The use of agricultural chemicals is an important aspect of animal production. Animal scientists have played an active and varied role in the recent and rapidly developed use of these chemicals. Although approval to use agricultural chemicals has always been based on both efficacy and end point residues, increased consumer concerns during the past one and one-half decades about the safety of th...

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...

soil enzyme activities can be used as indicators of soil quality for assessing the sustainability of agricultural ecosystems. the objective of this study was to determine the effects of barley residue input rate, burning, urea fertilizer and tillage management on activities of alkaline phosphatase and urease under field conditions, after a period of 90 days. the experiment was carried out based...

We investigated the determination of N-methylcarbamate pesticides and their metabolites in agricultural products by HPLC with post-column fluorescence detection after clean-up with an SPE cartridge. The homogenate of agricultural products was extracted with acetone. The crude extract was partitioned between 5% sodium chloride solution and dichloromethane, and the dichloromethane layer was conce...

Agricultural crop rotations have been shown to increase soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and microbial biomass. The mechanisms behind these increases remain unclear, but may be linked to the diversity of crop residue inputs to soil organic matter (SOM). We used a residue mixture incubation to examine how variation in longterm diversity of plant communities in agroecosystems influences decompositi...

Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration can increase biomass production and alter tissue composition. Shifts in both quantity and quality of crop residue may alter carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics and management considerations in future CO2-enriched agroecosystems. This study was conducted to determine decomposition rates of the legume soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] and nonlegume grain sor...