GRANT, C. C. BIGGS, H.C. MEISSNER, H.H. & SASSON, P.A. 1996. The usefulness of faecal phosphorus and nitrogen in interpreting differences in live-mass gain and the response to P supplementation in grazing cattle in arid regions. Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research, 2:121-126 The average daily gains of heifers and oxen on commercial and experimental farms in Namibia were used to indicat...

Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br) is a staple food in many developing countries and constitutes the major source of essential nutrients in semi-arid and arid regions of Africa and India. The knowledge about the nutrient content of autochthonous pearl millet ecotypes is scarce. In this study, biochemical analysis of six Tunisian pearl millet ecotypes has been investigated. Results pro...

For the frangible ecological environment, it is very important to reasonably develop and utilize groundwater resources in Northwest China. Shallow groundwater level is an essential factor related to the eco-environmental problems such as oasis degeneration and land salinification. The lack of groundwater dynamic data is a critical concern for water resources management in the arid region. This ...

Cynara cardunculus.L exhibits an important adaptability to arid and semi-arid regions where high salinity is frequently present. Aiming to introduce its cultivation in the Mediterranean environment especially in Tunisia, it seemed interesting to study seed germination of eight populations of cardoon in four concentrations of NaCl: 0g/L, 2g/L, 4g/L, and 8g/L. Our results showed a good variabilit...

Hypolithic microbial communities (i.e. cryptic microbial assemblages found on the undersides of translucent rocks) are major contributors of carbon input into the oligotrophic hyper-arid desert mineral soils of the Eastern Antarctic Dry Valleys. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, that hypolithic microbial communities possess both the genetic capacity for nitrogen fixation (i.e. the presen...

Hypoliths are microbial communities that live underneath translucent rocks in desert ecosystems and represent a key refuge niche in the Antarctic Dry Valleys. These cryptic microbial assemblages are crucial as they mediate numerous ecosystem processes. Here, we present the first draft genome of a hypolith isolate belonging to the α-proteobacterial class and the genus Sphingomonas. The draft gen...

In many arid and semi-arid regions whether or not to desalinate seawater has long been a non-issue and policy debates are focused on the timing and extent of the desalination activities. We analyze how water scarcity and demand structure, on the one hand, and cost reduction via R&D programs, on the other hand, affect the desirable development of desalination technologies and the time profiles o...

The Penman-Monteith equation is useful for computing evaporation rates of uniform surfaces, such as dense vegetation or bare soil. This equation becomes less useful for evaluation of evaporation rates at the regional scale, where surfaces are generally characterized by a patchy combination of vegetation and soil. This is particularly true in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world. The appr...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) is the major cause of sustained morbidity/ mortality among human cases of dengue in dengue endemic areas of Rajasthan. Screening of mosquitoes collected from disease endemic settings and typing the virus could provide significant epidemiological information for prospective risk of DHF. We therefore carried out a study on different dengue vi...