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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Long-Term Tillage System Impacts On Soil Erodibility, Julianne R. Chechanover, Dennis C. Flanagan Aug 2015

Long-Term Tillage System Impacts On Soil Erodibility, Julianne R. Chechanover, Dennis C. Flanagan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Conservation tillage practices, such as no-till agriculture, have the potential of reducing the erodibility of a soil compared to conventional agricultural practices. This research sought to determine whether long-term agricultural practices affect the baseline erodibility properties of a soil. Two soils from Throckmorton-Purdue Agricultural Center in Tippecanoe County, Indiana were used during this experiment. One soil was treated with a long-term conventional tillage (fall chisel, spring disk) system and the other soil was treated with a long-term no-till system. The soils’ interrill erodibility, and rill erodibility and critical hydraulic shear stress were measured under a rainfall simulator using soil boxes …


Genetic, Agronomic And Compositional Characterization Of Brown Midrib Sweet Sorghum Lignocellulosic Biomass For Ethanol Production, Luis A. Rivera Burgos Apr 2015

Genetic, Agronomic And Compositional Characterization Of Brown Midrib Sweet Sorghum Lignocellulosic Biomass For Ethanol Production, Luis A. Rivera Burgos

Open Access Dissertations

Sorghum is a promising bioenergy crop due to its unique phenotypic and genotypic attributes. Quality (low lignin and high stem sugar concentration) and quantity (biomass yield, plant height, plant maturity, etc.) biomass traits are key contributors to ethanol yield and production. In this study, a 236 sorghum recombinant inbred line (RIL) population was subjected to genetic, agronomic and compositional characterization for ethanol yield and production. We found that the sweet mutation enhances biomass quantity traits in the RILs which translates to higher ethanol production and biomass quality which improves ethanol yield. The variance components showed from moderate to high heritability …


Cover Crop And No-Till Effects On Soil Health Properties In Indiana, Sara Alford Apr 2015

Cover Crop And No-Till Effects On Soil Health Properties In Indiana, Sara Alford

Open Access Theses

A growing concern of soil health and long-term sustainability has increased interest in no-till and cover crops in the Midwest. Some of the challenges with no-till in the Midwest can be higher soil moisture and lower soil temperatures at cash crop planting in the spring, planter adjustment issues, and lack of immediate economic benefit. Cover crops also have some of the same issues along with extra cost of seed and termination, mismanagement of cover crops, and lack of knowledge on the benefits and costs. This project was begun in order to quantify the effects of no-till and cover crops on …


Genetic Analysis Of Nitrogen Remobilization And Kernel Compositon In Zea Mays L. And Sorghum Bicolor (L.) Moench, Raymond S Lindsey Apr 2015

Genetic Analysis Of Nitrogen Remobilization And Kernel Compositon In Zea Mays L. And Sorghum Bicolor (L.) Moench, Raymond S Lindsey

Open Access Dissertations

Genetic Analysis of Nitrogen Remobilization and Kernel Composition in Zea Mays L. and Sorghum Bicolor (L.) Moench. Major Professor: Mitchell Tuinstra. Modern maize (Zea mays L.) production relies heavily on nitrogen fertilization for high productivity. Over-application of nitrogen fertilizers in cropping systems can have detrimental economic and environmental effects. For this reason, improving Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) is a major goal of breeders and producers. Nitrogen Utilization Efficiency (NUtE) is one component of NUE, and the most important component under N-limited conditions. In this study we examined the genetic controls of the timing and preferential canopy position of leaf N …


Utilization Of Tall Wheatgrass Translocation Lines To Improve Fusarium Head Blight Resistance In Wheat, Xiangye Xiao Apr 2015

Utilization Of Tall Wheatgrass Translocation Lines To Improve Fusarium Head Blight Resistance In Wheat, Xiangye Xiao

Open Access Dissertations

Fusarium head blight (FHB) and leaf rust (LR) are two major fungal pathogens threatening the wheat crop, consequently identifying resistance genes from various sources is always of importance to wheat breeders. Type II FHB resistance in wheat has been improved by introgressing QTL from landraces and wild species. The present study was undertaken to (1) combine two different type II FHB resistance QTL in the backgrounds of six adapted wheat lines (2) improve the map resolution of Qfhs.pur-7EL.^ In the first objective, the FHB resistance gene Fhb1 originated in a Chinese wheat cultivar and is located on wheat chromosome …


What Do Experienced Water Managers Think Of Water Resources Of Our Nation And Its Management Infrastructure?, Faisal Hossain, Jeffrey R. Arnold, Edward Beighley, Casey M. Brown, Steven J. Burian, Ji Chen, Anindita Mitra, Dev Dutta S Niyogi, Roger A. Pielke, Vincent C. Tidwell, Dave Wegner Jan 2015

What Do Experienced Water Managers Think Of Water Resources Of Our Nation And Its Management Infrastructure?, Faisal Hossain, Jeffrey R. Arnold, Edward Beighley, Casey M. Brown, Steven J. Burian, Ji Chen, Anindita Mitra, Dev Dutta S Niyogi, Roger A. Pielke, Vincent C. Tidwell, Dave Wegner

Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Faculty Publications

This article represents the second report by an ASCE Task Committee "Infrastructure Impacts of Landscape-driven Weather Change" under the ASCE Watershed Management Technical Committee and the ASCE Hydroclimate Technical Committee. Herein, the 'infrastructure impacts" are referred to as infrastructure-sensitive changes in weather and climate patterns (extremes and non-extremes) that are modulated, among other factors, by changes in landscape, land use and land cover change. In this first report, the article argued for explicitly considering the well-established feedbacks triggered by infrastructure systems to the land-atmosphere system via landscape change. In this report by the ASCE Task Committee (TC), we present the …