7 Heihe River Basin is located in the arid inland area of northwest China and is facing 8 serious water shortage problems. Since irrigation is the largest water consumer in the 9 middle reaches of the Basin, it is crucial to study the crop yields and water 10 consumption in order to improve the agricultural water productivity and to support 11 sustainable economic development in this region. Ba...

Arid regions are an important part of the world as they cover more than 40% of the land surface and they can provide sufficient opportunities for extensive development. However, urban development of these regions is facing a set of problems. This is besides the development barriers due to the arid regions climate associated with a set of economical, social, administrative, and physical problems...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The timing of flowering and summer dormancy induction plays a central role in the adaptation of Mediterranean geophytes to changes in the length of the growth season along rainfall gradients. Our aim was to analyse the role of the variation in the responses of flowering and summer dormancy to vernalization, daylength and growth temperature for the adaptation of Poa bulbosa, ...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Rajasthan is one of the dengue endemic states of India. Very few studies have been published on entomological aspects of dengue in this state. Owing to water scarcity, inhabitants in desert areas overstore domestic water which leads to the persistence of dengue vectors within the domestic premises. Area specific knowledge on breeding, key containers and seasonal rhythms ...

BACKGROUND Agrobiodiversity is said to contribute to the sustainability of agricultural systems and food security. However, how this is achieved especially in smallholder farming systems in arid and semi-arid areas is rarely documented. In this study, we explored two contrasting regions in Benin to investigate how agroecological and socioeconomic contexts shape the diversity and utilization of ...

Plant phenology models, especially leafing models, play critical roles in evaluating the impact of climate change on the primary production of temperate plants. Existing models based on temperature alone could not accurately simulate plant leafing in arid and semi-arid regions. The objective of the present study was to test the suitability of the existing temperature-based leafing models in ari...

p270 is an integral member of human SWI-SNF complexes, first identified through its shared antigenic specificity with p300 and CREB binding protein. The deduced amino acid sequence of p270 reported here indicates that it is a member of an evolutionarily conserved family of proteins distinguished by the presence of a DNA binding motif termed ARID (AT-rich interactive domain). The ARID consensus ...

Climate changes are predicted to increase extreme rainfall events in semiarid and arid region in Northern Hemisphere. Nutrient cycles will be affected by the precipitation changes but so far only very little is known how soil N transformations may respond. Here we investigated gross soil N transformation rates and their response to simulated rainfall events across Northeast China Transect (NECT...

The interaction of genotype with environment is of primary importance in many aspects of genomic research and is a special priority in the study of major crops grown in a wide range of environments. Water deficit, the major factor limiting plant growth and crop productivity worldwide, is expected to increase with the spread of arid lands. In genetically equivalent cotton populations grown under...

Stereology was used to quantify components within the kidney of honeyeater birds. Arid zone and wet zone inhabiting 'matched' body mass pairs of birds were examined. The kidney structure of the arid zone white-fronted honeyeater, Phylidonyris albifrons (16.9 g), was compared with that of the wet zone New Holland honeyeater, Phylidonyris novaehollandiae (21.9 g), and that of the arid zone spiny-...