Many crop production management decisions can be informed using data from high-resolution aerial images that provide information about crop health as influenced by soil fertility and moisture. Surface soil moisture is a key component of soil water balance, which addresses water and energy exchanges at the surface/atmosphere interface; however, high-resolution remotely sensed data is rarely used...

In the North China Plain, groundwater tables have been dropping at unsustainable rates of 1 m per year due to irrigation of a double cropping system of winter wheat and summer maize. To reverse the trend, we examined whether alternative crop rotations could save water. Moisture contents were measured weekly at 20 cm intervals in the top 180 cm of soil as part of a 12-year field experiment with ...

In the semi-arid tropics (SAT), 33% areas are occupied by Alfisols and related soils. In SAT these soils have low structural stability and thereby tend to form seal and crusts at the surface. Due to this a large proportion of the rain that falls on Alfisols during the early part of the rainy season, is normally lost as runoff thus causing high soil loss as well as moisture stress to crops. Two ...

For many years, on-farm yield evaluations of corn (Zea mays L.) hybrids were done with weigh wagons, handheld moisture testers, and measuring wheels. Today, most combines have continuous flow yield and moisture sensors. Published research results comparing the accuracy of combine-mounted sensor systems with that of weigh wagons are limited for on-farm corn hybrid evaluation. This study examined...

the prevalent method of irrigation in paddy fields in iran is continuous ponding, which changes to intermittent method at the time of water shortage. soil cracks are the main problem in intermittent irrigation. in this study, effects of adding rice straw on some soil physical characteristics and cracks were studied in paddy soils of the guilan province of iran. the experiment was performed as s...

Prosopis africana is an under utilized tree crop with immense medicinal and industrial values. Manual threshing of the pods to extract the seeds is uneconomical, time consuming, associated with drudgery and low output capacity. A motorized Prosopis africana pod thresher was designed, fabricated and assessed for performance. The main components of the thresher include hopper, threshing unit, cle...