A three year field study (2007-2009) of the diversity and numbers of the total and metabolically active free-living diazotophic bacteria and total bacterial communities in organic and conventionally managed agricultural soil was conducted using the Nafferton Factorial Systems Comparison (NFSC) study, in northeast England. Fertility management appeared to have little impact on both diazotrophic ...

Crop rotations are an important factor for the design and implementation of sustainable agricultural systems. Integrated agricultural land use models increasingly acknowledge the role of crop rotations by assessing economic and environmental impacts of agricultural production systems. However, insufficient data on crop rotations often challenge their implementation. In this article, we present ...

Invasive, polyphagous crop pests subsist on a number of crop and non-crop resources. While knowing the full range of host species is important, a seasonal investigation into the use of non-crop plants adjacent to cropping systems provide key insights into some of the factors determining local population dynamics. This study investigated the infestation of non-crop plants by the invasive Drosoph...

In recent years, the disposal of organic wastes from domestic, agricultural and industrial sources has caused increasing environmental concerns. In this regard, the recycling of utilizable waste is feasible. This can be solved by combination of effective technologies like Biodung composting and Vermitech (incorporating earthworms for the production of vermicompost). The present work was carried...

Interannual variation in plant phenology can lead to major modifications in the interannual variation of net ecosystem production (NEP) and net biome production (NBP) as a result of recent climate change in croplands. Continuous measurements of carbon flux using the eddy covariance technique were conducted in two winter wheat and summer maize double-cropped croplands during 2003-2012 in Yucheng...

Research Article Stability analysis for grain yield and yield components in chick pea (Cicer arietinum l.) Abstract: Twenty one advanced breeding lines selected from All India Coordinated trials and one local popular variety " annegiri' were studied over three years to identify high yielding stable genotypes. Genotype , environment and G x E interaction variance found to be significant. Genotyp...

The adaptive responses of crop genotypes and patterns of genotype x location (G x L) interaction are important to crop improvement as they are the basis for selection for specific adaptation and for elucidation of the causes of G x L interaction. Their legitimate assessment, however, requires yield data for the test genotypes for a large number of sites and over multiple years. Such data are se...

Returning crop residue improves water conservation and storage, nutrient availability, and crop yields. We have little knowledge, however, of the residual impacts of crop residues on soil and crop production. We hypothesized that residual impacts of crop residues vary with the amount of residues used. A 10-yr study near Lincoln, NE, evaluated the residual effects of an earlier 8-yr study of var...

The Crop Growth Monitoring System (CGMS) has been applied for spatial biophysical resource analysis of Borkhar & Meymeh district in Esfahan province, Iran. The potentially suitable area for agriculture in the district has been divided into 128 homogeneous land units in terms of soil (physical characteristics), weather and administrative unit. Crop parameters required in the WOFOST simulatio...