Cultivation of Pleurotus ostreatus on different substrates such as rice straw, rice straw + wheat straw, rice straw+ paper, sugarcane bagasse and sawdust of alder was investigated. All the substrates except rice straw were supplemented with 10% rice bran. The substrate without supplement was considered as control. The effects of various substrates on mycelial growth, colonization time, primordi...

Rice husk and straw are by-products of rice cultivation and processing industry and can be used as an energy source. Proper understanding of the physical properties of rice residues is necessary for utilizing them in thermochemical conversion processes such as gasification and combustion. The physical properties (moisture content, particle size, bulk density and porosity) of rice husks and stra...

From a global viewpoint, a number of challenges need to be met for sustainable rice production: (i) increasingly severe occurrence of insects and diseases and indiscriminate pesticide applications; (ii) high pressure for yield increase and overuse of fertilizers; (iii) water shortage and increasingly frequent occurrence of drought; and (iv) extensive cultivation in marginal lands. A combination...

High cation exchange capacity and organic matter content of crude humic substances from compost could be exploited to reduce ammonia loss from urea and to as well improve rice growth and soil chemical properties for efficient nutrients utilization in lowland rice cultivation. Close-dynamic air flow system was used to determine the effects of crude humic substances on ammonia volatilization. A p...

Natural resource base degradation, forest denudation, instability in crop production due to scarcity of water necessitates a thorough insight on sustainable agricultural development for conservation of natural resources not only for the present generation but also for the posterity. An attempt had been made to study the natural resource inventory of part of eastern plateau of India, using LISS ...

This paper explores the origins of observed differences in cooperativeness across societies and cultures. In particular, we provide evidence that rice cultivation gives rise to a more cooperative social norm. The rationale behind the hypothesis is that unlike cultivating other crops, such as wheat or corn, farming rice historically required extensive cooperation among farmers. We travelled to f...

Arsenic (As) finds its way into soils used for rice (Oryza sativa) cultivation through polluted irrigation water, and through historic contamination with As-based pesticides. As is known to be present as a number of chemical species in such soils, so we wished to investigate how these species were accumulated by rice. As species found in soil solution from a greenhouse experiment where rice was...

Rice production in most of Asian countries has been increased more rapidly than population and this has been led to increase in supply and proportionately decrease in the real price of rice in world and domestic markets. Furthermore, together with growth in production and national gross income of the country per-capita income has been increased and also demand for rice at national and internati...

Because rice feeds half of the world's population, a secure global food supply depends on sustainable rice production. Here we test whether the co-cultivation of rice and fish into one "rice-fish system" (RFS; fish refers to aquatic animals in this article) could help sustain rice production. We examined intensive and traditional RFSs that have been widely practiced in China. We found that rice...

the objective followed in this research was to investigate the farmers’ attitude toward rice cultivation and development in ilam province. the study consisted of all the farmers who cultivated rice in the region of shirvan & chardavol (n=2550), of whom 119 were selected through multi-staged random sampling in the growing season of the years 1386-87 and over two main rice farming areas in the pr...