Tropical Africa is affected by intense land-use change, particularly forest conversion to agricultural land. In this study, the stream discharge of four small headwater catchments located within an area of 6 km in western Kenya was examined for 2 years (2007 and 2008). The four catchments cover a degradation gradient ranging from intact forest to agricultural land under maize cultivation for 5,...

a field study was undertaken with four farming systems (fs) such as; grasses and fodders, agro-forestry, agriculture (new farming systems) and shifting cultivation (old practice), to investigate the effect of land use on the soil properties, erosion and crop productivity on a loamy acidic alfisol. besides crops, the livestock were also kept and their dropping were incorporated in the respective...

sugarcane, which has high water requirements, is grown in khuzestan province (iran). climate and optimizing the use of water is very important to sustainable cultivation of sugarcane. studies of water requirements for sugar cane in khuzestan show that in parts of sugarcane agro-industry, the water applied is more than the actual water requirement of the plant. the present study was conducted to...

A field experiment was carried out to study the changes of soil bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes in saline-sodic soils for different numbers of cultivated years under drip irrigation. The drip irrigation had substantial effects on levels of bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes. With increased number of cultivated years under drip irrigation, the soil biological properties were greatly improved. A...

The species of Pleurotus have great commercial importance and adaptability for growth and fructification within a wide variety of agro-industrial lignocellulosic wastes. In this study, two substrates prepared from ground corncobs supplemented with rice bran and charcoal were tested for mycelium growth kinetics in test tubes and for the cultivation of four Pleurotus commercial isolates in polypr...

This is a preliminary study of the depth distribution of (137)Cs radionuclides in cultivated anthrosol soil of a 15-year old peach tree plantation at the experimental field "Radmilovac" near Belgrade. Before planting, the soil was ploughed at the depth of 1 m. The soil had not been annually ploughed, irrigated and treated with mineral fertilizers for three years before sampling. Activity concen...

We assessed the efficacy of cultivation as a potential management strategy for codling moth, Cydia pomonella L. (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), and plum curculio, Conotrachelus nenuphar Herbst (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) in apple orchards. Cocooned codling moth pupae and thinning apples infested with plum curculio larvae were cultivated over in the field. Emergence, percent burial, damage to buried...

The effects of reduced tillage and lime on crop yield and soil physical and microbial properties were studied in a weakly-structured silty clay loam soil. Two autumn primary tillage practices were compared, mouldboard ploughing to 20–25 cm and cultivation to 12 cm. Seedbed preparation was carried out by several harrowing operations in the mouldboard ploughed treatment, and with a PTO-driven har...