Digital Commons Network^™

Interactions Between Biochar And Compost In Organic Winter Wheat Production And Soil Quality Under Dryland Conditions, Phearen Kit Miller

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Organic wheat grown under dryland conditions encounters challenges such as limited nutrients and water. Maintaining organic wheat production requires solutions to these problems in order to retain economic sustainability for the farmers.

Research on biochar and compost have been conducted globally. Despite well known benefits of compost on soil and crop production, few organic farmers apply compost to their fields. Research on biochar is still new. Biochar is charcoal created from pyrolyzing agricultural material under conditions of low oxygen and high heat. Many studies claim that biochar is a valuable soil amendment for improving organic production and reducing environmental pollution …

A Simple Metabolic Switch May Activate Apomixis In Arabidopsis Thaliana, David Alan Sherwood

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Apomixis, asexual or clonal seed production in plants, can decrease the cost of producing hybrid seed and enable currently open pollinated crops to be converted to more vigorous and higher yielding hybrids that can reproduce themselves through their own seed. Sexual reproduction may be triggered by a programmed stress signaling event that occurs in both the meiocyte, just prior to meiosis, and later in the egg just prior to embryo sac maturation. The prevention of stress signaling and the activation of a pro-growth signal prior to meiosis triggered apomeiosis, the first half of apomixis. The same approach was used prior …

Silage Corn Hybrid Response To Row Width And Plant Density In The Intermountain West, Mark A. Pieper

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Corn (Zea mays L.) hectarage has increased rapidly in Utah and Idaho in recent years due to expansion of the dairy industry, but little is known about corn production practices that optimize yield and quality of silage corn in semi-arid irrigated cropping systems. The objective of this study was to determine the dry matter yield and quality effects of corn hybrids grown in different plant densities and row widths in the Intermountain West. Field experiments were conducted under irrigation in 2015 and 2016 at locations near North Logan, Utah and Jerome, Idaho. The experimental design was a randomized complete …

Utilizing Legumes To Improve Production And Nutritive Value Of Intermountain West Pastures, Jacob T. Briscoe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Pastures in the Intermountain Western United States mainly consist of cool-season grasses which lack production without supplemental nitrogen. Legumes provide nitrogen at reduced cost compared to nitrogen fertilizer. There is a need for proven methods of inter-seeding legumes into existing cool-season grass pastures as well as knowledge of how animals prefer legumes to grasses and how the nutritive value of forages change throughout the growing season. This research provides a resource for effective integration of legumes into pastures of the Intermountain West. Alfalfa, birdsfoot trefoil, and cicer milkvetch were inter-seeded into existing cool-season grass pastures following pretreatments of light tillage, …

Pharmacologically Induced Meiosis Apomeiosis Interconversions In Boechera, Arabidopsis And Vigna, Lei Gao

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Apomixis is a clonal propagation method that produces offspring identical to the mother plant. With this feature, superior traits could be maintained over generations. However, our knowledge about apomixis is limited. In this study, we analyzed several apomictic Boechera embryologically to learn the details of apomixis. Meanwhile, we designed chemical treatments to successfully induce sex in apomictic plants and apomixis in sexual plants. Our experiments suggest that sex and apomixis coexist in plants and that sexual and apomictic reproduction are switchable by treating with specific chemicals.

Pruning Strategies For High Density ‘Montmorency' Tart Cherry, Sheriden M. Hansen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The tart cherry (Prunus cerasus) is the most significant fruit tree crop in Utah, accounting for roughly 51% of the total statewide commercial fruit acreage. In order to accommodate harvesting equipment, tart cherries are grown in conventional orchards with large trees spaced up to 5.5 meters apart. New methods of harvest are adapted to smaller trees in tighter spaced high density (HD) orchards. HD orchards bear fruit earlier in the orchard life than conventional orchards, but likely require different pruning and management strategies, which have not yet been determined for tart cherry. Experimental HD orchards were used to …

Effect Of Silicon On Wheat Growth And Development In Drought And Salinity Stress, Spencer A. Tibbitts

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Silicon is a major component of most soils, and is found in significant concentration in plant tissue. Plants vary widely in the amount of silicon they take up, with some plants excluding it, and others using transporters to move the silicon from the soil into their roots. Early plant physiology studies were unable to determine conclusively whether silicon was essential to plant growth, but for some plants, most notably rice, it has proved to be important enough to justify fertilizing silicon deficient fields.

Researchers at the USU Crop Physiology Lab tested the effect of silicon on wheat growth and seed …

Effect Of Wood Chips As A Component Of Soilless Media On Growth And Nutrition Of Food And Ornamental Crops, Kristen Bullough

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Peat is the central component of the soil-less media mix in all greenhouse crop production but it is expensive because it is harvested in Canada and shipped to greenhouses across North America. Wood chips provide a local, low-cost alternative to peat, but observations by growers indicate potential growth reductions from the addition of wood to peat-based media. Here I report the effects of the addition of wood chips to peat-based media. The study included four treatments: two controls (peat/vermiculite: 50/50 and 75/25) and two treatments with wood chips ' (peat/wood chips: 50/50 and 75/25) with three species (sunflowers, soybeans, and …