Most of the world's grasslands are managed for livestock production. A critical component of the long-term sustainability and profitability of rangelands (e.g., grazed grassland ecosystems) is the maintenance of plant production. Amending grassland soils with organic waste has been proposed as a means to increase net primary productivity (NPP) and ecosystem carbon (C) storage, while mitigating ...

Sugar mills plays a major role in polluting the water bodies and land by discharging a large amount of wastewater as effluent. The sugar mill effluents are having higher amount of suspended solids, dissolved solids, BOD, COD, chloride sulphate, nitrates, calcium and magnesium. The continuous use of these effluents harmfully affect the crops when used for irrigation. As a result, a higher amount...

Plant growth is limited in arid and/or contaminated sites due to the adverse conditions coming from heavy metal (HM) contamination and/or water stress. Moreover, soils from these areas are generally characterised by poor soil structure, low water-holding capacity, lack of organic matter and nutrient deficiency. In order to carry out a successful re-afforestation, it is necessary to improve soil...

Agricultural systems often require added phosphorus to achieve optimum crop and livestock production. The application of soil amendments, such as inorganic fertilizers, manure, biosolids, and waste water, can improve soil fertility and help produce optimum crop yields. However, many of these amendments, particularly organic materials such as animal manure, are often applied in excess of crop nu...

In this study, we examined the response of surface soils to increased leaf and wood litter input within adjacent successional forests recovering from agricultural disturbance at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), Maryland, USA. Previous studies at this site demonstrated an arrested development of O-horizon, even after 130 years of forest growth, and an annual loss of leaf lit...

Southern blight ( ) of soybean ( ) is an important disease throughout the world. Some soil amendments can reduce disease levels by improving soil microbial activity. The main goals of this study were to investigate the effects of soil amendments such as dried powders of kudzu ( ), velvetbean ( ), and pine bark ( ), on soil microbial population and disease caused by on soybean. Pine bark, velvet...

Dried ground plant tissues from 20 leguminous species were mixed with Meloidogyne incognita-infested soil at 1, 2 or 2.5, and 5% (w/w) and incubated for 1 week at room temperature (21 to 27 degrees C). Tomato ('Rutgers') seedlings were transplanted into infested soil to determine nematode viability. Most tissues reduced gall numbers below the non-amended controls. The tissue amendments that wer...

ABSTRACT Soil fertility amendments, including composted cotton-gin trash, swine manure, a rye-vetch green manure, or synthetic fertilizers, were applied to subplots and tillage on bare soil; or tillage followed by surface mulch with wheat straw were applied to main plots to determine the effect on the incidence of southern blight caused by Sclerotium rolfsii, yield of processing tomato, and soi...

The impacts of two organic soil amendments on nematode abundance, community structure and soil characteristics were studied in field grown tomatoes. We hypothesized that as the raw (labile form) and composted (non-labile form) manures differ in their chemical composition and effect on microbial activity. Also they will have different effects on soil properties and directly and indirectly affect...