Quantifying the amount of crop residue left in the field after harvest is a key issue for sustainability. Conventional assessment approaches (e.g., line-transect) are labor intensive, time-consuming and costly. Many proximal remote sensing devices and systems have been developed for agricultural applications such as cover crop and residue mapping. For instance, current mobile devices (smartphon...

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...

Melanization reaction, resulting from the activation of prophenoloxidase, is a vital immune response in insects for encapsulating and killing the invasive organisms. Prophenoloxidase needs to be proteolytically activated by its upstream prophenoloxidase-activating protease (PAP) in melanization. Identification and characterization of PAPs facilitates the understanding of the molecular mechanism...

Soil populations of plant-parasitic nematodes were monitored bimonthly for 18 months in irrigated and nonirrigated corn plantings using four production systems: conventional and minimum tillage with crop residue returned and minimum tillage with 60% or 90% of previous corn crop residue removed. Populations of Meloidogyne incognita, Scutellonema brachyurum, Pratylenchus scribneri, and Paratricho...

The amino acid sequence of a corn inhibitor for trypsin and activated Hageman Factor (Factor XIIa) was determined by automated Edman degradation from the intact inhibitor and two fragments generated by specific cleavage of the inhibitor. The 112-residue sequence is unique at each position except 91, where both Ala and Glu were found. The structural heterogeneity suggests the occurrence of two g...

......................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements..................................................................................iv Chapter 1: Introduction...............................................................................1 References................................................................................

Corn germ cake is an abundant and inexpensive residue of corn germ pressing. The permanent increase of corn processing – due to the recent growing demand for bioethanol – has resulted in a surplus of this by-product, making it unmarketable as feed. Our goal was to find an alternative way to utilize this by-product. We could successfully extract 86 % of the polysaccharide content of the squeezed...

A 4-yr study using 217 cows/yr (3/4 Red Angus, 1/4 Simmental) evaluated effects of calving date and wintering system on cow and calf performance from birth to harvest. Cows were assigned to 1 of 5 treatments: 1) March (Mar) calving cows wintered on native range, 2) Mar calving cows wintered on corn residue, 3) June (Jun) calving cows wintered on native range, 4) Jun calving cows wintered on cor...

The presence of deep-burrowing earthworms can affect soil structure and in®ltration, therefore in ̄uencing agricultural productivity. We investigated the effects of deep-burrowing earthworm species on soil structure at the surface of chisel-plowed or ridge-tilled cropping systems in Pike County, OH, planted to corn (Zea mays L.). Earthworm populations were experimentally manipulated in ®eld encl...

Low-carbon biofuel sources are being developed and evaluated in the United States and Europe to partially offset petroleum transport fuels. Current and potential biofuel production systems were evaluated from a long-term continuous no-tillage corn (Zea mays L.) and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) field trial under differing harvest strategies and nitrogen (N) fertilizer intensities to determi...