• Authors:
    • Majchrzak, L.
  • Source: Fragmenta Agronomica
  • Volume: 28
  • Issue: 4
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: The present studies were aimed at determine the allopathic interspecies interactions of winter wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) mixture with winter triticale ( Triticale L.) and winter rye ( Secale cereale L.), spring barley ( Hordeum vulgare L.) with spring wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) and winter triticale ( Triticale L.) on germination and seedling growth. The preliminary intercrop influences were done in a laboratory using developing dishes. These tests allowed us to determine the allelopathic effect of tested grain species on the germinating ability of seeds of other grain crop species as well as on the length of root, coleoptiles length, fresh and air dry matter of roots and coleoptiles. The results showed that neighboring of wheat reduced germinating ability about 11%, reduced root system about 26%, and fresh matter of coleoptiles 42% as compared to the treatment with pure sowing of barley grain. There was no inhibiting influence allelopatic potential of triticale root exudates in his mixture relation with barley and wheat in grounds of analyses features. The research showed growth of germinating ability of winter wheat in mixture with winter triticale, but difference was not significant.
  • Authors:
    • Martiniello, P.
  • Source: European Journal of Agronomy
  • Volume: 35
  • Issue: 4
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: Rotations experiment have been investigated from 1991 to 2008 under irrigated and rainfed condition in Mediterranean environment. The crops studied were: annual winter binary mixture (BM), perennial meadow (ME) and durum wheat (W) continuously rotated for 3 years and W rotated on itself for all period of experiment (CW). The forage rotations emphasized on the impact made on biochemical characteristics of topsoil and productivity of the crops. The 3 years continuous wheat rotation over forage crops assess the advantage of forage crops left in the soil on seed yield and on quality of kernel. The continuous wheat rotation (CW) reduced the soil biochemical parameters, seed yield and quality of kernel. The value of organic carbon, C/N and total nitrogen, under rainfed in comparison to the values present in the topsoil at the beginning of experiment were 6.4% and 2.48 higher and 11.2% lower in ME and lower 5.2% in organic carbon and 2.8% total nitrogen and 0.21 higher in C/N in BM. The agronomic advantages allowed by forage rotations expire their effect after 3 years of continuous wheat. Yearly yield W gain under rainfed was 11.3 kg (ha yr) -1 in BM and 62 kg (ha yr) -1 in ME. The qualitative traits of wheat kernel rotated on forage were higher than those of continuous wheat CW. Results of biochemical characteristics obtained at the end of experiment evidenced that W after BM and ME rotations sustained, under irrigated and rainfed condition, the content of organic carbon and total nitrogen and C/N in the topsoil of the cropping system while continuously CW allowed strong impact of the parameter values present at beginning of experiment (organic carbon, total nitrogen and C/N was reduced under rainfed by 23.5%, 18.2 and 0.32 and 30.3%, 15.4% and 1.72 under irrigated, respectively).
  • Authors:
    • Paliwal, J.
    • Mebatsion, H.
    • Jayas, D.
  • Source: Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
  • Volume: 80
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: The variation in the shape of cereal grains, namely; barley, oat, rye and wheat (Canada Western Amber Durum and Canada Western Red Spring), were quantitatively evaluated using principal components analysis (PCA) based on elliptic Fourier descriptors. Grain image boundary contours were extracted from the digital images of kernels, expressed as chain-coded points and then approximated by 13 elliptic Fourier coefficients. After normalization of the size, rotation and starting point of the contours, four groups of coefficients namely; invariant, symmetrical, asymmetric and standardized Fourier coefficients were analyzed separately using PCA. The PCA based on the symmetric Fourier coefficients captured the shape variability of different grains with fewer principal components (PCs) than the rest. Results suggest that the major shape variations of grains can be summarized by the first two, five, eight and seventeen PCs of the symmetric, standardized, invariant and asymmetric Fourier coefficients, respectively, capturing about 99% of shape variations. The effect of growing regions on kernel shapes was also studied and results revealed that the shape variability is well captured by the PCA of the symmetric coefficients of the standardized Fourier descriptors.
  • Authors:
    • Zhang, F.
    • Stewart, B.
    • Miao, Y.
  • Source: Agronomy for Sustainable Development
  • Volume: 31
  • Issue: 2
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: China is facing one of the largest challenges of this century to continue to increase annual cereal production to about 600 Mt by 2030 to ensure food security with shrinking cropland and limited resources, while maintaining or improving soil fertility, and protecting the environment. Rich experiences in integrated and efficient utilization of different strategies of crop rotation, intercropping, and all possible nutrient resources accumulated by Chinese farmers in traditional farming systems have been gradually abandoned and nutrient management shifted to over-reliance on synthetic fertilizers. China is now the world's largest producer, consumer and importer of chemical fertilizers. Over application of nitrogen (N) is common in intensive agricultural regions, and current N-uptake efficiency was reported to be only 28.3, 28.2 and 26.1% for rice, wheat and maize, respectively, and less than 20% in intensive agricultural regions and for fruit trees or vegetable crops. In addition to surface and groundwater pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, over-application of N fertilizers has caused significant soil acidification in major Chinese croplands, decreasing soil pH by 0.13 to 2.20. High yield as a top priority, small-scale farming, lack of temporal synchronization of nutrient supply and crop demand, lack of effective extension systems, and hand application of fertilizers by farmers are possible reasons leading to the over-application problems. There is little doubt that current nutrient management practices are not sustainable and more efficient management systems need to be developed. A review of long-term experiments conducted around the world indicated that chemical fertilizer alone is not enough to improve or maintain soil fertility at high levels and the soil acidification problem caused by overapplication of synthetic N fertilizers can be reduced if more fertilizer N is applied as NO 3- relative to ammonium- or urea-based N fertilizers. Organic fertilizers can improve soil fertility and quality, but long-term application at high rates can also lead to more nitrate leaching, and accumulation of P, if not managed well. Well-managed combination of chemical and organic fertilizers can overcome the disadvantages of applying single source of fertilizers and sustainably achieve higher crop yields, improve soil fertility, alleviate soil acidification problems, and increase nutrient-use efficiency compared with only using chemical fertilizers. Crop yield can be increased through temporal diversity using crop rotation strategies compared with continuous cropping and legume-based cropping systems can reduce carbon and nitrogen losses. Crop yield responses to N fertilization can vary significantly from year to year due to variation in weather conditions and indigenous N supply, thus the commonly adopted prescriptive approach to N management needs to be replaced by a responsive in-season management approach based on diagnosis of crop growth, N status and demand. A crop sensor-based in-season site-specific N management strategy was able to increase Nuptake efficiency by 368% over farmers' practices in the North China Plain. Combination of these well-tested nutrient management principles and practices with modern crop management technologies is needed to develop sustainable nutrient management systems in China that can precisely match field-to-field and year-to-year variability in nutrient supply and crop demand for both single crops and crop rotations to not only improve nutrient-use efficiency but also increase crop yield and protect the environment. In addition, innovative and effective extension and service-providing systems to assist farmers in adopting and applying new management systems and technologies are also crucially important for China to meet the grand challenge of food security, nutrient-use efficiency and sustainable development.
  • Authors:
    • Nidamanuri, R.
    • Zbell, B.
  • Source: Biosystems Engineering
  • Volume: 110
  • Issue: 3
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: Spectral library search is emerging as an automated method for exploiting finer spectral details available in hyperspectral remote sensing data. We report on the potential of transferring independent crop spectral libraries for classifying various agricultural crops using airborne hyperspectral image. Spectral libraries constructed from multi-season field reflectance measurements for five agricultural crops (alfalfa, winter barley, winter rape, winter rye, and winter wheat) are used for the per-pixel and per-field classification of HyMAP airborne hyperspectral image by the spectral library search method. Results obtained from this method are compared with the results obtained from the per-field object-oriented, and per-pixel support vector machines (SVM) supervised image classification using image-based training data. Results from the spectral library search approach (best overall accuracy: 82%) exhibit strong correlation with the results obtained from both the object-oriented and SVM-supervised classification approach. However, per-field object-oriented classification shows moderate increase in the classification performance. In spite of significant reduction in the overall accuracy, the resultant overall accuracy of about 82% obtained from the spectral library search is fairly high, given the large spatial and temporal differences maintained between the image data and the field reflectance measurements. Results indicate the existence of a meaningful spectral matching between image and reflectance library spectra for some of the crops considered, showing their potential for transferring reflectance spectral libraries for image classification. Incomplete library coverage and phenological variations are found to be the key issues that influence the prospect of transferring spectral libraries for image classification.
  • Authors:
    • Jelic, M.
    • Zivanovic-Katic, S.
    • Nikolic, O.
  • Source: Herbologia
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 1
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: The aim of this investigation was to study allelopathic and competitive relationships between weeds and small grains by grain harvest index (GHI) of small grain in order to provide more information about these complex relationships. In the study were included small grains: wheat ( Triticum aestivum), barley ( Hordeum sativum), oat ( Avena sativa L.), triticale (Triticosecale Witt.) and rye ( Secale cereale) and some weed species: Agropyron repens, Cirsium arvense, Sonchus arvensis, and Sorghum halepense. Applied extracts of weed species mainly expressed suppressed effect on GHI, but stimulating actions were noticed, too. Positive influence, on GHI was registered at Agropyron repens and Sonchus arvensis variant in wheat and at Agropyron repens segments variant in oat. The most expressive grain harvest index decreasing was noticed in Sinapis arvensis variant, while oat showed the least sensitiveness towards weed presence by GHI aspect. The intensity of competitive relationships between weed species and wheat, considering grain harvest index, depended on sprouting quickness and percentage of studied weed species.
  • Authors:
    • Cabrera, D.
    • Liso, A.
    • Coelho, J.
    • Lopez-Pineiro, A.
    • Nunes, J.
    • Pena, D.
  • Source: Spanish Journal of Rural Development (SJRD)
  • Volume: 2
  • Issue: 1
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: In order to determine the effect of different irrigated crop rotation (1. corn, 2. intensive olive grove (300-400 trees/ha), 3. Corn - barley/oat/wheat (1 or 2 years) sugar beet and 4. Tomato - barley/oat/wheat (1 or 2 years) - Beet) on the organic matter content, pH, electrical conductivity and soil sodicity, we collect and georeferenced 6280 samples from the surface layer of soils (0-20 cm) in the Caia Irrigation Perimeter (located in Elvas and Campo Maior Counties, Portalegre District, Portugal) occupied with those rotations. These samples were mixed in groups of 10, resulting 1 sample, corresponding to an area of 11.1 ha, the one was sent to the laboratory where we proceeded to examine the above parameters. With the use of appropriate software (Geographic Information Systems - GIS), it was possible to correlate these individual soil samples with crop rotations and with the group of soil present (Fluvisols, Luvisols and Calcisols). We found that the use of the abovementioned crop rotations, over about two decades, led to significant differences in soil characteristics, although not always significant from a statistical point of view. The crop rotations using larger water and fertilizers amounts in irrigated crop systems are the ones causing a more evident decrease in soil organic matter and pH and, at the same time, leading to an increase in soil electrical conductivity and exchangeable sodium content.
  • Authors:
    • Oberforster, M.
    • Werteker, M.
  • Source: Tagungsband der 61. Jahrestagung der Vereinigung der Pflanzenzuchter und Saatgutkaufleute Osterreichs, 23-25 November 2010, Raumberg-Gumpenstein, Osterreich. Ertrag vs. Qualitat bei Getreide, Ol und Eiweisspflanzen
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: Relations between grain yield and quality parameters of winter wheat, winter barley, winter rye and spring barley were analysed. The results are based on the official Austrian VCU trials from 1979/80 to 2009/10 and on trials performed for the Descriptive List of Varieties. With respect to the species the number of trials was between 319 and 514, with a total of 39 (winter rye) to 139 (spring barley) cultivars. Adjusted means were calculated and correlated intervarietaly. In some cases inverse (statistically negative) relations between yield and quality, e.g. protein content, extract yield difference and color of wort of malting barley, fiber content of feed barley, are desired, whereas the significant intervarietal inverse relation of grain yield and protein content of quality wheat ( r=-0.48** in the Pannonian region; -0.53* in humid areas) and normal bread wheat ( r=-0.73** in the Pannonian region; -0.83** in humid areas) represents a challenge for breeders. Protein quality, expressed as sedimentation value and swelling number, as well as kneading and stretching properties of doughs, baking volume and milling properties were less or not at all influenced. In winter and spring barley the breeding progress is accompanied by an increase in thousand kernel weight and better results of the sieving analysis ( r=0.42** to 0.86**). In rye, especially in hybrid rye, a higher grain yield may be combined with a more favourable falling number and viscosity (amylogram).
  • Authors:
    • Osetrov, D.
  • Source: Ekonomika Sel'skokhozyaistvennykh i Pererabatyvayushchikh Predpriyatii
  • Issue: 4
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: In 2006-2009, total annual production of food and feed grain crops in Russia's Volgograd Oblast' averaged 3 652 300 tonnes, of which the main food crops (winter and spring wheat, rye, buckwheat and millet) accounted for 85.8%, the main feed crops (barley, oats, cereal maize and legumes) 14.1%, and other food and feed crops 0.1%. In 2001-2005, the region's total annual production of food and feed grain crops averaged 3 075 500 tonnes, of which the main food crops accounted for 78.9%, the main feed crops 21.1%, and other food and feed crops 0.0%. Total production of food grains, increased significantly (29.1%) between the 2001-2005 and 2006-2009 periods, with this growth largely attributable to higher harvests of winter wheat (up 50.1%). Total production of feed grains fell by 20.4% between the 2001-2005 and 2006-2009 periods, with harvests of barley, oats and legumes falling by 45.9%, 34.8% and 37.2% respectively, although cereal maize output more than quadrupled. On average in the 2006-2009 period, 1 755 000 tonnes/year of cereal grains were exported outside the region, and 112 000 tonnes/year were imported. Analysis of actual consumption of cereal grains in Volgograd Oblast' shows that total regional consumption averaged 1 919 000 tonnes/year in 2006-2009, of which 19.3% was used for seeds, 62.1% for animal feeds, 13.0% for food purposes, and 2.4% for other industrial processing, with 3.2% losses. A very similar usage pattern was recorded in 2001-2005. It is anticipated that demand for feed grains will rise as a result of implementation of government agricultural policies aimed at stimulating animal production, including the priority national programme "Development of the agro-industrial complex". While 62.1% of cereal grains consumed in Volgograd Oblast' in 2006-2009 were used in animal feeds (1 191 000 tonnes/year), feed crops accounted for only 14.1% of the region's cereal grain output (515 200 tonnes/year). Consequently many enterprises in the animal production segment were forced to use significant volumes of food grains, particularly wheat, for production of animal feeds. This pushes up the price of feeds, and also causes imbalances in the nutrient composition of feeds. Production of food grains in Volgograd Oblast' significantly exceeds demand, and the percentage of total cereal grain production accounted for by food grains is continuing to rise. However the region's food industry still suffers from shortages of some types of cereal grain. In order to correct the problems that have been identified with regard to cereal grains production in Volgograd Oblast', a strategy based on formation of clusters of cereal grain producers, processors and end users is recommended. Recommendations for improvements to the structure of cereal grain production in the region are also presented. These include significant increases in volumes of production of feed crops, in particular oats, maize, legumes and triticale.
  • Authors:
    • Brye, K.
    • Smith, A.
    • Fortin, C.
    • Nalley, L.
    • Popp, M.
  • Source: Agronomy Journal
  • Volume: 103
  • Issue: 4
  • Year: 2011
  • Summary: In this study, we developed a technique for estimating soil C sequestration from crop production with detailed spatial differences in production practices, tillage effects, and soil textures often overlooked when modeling state-level implications of climate change policies. The model also tracks C equivalent (CE) emissions from fertilizer, fuel, and agricultural chemical use. Using Arkansas as an example, a model that maximizes crop returns to producers in conjunction with C offset payments allowed estimation of probable changes in county-level cropping patterns and income as a result of varying C prices. While income ramifications of a C-offset climate change policy are positive, significant uncertainty about resultant greenhouse gas (GHG) effects are demonstrated. Crops included were corn ( Zea mays L.), cotton ( Gossypium hirsutum L.), grain sorghum [ Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench], soybean [ Glycine max (L.) Merr.], rice ( Oryza sativa L.) and wheat ( Triticum spp.). As a result of this detailed analysis, two caveats are that (i) policy recommendations hinge on a baseline scenario that would change with changes in input and output price levels, with these interactions not modeled within, and (ii) monitoring costs of a C-offset market could be significant.