Assessing forest understory biomass in northwest Florida (USA) and its potential to meet the state energy needs

A stratified random sampling approach was employed to quantify total biomass across prevalent non-commercial forest understory species found in six counties of northwest Florida, USA. The moisture content (wet basis) and calorific values of these species were also measured. Total green biomass from forest understory species was estimated to be around 12 million metric tons, mostly comprised of Cliftonia monophylla (titi, buckwheat tree) and Cyrilla racemiflora (white titi, swamp titi). This understory forest biomass would be sufficient to generate about 28.8 million GJ of electricity or 1589.25 million liters of ethanol. A need was identified to determine the inventory of forest understory biomass at the state level and assess the overall sustainability of utilizing forest understory biomass for bioenergy.     

Legume genetic resources: management, diversity assessment, and utilization in crop improvement

Grain legumes contribute significantly to total world food production. Legumes are the primary source of dietary proteins in many developing countries, where protein hunger and malnutrition are widespread. Grain legumes germplasm constitute ~15% of the 7.4 M accessions preserved globally. Nearly, 78% of the CGIAR??s, 0.217 M accessions, have been characterized, compared to 34% of national genebank collections. Interestingly, limited data on grain quality are available as the primary focus has been on morpho-agronomic traits. Clearly, more resources should be targeted on biochemical evaluation to identify nutritionally rich and genetically diverse germplasm. The formation of core and mini core collections has provided crop breeders with a systematic yet manageable entry point into global germplasm resources. These subsets have been reported for most legumes and have proved useful in identifying new sources of variation. They may however not eliminate the need to evaluate entire collections, particularly for very rare traits. Molecular characterization and association mapping will further aid to insights into the structure of legume diversity and facilitate greater use of collections. The use of high resolution elevational climate models has greatly improved our capacity to characterize plant habitats and species?? adaptive responses to stresses. Evidence suggests that there has been increased use of wild relatives as well as new resources resulting from mutagenesis to enhance the genetic base of legume cultigens.     

Phylogenetic relationships as in Ocimum revealed by RAPD markers

Genetic relationships were examined among thirty germplasm accessions belonging to five Ocimum species using RAPD markers. A very high degree of polymorphism (98.20%) was observed. UPGMA cluster analysis of genetic similarity indices grouped all the accessions into two major clusters corresponding to previously reported botanical sections. Intra-clustering within the two clusters precisely grouped the accessions belonging to one species in one sub-cluster as expected from their genetic background. Our results show that RAPD technique is a sensitive, precise and efficient tool for genomic analysis in Ocimum species, that may be useful in future studies, by assigning new unclassified germplasm accessions to specific taxonomic groups and reclassifying previously classified accessions of other Ocimum species by traditional criteria on a more objective basis. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Physiological Mechanism and Nutrient Management Strategies for Flood Tolerance in Rice Grown in Lowland Flood Prone Ecosystem

Journal of Crop Science and Biotechnology - In flood-prone areas, rice must have flood tolerance characteristics either through genotypic selections or by nutrient application management...     

Comparative diagnostic evaluation of OMP31 gene based TaqMan® real-time PCR assay with visual LAMP assay and indirect ELISA for caprine brucellosis

Tropical Animal Health and Production - Brucellosis is one of the leading causes of abortion in domestic animals that imposes costs on both economy and society. The disease is highly zoonotic and...     

Immunopathological changes in cadmium-treated rats.

Rats treated with cadmium developed an interstitial pneumonitis with intraalveolar hemorrhage. In the spleen there was marked germinal center formation containing reactive B-cells. Lesions of the kidneys resembled those found in cadmium poisoning in man, primarily a proliferative glomerulonephritis.     

Economic feasibility of and vegetation responses to biomass harvest in managed loblolly pine plantations

We evaluated two biomass harvest methods, (1) Whole Tree Thinning (WTT; third-row thinning), and (2) Whole Tree Thinning with Fuelchips (WTTF; third-row thinning plus remove all accessible hardwood stems >2.5 cm diameter at breast height and understory shrubs in thinned area of stand) in a 21-year-old loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantation in northwest Florida for their harvesting yields and productivities, costs, and effects on groundcover. Both WTT and WTTF produced similar quantities of roundwood (~70 Mg ha^?1) and chips (8.43–13.12 Mg ha^?1) without significantly added operational time (15.77–28.12 Mg h^?1). On-board costs of chip production (US$6.93 to 10.60 Mg^?1) and total cost of roundwood and chip production (~22.5 US$ Mg^?1) of the two harvest methods also did not differ significantly. Following either WTT or WTTF, overall percent groundcover recovered within 6 months. While shrub and grass cover were similar, forb cover in WTT increased significantly following six months of harvests. Importantly, the study suggests that biomass removal is an attractive option that could be integrated with traditional silvicultural thinning methods to manage vegetation and alleviate hazardous fuel and wildfire conditions, leading to improved forest health.     

An inventory of salt-affected soils and waterlogged areas in the Nagarjunsagar Canal Command Area of southern India,using space-borne multispectral data

Information is presented on the nature, extent and spatial distribution of waterlogged areas and salt-affected soils, derived through systematic visual interpretation of standard false colour composite (FCC) prints on a 1:100 000 scale generated from the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS-1B) Linear Imaging Self-scanning Sensor (LISS-I) and Landsat–Thematic Mapper (TM) data for the Nagarjunsagar Right Bank Canal Command Area, Andhra Pradesh. A total of 1710 ha of land in the coastal region has been found to be waterlogged. Salt-affected soils cover an area of 42 800 ha, with saline–sodic soils covering 28 480 ha emerging as the dominant category. To make optimal use of these lands and to prevent further degradation both preventive and ameliorative measures have been advocated. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.