 paral...