Over the last decade, investigations on root water uptake have evolved toward a deeper integration of the soil and roots compartment properties, with the goal of improving our understanding of water acquisition from drying soils. This evolution parallels the increasing attention of agronomists to suboptimal crop production environments. Recent results have led to the description of root system ...

The green lumber products tend towards a state of equilibrium with the surrounding environment. The final target is the equilibrium moisture content (EMC). Whether is natural convection in the lumberyard or forced convection in the kiln drier, the road towards the final EMC consumes time and energy. The air drying operations (natural convection) are not an easy task for the drying management. T...

Coffee is one of the most consumed commercial beverages worldwide, and coffee growers are constantly seeking innovative processing techniques to improve quality final product. This study evaluated influence four drying airflows three harvest periods on chemical composition green roasted specialty beans. The samples were obtained from Hacienda La Papaya in Loja, Ecuador. Liquid gas chromatograph...

Under conditions of high vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and soil drying, restricting transpiration is an important avenue to gain efficiency in water use. The question we raise in this article is whether breeding for agro-ecological environments that differ for the rainfall have selected for traits that control plant water use. These are measured in pearl millet materials bred for zones varying i...

Convective hot air drying of potato slabs and the effects of drying air temperature and slab thickness have been investigated using a batch tray dryer. The temperature of drying chamber varied in four levels (50, 60, 70 and 80°C) and the slab thickness changed in three levels (0.5, 1 and 1.5 m). For the prediction of effective moisture diffusivity (D ), the conventional Fick’s diffusion model w...

thin layer drying behavior of sweet lemon slice was experimentally investigated in a convective type dryer and the mathematical modeling performed, using thin layer drying models given in literature. drying experiments were conducted at inlet drying air temperatures of 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 ?c; two slice thicknesses of 3 and 6 mm, and, at one drying air velocity of 0.5 m/s with three replicatio...

The physiological responses of potato (Solanum tuberosum L. cv. Folva) to partial root-zone drying (PRD) were investigated in potted plants in a greenhouse (GH) and in plants grown in the field under an automatic rain-out-shelter. In the GH, irrigation was applied daily to the whole root system (FI), or to one-half of the root system while the other half was dried, for 9 d. In the field, the pl...