Brazil has the largest commercial beef cattle herd in the world (over 190 million head in 2006) [1], with cultivated pastures occupying about 150 million hectares of its territory [2]. On a biome basis, the most extensive pasture occupation is found in the Cerrado (~ 546,251 km, amounting to about 26.8% of the total biome area and 36.8% of the total pasture area in Brazil), the Brazilian savann...

β-glucosidase (E.C. 3.2.1.21), an enzyme involved in cellulose degradation, plays an important role in the soil organic carbon cycle. Cellulose is the most abundant organic compound in the biosphere so a product of its enzymatic hydrolysis is important as an energy source for soil microorganisms. Since β-glucosidase is very sensitive to different factors, determination of its activity might be ...

The Moringa is a fast-growing evergreen or deciduous, multipurpose tree species comprised of 13 species. They are thought to be native to India from where they have been introduced in many different tropical and subtropical countries and are now growing throughout the world including Saudi Arabia (Moringa peregrina a native species). Moringa tree is regarded as an excellent source of nutrition ...

Advances in the growth of hitherto unculturable soil bacteria have emphasized the requirement for rapid bacterial identification methods. Due to the slow-growing strategy of microcolony-forming soil bacteria, successful fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) requires an rRNA enrichment step for visualization. In this study, catalyzed reporter deposition (CARD)-FISH was employed as an alterna...

The objective of this investigation was assessment of physical and chemical parameters ofsoil and sediment in loess lands under different land uses, in the north of Iran. A yearly soilsampling was carried out randomly in three land uses (cultivated, forest and pasture) inQarnave and Yelcheshme watersheds. Sediment samples were taken monthly in thewatersheds at the hydrometrical station of Tamer...

In the semi-arid part of northern Tanzania, the native tropical woodland is undergoing a rapid conversion into agricultural land. This has resulted in drastic ecological changes in the region. This study was undertaken to investigate the effects of these changes in land use systems on the amount and composition of SOM in bulk soil samples and size separates. Samples were collected from the uppe...

Nowadays, Wolfiporia extensa as a popular raw material in food and medicine industry has received increasing interests. Due to supply shortage, this species of edible and medicinal mushroom has been cultivated in some provinces of China. In the present study, cultivated W. extensa collected from six regions in Yunnan Province of China were analyzed by an integrated method based on Fourier trans...

Land-use change and management practices are normally enacted to manipulate environments to improve conditions that relate to production, remediation, and accommodation. However, their effect on the soil microbial community and their subsequent influence on soil function is still difficult to quantify. Recent applications of molecular techniques to soil biology, especially the use of 16S rRNA, ...

plants and soil microbes are the main sources of most enzymes available in the environment. it is, therefore, anticipated that any change in the growth of soil biota in response to salinity, may reduce the synthesis and production of extra- and intra- cellular enzymes. as a result, a reduction in the growth of plants and the activity of soil microbes in saline environments may lessen the level ...