Crop

The changing trend of soil available phosphorus (Olsen-P) content in soil and its relationship with soil phosphorus surplus and crop yield are fundamental when making appropriate phosphate fertilizer recommendations. In this paper, the influences of long-term fertilization on crops phosphorus uptake, soil phosphorus surplus, changing trend of soil available phosphorus content and relationships of soil available phosphorus content with soil phosphorus surplus and crop yield were investigated through 34 years (1981-2015) long-term trial in loessial soil region on the Loess Plateau...

Non-invasive microsensing technique has been widely used in evaluating the adaptive responses of plant cells and tissues to abiotic stresses. One of the representative techniques is the microelectrode ion flux estimation (MIFE), which allows concurrent quantification of net fluxes with high spatial and temporal resolution. More importantly, this technique permits simultaneous recording of ion concentration and mobility with less intervention to the in situ physiological status. With the availability of such advanced technique, the last three decades have seen a significant progress towards the role of ion signaling in a variety of abiotic stresses including salinity, extreme temperature, osmotic stress, hypoxia, and drought...

In recent years, the two issues of climate change including elevated CO2 etc., and resistance of transgenic Bt crops against non-target insect pests have received widespread attention. Elevated CO2 can affect the herbivorous insects. To date, there is no consensus about the effect of elevated CO2 on the suck-feeding insect pests (non-target insect pests of transgenic Bt crops). Its effects on the suck-feeding behavior have rarely been reported. In this study, CO2 levels were set up in artificial climate chamber to examined the effects of ambient (400 μL·L-1 ) and double-ambient (800 μL·L-1 ) CO2 levels on the suck-feeding behavior, growth, development, and reproduction of the non-target insect pest of transgenic Bt rice, brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens...

An eight-year field experiment of straw returning was conducted on dark loessial soil in Weibei Highland to investigate the effects of tillage patterns on soil aggregate, soil organic carbon (SOC), corn yield and soil water use efficiency (WUE). There were six tillage patterns, including conventional tillage (CT/CT), no-tillage (NT/NT), subsoiling tillage (ST/ST), no-tillage/subsoiling tillage (NT/ST), conventional tillage/no-tillage (CT/NT) and conventional tillage/subsoiling tillage (CT/ST). The results showed that compared with CT/CT, the patterns of NT/NT, ST/ST and the rotational tillage patterns (NT/ST, CT/NT and CT/ST) decreased the mean mass diameter of soil mechanical stable aggregate...

Direct straw return to soils often leads to poor combination between soil and straw, decreases straw decomposition and suppresses crop growth. Those problems hamper crop yield and its stability. Granulated straw with high bulk density and small volume improves the straw quality and the soil-straw combination. It remains unknown how does the practice influence soil carbon emission and grain yield. A micro-field experiment was carried out to investigate the responses of wheat and maize yields, soil respiration and soil carbon use efficiency...

The elevated concentration of tropospheric ozone (O3 ) is an important global climate change driver, with adverse impacts on soil ecological environment and crop growth. In this study, a pot experiment was carried out in an open top chamber (OTC), to investigate the effects of elevated ozone concentration on soil enzyme activities (catalase, polyphenol oxidase, dehydrogenase and invertase), organic acids contents (oxalic acid, citric acid and malic acid) at different growth stages (tillering, jointing, heading and ripening stages) of wheat, and combined with the rhizospheric soil physicochemical properties and plant root characteristics to analyze the underlying reasons...

In order to explore the cultivation techniques for high yield, quality and nitrogen use efficiency of wheat and guide the production practice of late sowing, a two-year experiment of different sowing times and plant densities in fixed plots was conducted from October 2012 to June 2014. Weak-spring cultivar of Yanzhan4110 (YZ4110) and semi-winter cultivar of Aikang58 (AK58) were sowed with two cropping patterns: Normal sowing (sowing in the middle of October, 2.4×106 plants·hm-2 ) and extremely-late sowing (sowing in the middle of November, 6...

A five-year successive rice straw-derived biochar (BC) amendment pot trial was conducted to investigate the BC effects on crop growth responses, soil properties and ammonia volatilization in a calcareous alkaline soil from 2010-2015 under the greenhouse condition. We adopted 0 (the control; BC0 ), 2.25 t·hm-2 (BC2.25 ) and 22.5 t·hm-2 (BC22.5 ) for each wheat/millet crop season with an identical dose of NPK fertilizers. The results showed that BC treatments (BC2.25 and BC22.5 ) improved soil fertility and crop growth compared to the no BC control...

To evaluate the long-term effects of biochar amendment on greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), a field experiment was conducted to examine the effects of 3-year field-aged biochar (B3 ) and fresh biochar (B0 ) on global warming potential (GWP) and greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) of methane (CH4 ) and nitrous oxide (N2 O) in a typical rice-wheat rotation system. Four treatments were established as control without nitrogen fertilizer (CK), urea without biochar (N), urea with fresh biochar amended in 2015 (NB0 ), and urea with 3-year field-aged biochar amended in 2012 (NB3 )...

Trend analysis method was applied to analyze the general variation characteristics of the climate resources and meteorological disasters of growing season of the winter planting in Guangdong before (1961-1996) and after climate warming (1997-2015). Percentile method was employed to determine thresholds for extreme cold and drought in major planting regions, and the characteristics of extreme disasters since climate warming were analyzed. The results showed that, by comparing 1997-2015 with 1961-1996, the heat value in winter growing season increased significantly...

An assessment of potential risks of pesticides on wildlife is required during the process of product registration within Europe, because of the importance of agricultural landscapes as wildlife habitats. Despite their peculiarity and their specific role as artificial wetlands, rice paddies are to date pooled with cereals in guidance documents on how to conduct risk assessments for birds and mammals in Europe. Hence, the focal species currently considered in risk assessments for rice paddies are those known from cereal fields and can therefore be expected to differ significantly from the species actually occurring in the wet environments of rice paddies...

Plants in Brassica genus have been found to possess strong allelopathic potential. They may inhibit seed germination and emergence of subsequent crops following them in a rotation system. Series of laboratory and greenhouse experiments were conducted to determine the allelopathic impacts of Brassica napus L. against mung bean. We studied (1) the effects of aqueous extract (5%) of different plant parts (root, stem, leaf, flower, and whole plant) of B. napus, (2) the effects of leaf and flower extracts of B. napus at 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4% concentrations, and (3) the effect of residues of different B...

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Among their responses to microbial infection, plants deploy an arsenal of natural antibiotic products. These historically have been identified on the basis of their antibiotic activity in vitro, which leaves open the question of their relevance to defense in planta. The vast majority of such natural products from the important crop plant rice (Oryza sativa) are diterpenoids whose biosynthesis proceeds via either ent- or syn- copalyl diphosphate (CPP) intermediates, and which were isolated on the basis of their antibiotic activity against the fungal blast pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of different rice rotations on cyanobacteria populations during the growing season. The study was conducted in Entre Ríos (Argentina). Four crop rotations were evaluated: rice-soybean (AS); rice-soybean-corn-soybean (ASMS); rice-rice (AA) and rice-pasture (AP). Soil and water samples were collected in 4 stages: implantation, tillering, booting and physiological maturity. The potential number of cyanobacteria population was lowerin relation to other rice sites previously reported...

Miscanthus is a leading bioenergy crop and rice provides enormous biomass for biofuels. Using Calcofluor White staining, this work in situ observed an initial lignocellulose hydrolysis in two distinct Miscanthus accessions, rice cultivar (NPB), and Osfc16 mutant after mild chemical pretreatments. In comparison, the M. sin and Osfc16 respectively exhibited weak Calcofluor fluorescence compared to the M. sac and NPB during enzymatic hydrolysis, consistent with the high biomass saccharification detected in vitro...

Following publication of the original article [1], the authors reported that while the ordination graphs are all correct, the symbols in the legend are wrong.

In this study, modified perpendicular drought index (MPDI) models based on the red-near infrared spectral space are established for the first time through the analysis of the spectral characteristics of GF-1 wide field view (WFV) data, with a high spatial resolution of 16 m and the highest frequency as high as once every 4 days. GF-1 data was from the Chinese-made, new-generation high-resolution GF-1 remote sensing satellites. Soil-type spatial data are introduced for simulating soil lines in different soil types for reducing errors of using same soil line...

Understanding the molecular mechanisms underpinning the ecological success of plant pathogens is critical to develop strategies for controlling diseases and protecting crops. Recent observations have shown that plant pathogenic bacteria, particularly Pseudomonas , exist in a range of natural environments away from their natural plant host e.g., water courses, soil, non-host plants. This exposes them to a variety of eukaryotic predators such as nematodes, insects and amoebae present in the environment. Nematodes and amoeba in particular are bacterial predators while insect herbivores may act as indirect predators, ingesting bacteria on plant tissue...

Larvae of a previously unknown species of gall midge were found feeding on young fruit of mango, Mangifera indica (Anacardiaceae), in Guangxi Autonomous Region in southern China, causing severe damage to the crop. The new species is named Procontarinia fructiculi Jiao, Wang, Bu Kolesik, its morphology is described, the basic biology is given, and the Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I (COI) mitochondrial gene segment is sequenced and compared to other congeners. Procontarinia contains now 16 described species, each feeding on mango...