There is a continual drive to conserve water and improve irrigation efficiency in agriculture, especially in regions where water resources are limited and regulated. Mulching is one cultural practice which can be used to reduce water needs. Using certain agricultural byproducts as mulch is a sustainable practice which can provide other benefits as well such as improving soil. Wheat straw, grass...

Host-associated organisms (e.g., parasites, commensals, and mutualists) may rely on their hosts for only a portion of their life cycle. The life-history traits and physiology of hosts are well-known determinants of the biodiversity of their associated organisms. The environmental context may strongly influence this interaction, but the relative roles of host traits and the environment are poorl...

Interspecific relationships among species mean leaf traits, performance and species resource/climate distributions help provide the foundation for a predictive, functionally based plant ecology. Intraspecific responses of leaf traits and performance to resource gradients and how these vary among species may be equally important but have received less attention. Here, we examine relationships be...

soil is one of the most important natural resources covering a large area of the land surface. soil plays a vital role in biosphere processes, such as energy balance, hydrology, biochemistry, and biological productivity. it supports plants that supply foods, fibers, drugs, and some other human needs. conversely, desert regions include about one third of earth lands and these regions have increa...

Understanding the dynamics of water distribution in soil is crucial for enhancing our knowledge of managing soil and water resources. The application of X-ray computed tomography (CT) to the plant and soil sciences is now well established. However, few studies have utilized the technique for visualizing water in soil pore spaces. Here this method is utilized to visualize the water in soil in si...

Composted sewage sludge (CS) is considered a rich source of soil nutrients and significantly affects the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of soil, but its effect on specific enzyme activity in soil is disregarded. The present experiment examined the absolute and specific enzyme activity of the enzymes involved in carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles, the diversity of soil m...

Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) are physical–mathematical models which allow estimating soil hydraulic properties from soil data. In the absence of direct measurements, they represent a valuable tool for providing agro-ecological models with soil input estimations, whose accuracy is currently a key issue, especially in fieldand regional-scale modelling which rely on soil information databases. Th...

Soil quality assessment is a significant approach for arable land, especially in a coastal region to gain a better understanding of soil productivity and effect of agricultural systems on soil resources. This study aimed to determine the quality of cultivated soil of both urban (Noakhali) and rural areas (Kabirhat and Subarnachar) of Noakhali, Bangladesh. The soil quality was evaluated as soil ...

Climate change can influence soil microorganisms directly by altering their growth and activity but also indirectly via effects on the vegetation, which modifies the availability of resources. Direct impacts of climate change on soil microorganisms can occur rapidly, whereas indirect effects mediated by shifts in plant community composition are not immediately apparent and likely to increase ov...