We determined total and methyl mercury contents in soil, three earthworm species and their vomitus to study the species-specific differences of mercury bioconcentration in Huludao City, a heavily polluted region by chlor-alkali and nonferrous metal smelting industry in Liaoning Province, northeast China. Total and methyl mercury contents were 7.20 mg/kg and 6.94 ng/g in soil, 1.43 mg/kg and 43....

The efficiency with which fertilizer-nitrogen (N) is transferred to grain-N in cereals is usually less than 50% and averages 33% worldwide. Two long-term N fertility experiments were evaluated to examine temporal changes in nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) and their causes. Averaged over 30-yr, non-irrigated winter wheat NUE was 49% at a 22.4 kg N ha 1 yr 1 rate and decreased to 34% at a rate of 1...

The field experiment was conducted during Zaid season 2021-22 at Crop Research Farm, Department of Agronomy, Sam Higginbottom University Agriculture, Technology and Sciences, Prayagraj (U.P). soil the plot sandy loam in texture, nearly neutral reaction (pH 7.2), low organic carbon (0.48%), available N (171.48 kg/ha), P (13.6 kg/ha) K (215.4 kg/ha). treatments consisted three levels Gibberellic ...

Conservation practices retain crop residues on the soil surface that affect nutrient distribution in time and space. We hypothesized that nutrient mineralization from surface residues may not be correlated to mass loss but may depend on crop type and water availability. Frequent, moderate, and no irrigation were used to evaluate water effects on N, P, K, and mass dynamics of alfalfa (Medicago s...

The community of ammonia-oxidizing prokaryotes was examined in an agricultural soil treated for six seasons with contrasting nitrogen (N) sources. Molecular tools based on the genes encoding ammonia monooxygenase were used to characterize the ammonia oxidizer (AO) communities and their abundance. Soil DNA was extracted from soils sampled from silage corn plots that received no additional N (con...

In a previous study, three bacterial strains isolated from tropical hydrocarbon-contaminated soils and phylogenetically identified as Achromobacter sp. strain SL1, Pseudomonas sp. strain SL4 and Microbacterium esteraromaticum strain SL6 displayed angular dioxygenation and mineralization of carbazole in batch cultures. In this study, the ability of these isolates to survive and enhance carbazole...

Surface soil and groundwater in Australia have been found to contain high concentrations of arsenic. The relative importance of long-term human exposure to these sources has not been established. Several studies have investigated long-term exposure to environmental arsenic concentrations using hair and toenails as the measure of exposure. Few have compared the difference in these measures of en...