Th e incorporation of plant biomass (litter/prunned residues) into the soil constitutes an important pathway for nutrient cycling in ecosystems. Th e feasibility of meeting N needs of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) with short-duration pigeon pea fallow was studied in the fi eld in Akure, a humid zone of Nigeria. Th e trials were set up on site where late season pigeon pea – maize intercr...

Relay intercropping systems with rice cultivars (WAB450-24-3-2-P18-HB (V4) and WAB56-50), the competitive Cajanus cajan and the weakly competitive Stylosanthes hamata were evaluated in the tropical savanna zone in Côte d’Ivoire. The INTERCOM model for competition served for data analysis and understanding of the system based on phenological, physiological and morphological characteristics of th...

The temporal dynamics of vegetation biomass are of key importance for evaluating the sustainability of arid and semiarid ecosystems. In these ecosystems, biomass and soil moisture are coupled stochastic variables externally driven, mainly, by the rainfall dynamics. Based on long-term field observations in northwestern (NW) China, we test a recently developed analytical scheme for the descriptio...

Experiment was designed to establish a more defi nitive relationship of phenological and physiological traits with yield in wheat using twenty fi ve spring wheat genotypes. Because many of these traits are interrelated, correlation coeffi cient, path analysis and principal component analysis were used to expose these relationships more clearly. Experiment was conducted at the Wheat Research Cen...

Introduction: Exposure to the fumes produced as a result of burning of biomass used for cooking is considered a cause of chronic bronchitis, chronic airway obstruction and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease The severity depends on duration of exposure. Present study was aimed to assess the lung function of rural women exposed to biomass fumes during cooking. Methodology: Women from Agashivna...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Tobacco smoking has been established as a major risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in women of developing countries, but emerging evidence suggests that biomass fuel is an important risk factor as well. The primary objective of the study was to find the true prevalence of COPD in Indian women exposed to biomass fuel using spirometry. We also a...

Microzooplankton are an integral part of aquatic food webs, yet compared to macrozooplankton, are understudied in the Southern Ocean. The region along the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is experiencing rapid climate warming, resulting in declines in sea ice extent and duration, and affecting the marine food web. Microzooplankton community structure along the WAP was analyzed in January 2010 ...

Microbial biomass nitrogen and carbon were studied in long-term field experiments with continuous cultivation of silage maize and with crop rotation. a positive effect of organic fertilizers on the microbial biomass nitrogen and the carbon content in soil was observed. Statistically significant effect of organic fertilizers on the higher content of microbial biomass C and n was established in t...

The rate of new exotic recruitment following removal of adult invaders (reinvasion pressure) influences restoration outcomes and costs but is highly variable and poorly understood. We hypothesize that broad variation in average reinvasion pressure of Triadica sebifera (Chinese tallow tree, a major invader) arises from differences among habitats in spatiotemporal availability of realized recruit...