Geostatistical and fuzzy clustering approach for delineation of site-specific management zones and yield-limiting factors in irrigated hot arid environment of India

Precision Agriculture - Delineation of management zones (MZs) are needed to manage fields in order to maximize economic return, minimize environmental impact, and improve soil and crop management....     

A deep-level region-based visual representation architecture for detecting strawberry flowers in an outdoor field

Precision Agriculture - An accurate and robust strawberry flower representation and detection scheme is a key step to enable the reliable forecasting of fruit yield for use in precision...     

Long-term consequences of topsoil mining on select biological and physical characteristics of two New Zealand loessial soils under grazed pasture

Soil chemical, biochemical, biological and structural properties were measured in two New Zealand loessial soils that were topsoil-mined 10 and 25 years ago respectively. Measurements at the 10-year site were compared to some earlier measurements made at this site and the data combined in a chronological sequence for analysis. Topsoil mining had a large, detrimental impact on the soil microbial biomass, the earthworm populations, easily mineralizable N and soil enzyme activities. However, most of these properties substantially recovered, to 80-90 per cent of the levels in unmined soils, within 10-25 years of restoration under pasture. In contrast, while total soil C and N were less affected by topsoil mining, their recovery was much slower. Stabilities of macro-aggregates of soil had fully recovered within 10-25 years after topsoil mining. The apparent changes in all the measured properties between 10 and 25 years of restoration were small in comparison with changes between 0-10 years of restoration after topsoil mining. The total C content of both soils under pasture appeared unlikely to attain the levels present in unmined soils. In soils undergoing restoration, the ratio of microbial C/total soil C may be a useful index of soil ‘biological stability’. Sulphatase activity may reflect the recovery of pasture production.     

Land degradation,stocking rates and conservation policies in the communal rangelands of Botswana and Zimbabwe

Communal rangeland management policies in Botswana and Zimbabwe are based on incorrect technical assumptions about the stability of semiarid rangeland, the nature of rangeland degradation, and the benefits of destocking. Consequently, inappropriate policies, stressing the need to destock and stabilise the rangelands, are pursued. Acknowledgement of the great instability but intrinsic resilience of rangeland would encourage the Governments to more favourably regard the opportunistic stocking strategies of the agro-pastoralists of the Communal Areas. However, degradation of rangelands is occurring, although at varying rates. This justifies the promotion of a ‘tracking strategy’, in which livestock densities are encouraged to follow, more closely that at present, variations in rainfall. The establishment of grazing territories controlled by specific ‘communities’ may be a prerequisite for the promotion of the tracking strategy, and for communal rangeland management and improvement. However, the establishment of such territories must take into account social equity, institutional problems and transaction costs, as well as spatial and temporal variation in rangeland resources.     

Future of land use in Australia: An economic perspective

It is proposed that the standard economist's model of optimum land use is extended to include the interaction with land cover and land condition. Such a model allows consideration of the influence of market factors and government policies and programmes on land use patterns and management practices, and the feedback effect on land cover and land condition. Recent developments in the approach to modelling land condition, which include the joint consideration of economic factors and physical processes, are discussed. Factors affecting the pattern of agricultural land use in Australia are then reviewed. The importance of considering economic and physical interactions when assessing land use patterns is increasingly being recognized in research and policy development. If research is to meet the needs of land managers in the future then economists and physical scientists will need to integrate their data modelling capabilities in order to address natural resource management issues.     

Agroforestry techniques for the rehabilitation of degraded salt-affected lands in India

The development of appropriate technologies for the judicious use of India's 8.11 million ha of salt-affected lands would give increased food, fodder and fuelwood production. A sizeable portion of the salt-affected lands of the Indo-Gangetic plain have been reclaimed through chemical amendments and are being commercially used for arable farming. However, large areas of salt-affected common lands, village and government lands and waste lands near cities, along railway tracks and roads do not have any productive use. Owing to their sparse vegetative cover such lands are vulnerable to further degradation and can be a source of runoff causing floods, especially where cows congregate. Research at the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal has generated agroforestry techniques which could enable the economic exploitation of such marginal lands. This paper deals with various aspects of these techniques, which have been applied to over 50 000 ha by 1994. Based on eight to ten years of growth and biomass figures, the most salt-tolerant woody species identified were: Prosopis juliflora, Acacia nilotica, Casuarina equisetifolia, Tamarix articulata, Leptochloa fusca (a palatable forage grass which was found to be a promising primary colonizer of salt lands). Agronomic practices for the successful establishment of trees such as planting methods, amendment use, irrigation, spacing and lopping schedules are discussed. A Prosopis juliflora-leptochloa fusca silvipastoral model was found to be excellent for fuelwood and forage production and for the amelioration of high pH soils. This system, when followed for little more than four years, reclaims alkali soils to such an extent that normal agriculture crops such as Trifolium alexandrinum and T. resupinatum can be grown successfully. A ridge-trench system of tree planting was found to be helpful in alkali soils, the in situ rainwater conservation it led to assisting biomass production. Eucalyptus tereticornis, Populus deltoides and Tectona grandis based agroforestry were promising for reclaimed salt-affected lands. The short- and long-term effects of various tree plantations on the physicochemical properties of the soil and on soil-water relations are also discussed. Agroforestry options for the development of salt-affected lands found in various agroclimatic zones of India are explored.     

Mycobacterium fortuitum abortion in a sow

Two aborted Chester White pig fetuses were presented to a veterinary diagnostic laboratory in Illinois. Postmortem examination identified no gross abnormalities. Histologic evaluation revealed multifocal necrosis of chorionic epithelial cells, coalescing areas of mineralization in the placenta, and focal accumulations of viable and degenerate neutrophils in the lung. Intra- and extracellular acid-fast bacilli were identified in the lesions in both the placenta and lungs. Bacterial culture of stomach contents yielded heavy growth of Mycobacterium fortuitum, a rapidly growing nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM), which was further confirmed through whole-genome sequencing. NTM are opportunistic pathogens commonly found in the soil and in contaminated water supplies. In animals, M. fortuitum is typically introduced through cutaneous wounds leading to infections limited to the skin, with systemic infection being uncommon. To our knowledge, abortion caused by M. fortuitum has not been reported previously.     

Field measurement of the sheltering effect of vegetation on erodible land surfaces

Natural vegetation on erodible land surfaces, such as the loose sandy soils found in the southwestern United States and in Soviet Central Asia, absorbs part of the wind momentum flux (stress) and thus protects the erodible soil to a degree that depends on the geometry of plant distribution and profile. The sheltering effect of natural plants may be expressed as the ratio, R, of threshold friction velocity for the bare soil (determined in the laboratory or in specially prepared areas of bare soil in the field) to that for the naturally vegetated surface. We used new automated instrumentation to detect erosion thresholds in locations where erosion events are widely separated in time. Measured values of R were low for our most vegetated sites and nearer unity for the sparsely vegetated site.     

人参皂苷Rg3(R),Rg3(S),Rg5/Rk1对乙醇致小鼠记忆阻碍改善作用的影响

采用被动回避穿越法研究了人参皂苷Rg3(R),Rg3(S)和Rg5/Rk1(1∶1)对乙醇致小鼠记忆阻碍改善作用的影响。结果表明:灌服人参皂苷Rg3(R),Rg3(S)和Rg5/Rk110 mg/kg后,显著延长了小鼠避暗的潜伏期,尤其以人参皂苷Rg5/Rk1作用最为显著,Rg5/Rk1处理组的潜伏期是对照组的2.97倍,Rg3(R),Rg3(S)分别为对照组的2.35和2.53倍,差异极显著(P<0.01)。说明这些化合物具有改善乙醇致小鼠的记忆障碍的能力。