The occurrence of sterigmatocystin (STC) in paddy and processed rice samples produced in Italy was surveyed. After extraction and purification, STC was analysed using HPLC-MS/MS. STC was detected in all paddy rice samples (n = 49), in the range 0.29-15.85 μg·kg-1. As regards processed rice, a widespread contamination was found in brown and parboiled rice. All the brown rice samples were contami...

The effects of aqueous leaf extracts of Tectona grandis L. and Mikania micrantha L. on germination and growth of Zea mays L. (maize) and Oryza sativa L. (paddy) were investigated during 2009-2010. The extracts suppressed the germination of paddy to an extent of 10-30% under high extract concentration and 40-50% suppression in maize under similar concentration. The growth of root and shoot of bo...

The basic objective of this paper is to measure and compare the profitability of investments made by the small and marginal farmers of the state of West Bengal in floriculture shifting from the traditional cultivation of paddy. A comparison of IRR is made to establish the fact that cultivation of flowers yield higher returns farmers whose land size is so small that viability of paddy cultivatio...

The rapid increase of paddy field acreage has led to widely descending of groundwater table in well irrigation paddy area of low-land in Sanjiang Plain recent years. More and more “hanging pump” and partial over pumping phenomenon have been occurring in well irrigation paddy area of low-land. Therefore, the groundwater resources in Sanjiang Plain need to be recharged urgently. For solving the m...

Pollen and phytolith analyses were undertaken at the Jiangli site in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, combined with studies on macrofossils by flotation. The concentration of pollen decreased while the percentage of Poaceae pollen in the profile increased from the late phase of the Majiabang Culture to the Songze Culture suggesting that human impact on the local environment intensified gradually. The ...

A study by Yongguan Zhu and co-workers has added greatly to our understanding of arsenic dynamics in the rhizosphere of paddy rice. Their finding that arsenic is sequestered in iron plaque on root surfaces in plants, regulated by phosphorus status, and that there is considerable varietal variation in arsenic sequestration and subsequently plant uptake, offers a hope for breeding rice for the ne...

cannot be had ; so I began enumerating all the waste products I could think of to replace it. As regards saw-dust, I knew of no quantity sufficiently large for the purpose. Paddy husking I knew was fairly common as a trade in the presidency, but I knew also that straw had been replaced in England by moss litter as stabling for horses and therefore concluded that straw or paddy husking were not ...

This study focused to identify the likelihood factors affecting on farmers’ higher gain from paddy marketing in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka, where the main paddy cultivation area of the country. The required data was drawn from the field survey carried out in three irrigation systems covering 257 farmers during July to August 2010. The empirical logit model was used to assess factor...

The number of syntrophic butyrate-degrading bacteria in a flooded paddy field soil was 1.7 x 10(3) MPN/g dry soil. Butyrate was degraded to acetate and methane when paddy soils were incubated anaerobically with the addition of butyrate. However, butyrate degradation was completely suppressed by the addition of the specific inhibitor of methanogenesis, 2-bromoethanesulfonate (BES) to the soil. A...

This paper designs a WSN gateway for environmental monitoring of paddy field, which includes the hardware structure and the software program. We use the MSP430F149 as the core of the gateway node and the nRF905 as the peripherals equipment for node communication. We choose TDR-3, a soil moisture sensor, and DHT22, a temperature-humidity sensor, to collect and process the environmental informati...