scholarly journals Introduction of Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) green manure in rotations of head salads and baby leaf crops under greenhouse

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Morra ◽  
Domenico Cerrato ◽  
Maurizio Bilotto ◽  
Salvatore Baiano

This paper deals with the introduction in tunnel-greenhouses of sweet sorghum cultivated in short, summer cycle as green manure with the aim to amend soils with biomass grown on farm. This practice has been spreading in tunnels of Sele river Valley (Salerno, Italy) where baby leaf crops are cultivated in numerous cycles (up to 5-7) per year. Three sorghum varieties for forage or biomass (Goliath, BMR 201 and BMR 333) were cultivated in two farms at Eboli and San Marzano sul Sarno with the aims to study their responses in term of fresh and dry aboveground biomass yielded, C and N content of the biomass incorporated in soil, C balance in amended soils after one year of ordinary cash crop sequences. No differences, with regard to all the parameters measured, were pointed out among the tested varieties in each site. The sorghum cycle lasted 45 days at Eboli, yielding on average 98 and 13 t ha<sup>-1</sup> of fresh and dry biomass, respectively; soil biomass incorporation supplied, on average 5.8 t ha<sup>-1</sup> of organic carbon and 273 kg ha<sup>-1</sup> of total nitrogen. In the farm of San Marzano, sorghum cycle lasted 68 days, yielding 116 and 18 t ha<sup>-1</sup> of fresh and dry biomass, respectively; soil biomass incorporation supplied, on average 8 t ha<sup>-1</sup> of organic carbon and 372 kg ha<sup>-1</sup> of total nitrogen. After one year, the plots amended with sorghum biomass showed a soil organic carbon (SOC) concentration not different from the starting point while SOC decreased in fallow plots. At Eboli, initial SOC content was 12.3 g kg<sup>-1</sup>, but one year later it resulted 12.3, 12.8, 12.2 and 11.3 g kg<sup>-1</sup> in BMR 201, BMR 333, Goliath and control plots, respectively. At San Marzano initial SOC content was 11.4 g kg<sup>-1</sup>, but one year later it resulted 11, 12, 10.7 and 10.5 g kg<sup>-1</sup> in BMR 201, BMR 333, Goliath and control plots, respectively. The annual C balance put in evidence that the green manure with sorghum biomass caused SOC losses higher than those detected in fallow plots let us supposing a prime effect in boosting the soil microbial C mineralization. Only cv BMR 333 in the Eboli trial, pointed out a positive SOC change of 1.8 t ha<sup>-1</sup>. Further studies are requested to better understand the real efficacy of sorghum cover crop in soil amendment under tunnels devoted to intensive vegetable crop sequence.

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e6897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yujuan Zhang ◽  
Shiming Tang ◽  
Shu Xie ◽  
Kesi Liu ◽  
Jinsheng Li ◽  
...  

Background Patchy vegetation is a very common phenomenon due to long-term overgrazing in degraded steppe grasslands, which results in substantial uncertainty associated with soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics because of changes in the amount of litter accumulation and nutrition input into soil. Methods We investigated soil C and N stocks beneath three types of monodominant species patches according to community dominance. Stipa krylovii patches, Artemisia frigida patches, and Potentilla acaulis patches represent better to worse vegetation conditions in a grassland in northern China. Results The results revealed that the soil C stock (0–40 cm) changed significantly, from 84.7 to 95.7 Mg ha−1, and that the soil organic carbon content (0–10 cm) and microbial biomass carbon (0–10 and 10–20 cm) varied remarkably among the different monodominant species communities (P < 0.05). However, soil total nitrogen and microbial biomass nitrogen showed no significant differences among different plant patches in the top 0–20 cm of topsoil. The soil C stocks under the P. acaulis and S. krylovii patches were greater than that under the A. frigida patch. Our study implies that accurate estimates of soil C and N storage in degenerated grassland require integrated analyses of the concurrent effects of differences in plant community composition.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. e0252123
Author(s):  
Leta Hailu ◽  
Mulugeta Betemariyam

This study was conducted to examine and compare the status of soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) stocks between farmlands treated with level soil bund (LSB) of three and six years and adjacent farmland without conservation measure (control) at Somodo Watershed. Soil samples were collected from farmland treated with LSB-3 years, LSB-6 years and control using randomized complete block design. A total of 108 composite soil samples (3 treatments * 6 replications * 3 bund zones * 2 depths (0–20 and 20–40 cm) were collected for analysis and determination of the Organic Carbon fraction (OC) and Nitrogen fraction (N). OC was determined using Walkley and Black method while N was determined using the Kjeldahl digestion, distillation and titration method. The result indicated that farmland treated with LSB-6 years has insignificantly higher SOC (98.43±11.55 Mg ha-1) and TN (9.37±1.10 Mg ha-1) stock than control SOC (93.01±13.51 Mg ha-1) and TN (9.28±1.60 Mg ha-1) stock. Likely, farmland treated with LSB-6 years has insignificantly higher SOC and TN stock than farmland treated with LSB-3 years SOC (96.61±11.45 Mg ha-1) stock. With respect to the age of LSB, farmland treated with LSB-6 years accumulated more SOC stock (5.83%) than control. This study revealed that the age of LSB conservation measures has a critical role in enhancing soil fertility through maintaining and sequestering SOC and TN.


2012 ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Michał Mrozowicki

Michel Butor, born in 1926, one of the leaders of the French New Novel movement, has written only four novels between 1954 and 1960. The most famous of them is La Modification (Second thoughts), published in 1957. The author of the paper analyzes two other Butor’s novels: L’Emploi du temps (Passing time) – 1956, and Degrés (Degrees) – 1960. The theme of absence is crucial in both of them. In the former, the novel, presented as the diary of Jacques Revel, a young Frenchman spending a year in Bleston (a fictitious English city vaguely similar to Manchester), describes the narrator’s struggle to survive in a double – spatial and temporal – labyrinth. The first of them, formed by Bleston’s streets, squares and parks, is symbolized by the City plan. During his one year sojourn in the city, using its plan, Revel learns patiently how to move in its different districts, and in its strange labyrinth – strange because devoid any centre – that at the end stops annoying him. The other, the temporal one, symbolized by the diary itself, the labyrinth of the human memory, discovered by the narrator rather lately, somewhere in the middle of the year passed in Bleston, becomes, by contrast, more and more dense and complex, which is reflected by an increasinly complex narration used to describe the past. However, at the moment Revel is leaving the city, he is still unable to recall and to describe the events of the 29th of February 1952. This gap, this absence, symbolizes his defeat as the narrator, and, in the same time, the human memory’s limits. In Degrees temporal and spatial structures are also very important. This time round, however, the problems of the narration itself, become predominant. Considered from this point of view, the novel announces Gerard Genette’s work Narrative Discourse and his theoretical discussion of two narratological categories: narrative voice and narrative mode. Having transgressed his narrative competences, Pierre Vernier, the narrator of the first and the second parts of the novel, who, taking as a starting point, a complete account of one hour at school, tries to describe the whole world and various aspects of the human civilization for the benefit of his nephew, Pierre Eller, must fail and disappear, as the narrator, from the third part, which is narrated by another narrator, less audacious and more credible.


2021 ◽  
pp. 053901842199894
Author(s):  
Frank Adloff ◽  
Iris Hilbrich

Possible trajectories of sustainability are based on different concepts of nature. The article starts out from three trajectories of sustainability (modernization, transformation and control) and reconstructs one characteristic practice for each path with its specific conceptions of nature. The notion that nature provides human societies with relevant ecosystem services is typical of the path of modernization. Nature is reified and monetarized here, with regard to its utility for human societies. Practices of transformation, in contrast, emphasize the intrinsic ethical value of nature. This becomes particularly apparent in discourses on the rights of nature, whose starting point can be found in Latin American indigenous discourses, among others. Control practices such as geoengineering are based on earth-systemic conceptions of nature, in which no distinction is made between natural and social systems. The aim is to control the earth system as a whole in order for human societies to remain viable. Practices of sustainability thus show different ontological understandings of nature (dualistic or monistic) on the one hand and (implicit) ethics and sacralizations (anthropocentric or biocentric) on the other. The three reconstructed natures/cultures have different ontological and ethical affinities and conflict with each other. They are linked to very different knowledge cultures and life-worlds, which answer very differently to the question of what is of value in a society and in nature and how these values ought to be protected.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert Hensgens ◽  
Hjalmar Laudon ◽  
Mark S. Johnson ◽  
Martin Berggren

AbstractThe boreal forest is among the largest terrestrial biomes on earth, storing more carbon (C) than the atmosphere. Due to rapid climatic warming and enhanced human development, the boreal region may have begun transitioning from a net C sink to a net source. This raises serious concern that old biogenic soil C can be re-introduced into the modern C cycle in near future. Combining bio-decay experiments, mixing models and the Keeling plot method, we discovered a distinct old pre-bomb organic carbon fraction with high biodegradation rate. In total, 34 ± 12% of water-extractable organic carbon (WEOC) in podzols, one of the dominating boreal soil types, consisted of aged (~ 1000 year) labile C. The omission of this aged (i.e., Δ14C depleted) WEOC fraction in earlier studies is due to the co-occurrence with Δ14C enriched modern C formed following 1950s nuclear bomb testing masking its existence. High lability of aged soil WEOC and masking effects of modern Δ14C enriched C suggests that the risk for mobilization and re-introduction of this ancient C pool into the modern C cycle has gone undetected. Our findings have important implications for earth systems models in terms of climate-carbon feedbacks and the future C balance of the boreal forest.


Author(s):  
Antonia Raya-Tena ◽  
María Isabel Fernández-San-Martin ◽  
Jaume Martin-Royo ◽  
Rocío Casañas ◽  
Glòria Sauch-Valmaña ◽  
...  

The association between physical illness and depression implies a poorer management of chronic disease and a lower response to antidepressant treatments. Our study evaluates the effectiveness of a psychoeducational group intervention led by Primary Care (PC) nurses, aimed at patients of this kind. It is a randomized, multicenter clinical trial with intervention (IG) and control groups (CG), blind response variables, and a one year follow-up. The study included 380 patients ≥50 years of age from 18 PC teams. The participants presented depression (BDI-II > 12) and a physical comorbidity: diabetes mellitus type 2, ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and/or asthma. The IG (n = 204) received the psychoeducational intervention (12 weekly sessions of 90 min), and the CG (n = 176) had standard care. The patients were evaluated at baseline, and at 4 and 12 months. The main outcome measures were clinical remission of depressive symptoms (BDI-II ≤ 13) and therapeutic response (reduction of depressive symptoms by 50%). Remission was not significant at four months. At 12 months it was 53.9% in the IG and 41.5% in the CG. (OR = 0.61, 95% CI, 0.49–0.76). At 4 months the response in the IG (OR = 0.59, 95% CI, 0.44–0.78) was significant, but not at 12 months. The psychoeducational group intervention led by PC nurses for individuals with depression and physical comorbidity has been shown to be effective for remission at long-term and for therapeutic response at short-term.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1208
Author(s):  
Francisco Alonso ◽  
Mireia Faus ◽  
Cristina Esteban ◽  
Sergio A. Useche

Technological devices are becoming more and more integrated in the management and control of traffic in big cities. The population perceives the benefits provided by these systems, and, therefore, citizens usually have a favorable opinion of them. However, emerging countries, which have fewer available infrastructures, could present a certain lack of trust. The objective of this work is to detect the level of knowledge and predisposition towards the use of new technologies in the transportation field of the Dominican Republic. For this study, the National Survey on Mobility was administered to a sample of Dominican citizens, proportional to the ONE census and to sex, age and province. The knowledge of ITS topics, as well as the use of mobile applications for mobility, are scarce; however, there was a significant increase that can be observed in only one year. Moreover, technology is, in general, positively assessed for what concerns the improvement of the traffic field, even though there is a lack of predisposition to provide one’s personal data, which is necessary for these devices. The process of technological development in the country must be backed up by laws that protect the citizens’ privacy. Thus, technologies that can improve road safety, mobility and sustainability can be implemented in the country.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Yingcong Ye ◽  
Yefeng Jiang ◽  
Lihua Kuang ◽  
Yi Han ◽  
Zhe Xu ◽  
...  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document