Brassica plants once incorporated into soil as green manures have recently been shown to have biofumigant properties and have the potential of controlling plant-parasitic nematodes. In Washington State, plant-parasitic nematodes are successfully managed with synthetic nematicides. However, some of the synthetic nematicides became unavailable recently or their supply is limited leaving growers w...

Effect of composting on the extractability of plant nutrients in organic wastes is essential for their recycling in sustainable soil fertility management. Therefore, an experiment was carried out to determine the concentrations of total C, total N, extractable P, K, Na and B in five types of fresh and composted manures (namely buffalo, camel, cow, goat and poultry). Laboratory results showed th...

Changes in physicochemical characteristics, chemical structures and maturity of swine, cattle and chicken manures and composts during 70-day composting without addition of bulking agents were investigated. Physicochemical characteristics were measured by routine analyses and chemical structures by solid-state 13C NMR and FT-IR. Three manures were of distinct properties. Their changes in physico...

Manure water-extractable phosphorus (WEP) data are used in indices and models to assess P transport in runoff. Methods to measure WEP vary widely, often without understanding the effect on howmuch P is extracted.We conductedwater extractions on five dairy, swine, and poultry manures to assess single and sequential extractions, drying manures, solution to solid (cm g) extraction ratios, andPdete...

Concern over the enrichment of agricultural runoff with phosphorus (P) from land applied livestock manures has prompted the development of manure amendments that minimize P solubility. In this study, we amended poultry, dairy, and swine manures with two rare earth chlorides, lanthanum chloride (LaCl(3).7H(2)O) and ytterbium chloride (YbCl(3).6H(2)O), to evaluate their effects on P solubility in...

The incorporation of ecological practices into sugarcane production and management has the potential to arrest and ameliorate the negative effects of monocropping on soil degradation and yield decline. Historically, the production of green manures as cover or break crops has been shown to improve the physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil for many crops in production agriculture....

The potentials of poultry, farmyard and refuse dump manures for management of Phytophthora root rot on sweet peppers, Capsicum annuum was evaluated in pot experiments under controlled conditions. Five week-old seedlings of pepper varieties were transplanted into heat sterilized soil amended with poultry, farmyard and refuse dump manures at 2, 4 and 8 tons/ha. The pots were arranged in complete ...

We report here the development, validation, and use of three real-time PCR assays to quantify the abundance of the following three groups of tetracycline resistance genes: tet(A) and tet(C); tet(G); and tet genes encoding ribosomal protection proteins, including tet(M), tet(O), tetB(P), tet(Q), tet(S), tet(T), and tet(W). The assays were validated using known numbers of sample-derived tet gene ...

To determine the contents of heavy metal (Cu, Zn, As, Cr, Cd and Pb) in animal feeds and manures, 104 livestock feeds and 118 animal manure samples from farms of different herd size and located in northeast China were collected and their heavy metal concentrations were determined. The content of Cu, As and Cd ranged from 2.3-1,137.1 mg/kg dm, 0.02-13.03 mg/kg dm and non-detectable (nd)-31.65 mg...