The influence of methods of basic tillage and fertilizers on the content of basic nutrients in leached chernozem

Relevance. The preservation, reproduction and rational use of agricultural soil fertility is the main condition for the stable development of the agro-industrial complex. Mechanical tillage systems, the use of mineral and microbiological fertilizers are one of the main links in adaptive landscape farming systems. In the conditions of a sharp decrease in the rates of fertilizer application, an increase in the imbalance of elements of mineral nutrition of plants observed in recent years in agroecosystems, the function of improving the regimes of chernozems, preserving their fertility is designed to perform resource-saving technologies of soil cultivation in combination with effective methods of using agrochemicals that combine environmental and economic feasibility.Methods. The experiments were laid in 2017–2019 on chernozem heavy loamy soils typical for most farms in the Ulyanovsk region. The object of the study is spring wheat, the variety Ulyanovskaya 100. The subject of the study is the methods of tillage, doses of mineral fertilizers, the biological product "BisolbiFit". The following technological methods of using the biological product were studied: seed treatment before sowing, non-root treatment of vegetating plants and a combination of these methods. The experiment was carried out on three backgrounds: N0P0K0 (control); 2) N30P30K30; 3) N60P60K60.Results. It was found that the best nitrification ability was possessed by variants with fine combback and comb-back with soil-deepening treatment, in which the weighted average content of nitrate nitrogen was 3.29–3.33 mg/100 g, which is 35–36%; 26–28%; 43–44% more than with fine, conventional non-dump and dump treatment respectively. Plowing improved the conditions of phosphorus and potassium nutrition of plants by 25–37% and 6–14% compared to other treatments. When N30P30K30 and N60 P60 K60 were applied to the soil, the content of nitrate nitrogen increased by 46 and 91%, phosphorus — by 0–14% and potassium — by 6 and 21% compared to the nonfertilized background. More effective in terms of the effect on the productivity of spring wheat were comb-shaped treatments, where the average yield was 2.89–2.94 t/ha, which exceeded the usual plowing by 0.19–0.24 t/ha. The greatest increase in yield was obtained when combining the methodsseed treatment + spraying of vegetative plants with the biological preparation "BisolbiFit". On an unfertilized background, the increase in grain yield was -0.71, on the background of N30P30K30 — 1.04, on the background of N60P60K60 — 1.56 t/ha.

Genomic Insights Into the Population History and Biological Adaptation of Southwestern Chinese Hmong–Mien People

Hmong–Mien (HM) -speaking populations, widely distributed in South China, the north of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, have experienced different settlement environments, dietary habits, and pathogenic exposure. However, their specific biological adaptation remained largely uncharacterized, which is important in the population evolutionary genetics and Trans-Omics for regional Precision Medicine. Besides, the origin and genetic diversity of HM people and their phylogenetic relationship with surrounding modern and ancient populations are also unknown. Here, we reported genome-wide SNPs in 52 representative Miao people and combined them with 144 HM people from 13 geographically representative populations to characterize the full genetic admixture and adaptive landscape of HM speakers. We found that obvious genetic substructures existed in geographically different HM populations; one localized in the HM clines, and others possessed affinity with Han Chinese. We also identified one new ancestral lineage specifically existed in HM people, which spatially distributed from Sichuan and Guizhou in the north to Thailand in the south. The sharing patterns of the newly identified homogenous ancestry component combined the estimated admixture times via the decay of linkage disequilibrium and haplotype sharing in GLOBETROTTER suggested that the modern HM-speaking populations originated from Southwest China and migrated southward in the historic period, which is consistent with the reconstructed phenomena of linguistic and archeological documents. Additionally, we identified specific adaptive signatures associated with several important human nervous system biological functions. Our pilot work emphasized the importance of anthropologically informed sampling and deeply genetic structure reconstruction via whole-genome sequencing in the next step in the deep Chinese Population Genomic Diversity Project (CPGDP), especially in the regions with rich ethnolinguistic diversity.

Viral population genomics reveals host and infectivity impact on SARS-CoV-2 adaptive landscape

Public health surveillance, drug treatment development, and optimization of immunological interventions all depend on understanding pathogen adaptation, which differ for specific pathogens. SARS-CoV-2 is an exceptionally successful human pathogen, yet complete understanding of the forces driving its evolution is lacking. Here, we leveraged almost four million SARS-CoV-2 sequences originating mostly from non-vaccinated naive patients to investigate the impact of functional constraints and natural immune pressures on the sequence diversity of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Overall, we showed that the SARS-CoV-2 genome is under strong and intensifying levels of purifying selection with a minority of sites under diversifying pressure. With a particular focus on the spike protein, we showed that sites under selection were critical for protein stability and virus fitness related to increased infectivity and/or reduced neutralization by convalescent sera. We investigated the genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 B and T cell epitopes and determined that the currently known T cell epitope sequences were highly conserved. Outside of the spike protein, we observed that mutations under selection in variants of concern can be associated to beneficial outcomes for the virus. Altogether, the results yielded a comprehensive map of all sites under selection across the entirety of SARS-CoV-2 genome, highlighting targets for future studies to better understand the virus spread, evolution and success.

The spatial adaptation of farming systems to the heterogeneity of plots

The full exploitation of the resource potential of arable lands was analyzed in the research. The problem of completeness of the use in different farming systems was considered. It was found that at the current stage of development of farming systems, the diversity of soils and lands and, accordingly, their resource potential were most successfully incorporated in adaptive-landscape farming systems and precision farming systems. Undoubtedly, the cost of precision farming systems will decrease in the future due to the cheapening of technical means. But without introducing scientific and methodological justification for accounting of diversity of soils and land plots (as in adaptive-landscape farming systems) and heterogeneity of crops into precision farming systems, increasing the completeness of land resource potential cannot be achieved. Another important direction to improve the full use of the land resource potential is the development of a new scientific direction - Econics, and the development of technologies for leveling the heterogeneity of fields. But these directions are at the very beginning of their development.

Estimation of the efficiency of the «soy – winter wheat» crop rotation link and its influence on soil properties

Crop rotation is a systematic solution to one of the main tasks of agricultural production: rational land management, taking into account their possible effective fertility, biological potential of cultivated plants and available external and internal resources (heat, climate, fertilizers, agricultural machinery and agrochemicals) in order to maintain the most economically efficient management, which is possible with consistently high yields, with consistent reproduction of soil fertility and protection of the external environment. And as a consequence, crop rotation in this case acts as the basis of modern zonal adaptive landscape farming systems. It defines most other systems: soil cultivation and protection from erosion processes, fertilization and plant protection systems, seed production and variety change, irrigation and drainage of lands, technical systems, labor organization, etc. crop rotation «soybean-winter wheat» on merged leached chernozems and its effect on soil properties in the southern foothill zone of the Western Ciscaucasia. As a result of the study, a comprehensive assessment of the productivity of the «soybean-winter wheat» link in the crop rotation has been carried out and its positive effect on agrophysical and agrochemical properties of merged chernozems determined. It has been established that in order to obtain high-quality soybean seeds of the Mentor variety with the corresponding qualities of «the winter wheat» predecessor in the foothill zone of Adygea, it is necessary to use early sevarian conditions at a seeding rate of 0,6 million pieces/ha and a row spacing of 15 and 30 cm. To acieve a high level of production profitability, winter wheat of the Alekseich variety should be placed according to the «soybeans» predecessor against the background of surface tillage (10–12 cm). At the same time, it is proposed to apply mineral fertilizers at a rate of 200 kg/ha in the form of sulfoammophos N20P20S8, with obligatory double spring feeding of 150 kg/ha with ammonium nitrate N51+N51.

Evolution of enzyme levels in metabolic pathways: A theoretical approach. Part 2

Metabolism is essential for cell function and adaptation. Because of their central role in metabolism, kinetic parameters and enzyme concentrations are under constant selective pressure to adapt the fluxes of the metabolic networks to the needs of the organism. In the line of various studies dealing with enzyme evolution, we recently developed a model of evolution of enzyme concentrations under selection for increased flux, considered as a proxy of fitness (Coton 2021). Taking into account two realistic cellular constraints, competition for resources and co-regulations, we determined the evolutionary equilibria and the ranges of neutral variations of enzyme concentrations. In this article, we give more generality to this model, by considering that the enzymes of a pathway can belong to different groups of co-regulation. We determined the equilibria and showed that the constraints modify the adaptive landscape by limiting the number of independent dimensions. We also showed that any trade-off between enzyme concentration is sufficient to limit the flux and to relax selection for increasing other enzyme concentrations. Even though the model is based on simplifying assumptions, the complexity of the relationship between enzyme concentrations prevents the analysis of selective neutrality.

Adaptive Water Management-land Use Practice for Improving Ecosystem Services – a Hungarian Modelling Case Study

During the 20th century in the Hungarian lowlands the emphasis was put on maximizing provisioning ecosystem services (ES), which caused the weakening of regulating and other services. With the growing environmental pressures, it is crucial to apply a more adaptive landscape management. This, however, leads to territorial conflicts, as large areas with water-tolerant land cover (i.e., wetlands, meadows, riparian forests) are needed to buffer extreme hydrological events.We present some findings of the WateRisk project, a research that focused on the possible solutions of these conflicts. In a scenario-based case study, we analyze the outlined issue for the Szamos-Kraszna Interfluve, a 510 km2 lowland catchment heavily affected by excess water. Scenarios were evaluated with an integrated methodology that focuses on the water budget and the total values of ES. The efficiency of the drainage network was found to be minor/moderate as it provided only -1–5% reduction in the spatial extents of inundations, and it contributed only ~20% to the elimination of water coverage. Furthermore, comparing the present (defense-focused) and the alternative (water retention focused) scenarios, the latter turned out to provide higher monetary value for the summed individual and social benefits of ES. This underlines the need for extensive adaptive measures in both water management and landscape planning to create resilience and the ability to cope with contemporary environmental challenges.

Metagenomic targets of balancing selection in the human gut

Bacteria in the human gut contend with numerous fluctuating environmental variables, including bouts of extreme selective agents like antibiotics. Theory predicts that oscillations in the adaptive landscape can impose balancing selection on bacterial populations, leaving characteristic signatures in the sequence variation of functionally significant genomic loci. Despite their potential importance for gut bacterial adaptation, the metagenomic targets of balancing selection have not been identified. Here, I present population genetic evidence that balancing selection maintains allelic diversity in multidrug efflux pumps of multiple predominant bacterial species in the human gut metagenome. Metagenome wide scans of 566,958 core open reading frames (CORFs) from 287 bacterial species represented by 118,617 metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) indicated that most CORFs have been conserved by purifying selection. However, dozens of CORFs displayed positive Tajima’s D values that deviated significantly from their species’ genomic backgrounds, indicating the action of balancing selection. The AcrB subunit of a multidrug efflux pump (MEP) in Bacteroides dorei displayed the highest Tajima’s D of any CORF, and AcrB and other MEPs from a diversity of bacterial species were significantly enriched among the CORFs with the highest Tajima’s D values. Crystal structures indicated that the regions under balancing selection bind tetracycline and macrolide antibiotics. Other proteins identified as targets of balancing selection included synthases, hydrolases, and ion transporters. Intriguingly, bacterial species experiencing balancing selection were the most abundant in the human gut based on metagenomic data, further suggesting fitness benefits of the allelic variation identified.

Design principles of dangerous territory slope erosion agricultural landscapes of soil for the development of adaptive-landscape system of agriculture lands on Forest-steppe zone

On results undertaken studies systematization is carried out and in theory - methodological positions are deep on this basis practical recommendations are offered in relation to basic directions of ecological optimization of the use of earth-resource potential erosive dangerous agrolandscape by working and development of theoretical and applied bases of the adaptive-landscape systems of agriculture, newest systems of land-tenure, aimed at the rational use and protection of agricultural land, differentiated adaptation of technological means to soil-landscape-climatic factors and economic conditions of modern agricultural.The research was aimed at identifying the latest approaches to the organization of modern land use, which will necessitate the development of farming and land use systems on an ecological and landscape basis, given the different levels of intensification and resource provision, which in turn requires the improvement of existing and development of new components and the whole complex of agricultural systems, in particular in the context of climate change, risks of water and wind erosion and desertification.Many years of domestic experience in developing the scientific basis for the organization and management of agricultural land use, taking into account the basic principles of the concept of sustainable development shows that land management design based on landscape-ecological approach to the organization of agricultural land use is quite capable of becoming a link. unified system of theory and practice of organization of ecologically balanced land use at all levels.The principles of designing the organization of the territory of erosively dangerous sloping agrolandscapes for the development of soil protection adaptive-landscape system of agriculture on sloping lands (theoretical and methodological principles of landscape-adaptive land management, methodological approaches to substantiate land management projects on a landscape-ecological basis).

Development of the forest strip network in the territory of the Volokonovsky district by carrying out an adaptive landscape agriculture system

In the last decade of the twentieth century, there have been significant negative transformations of arable land in the main agricultural regions of Russia. Traditional and zonal farming systems were disrupted, extensive agricultural technologies began to prevail with low doses of mineral fertilizers, a sharp reduction in the number of soil treatments and the use of organic fertilizers and ameliorants, disruption of crop rotation, and burning of stubble. Under these conditions, degradation processes have developed extremely strongly: erosion and plowing, dehumification and acidification, alkalization, and salinization. Many lands turned out to be abandoned, the weediness of crops increased sharply. With a decrease in the real (effective) land fertility and the level of technological culture of agriculture, the profitability of crop production fell sharply. The volume of soil protection and erosion control measures has sharply decreased. Traditional recommendations on soil-protective crop rotations and agrotechnics in the new economic conditions turned out to be practically inaccessible for most farms and cooperative farms, the necessary condition for the survival of which is a quick return on financial investments. The development of agricultural production in the current environmental and economic conditions (the vital need to increase the profitability of production, on the one hand, and a serious aggravation of the agroecological situation and, as a consequence, the increase in environmental and economic risks of production, on the other) requires a transition to adaptive landscape farming systems, which are the next stage of landscape-ecological detailing and economic and economic adaptation of previously developed zonal farming systems.