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Arkansas Corn And Grain Sorghum Research Studies 2022, Victor Ford, Jason Kelley, Nathan Mckinney Ii

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Series

The 2022 edition of the Arkansas Corn and Grain Sorghum Research Studies Series includes research results on topics pertaining to corn and grain sorghum production, including weed, disease, and insect management; economics; sustainability; irrigation; post-harvest drying; soil fertility; mycotoxins; cover crop management; and research verification program results. Our objective is to capture and broadly distribute the results of research projects funded by the Arkansas Corn and Grain Sorghum Board. The intended audience includes producers and their advisors, current investigators, and future researchers. The Series serves as a citable archive of research results.

Reports in this publication are 2–3 year summaries. …

Utah Florist Preferences For Local Cut Flowers, Kynda R. Curtis, Melanie Stock

All Current Publications

This fact sheet provides crucial information on wholesale florist needs and preferences for local cut flowers. The information here will enhance the ability of current and potential cut flower growers to properly assess the profit potential of their decisions and assist with the long-term sustainability of their farming operations.

Arkansas Soybean Performance Tests 2022, J. F. Carlin, R. B. Mulloy, R. D. Bond

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Series

Soybean variety and strain performance tests are conducted each year in Arkansas by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s Arkansas Crop Variety Improvement Program. The tests provide information to companies developing varieties and/ or marketing seed within the state, and aid the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service in formulating variety recommendations for soybean producers.

Do Cover Crop Mixtures Improve Soil Physical Health More Than Monocultures?, Humberto Blanco-Canqui

Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications

Rationale and Purpose — Adding multispecies cover crop (CC) mixtures could diversify the current simplified crop rotations and enhance soil health more than monoculture CCs. Further, CC mixtures with diverse plant species could adapt better to changing climatic and environmental conditions than monoculture CCs. However, our current understanding of the soil benefits of CC mixtures is still limited. This review discussed whether CC mixtures are better than monoculture CCs to improve soil physical health.

Methods — All studies published up to May 25, 2023, comparing soil physical properties between CC mixtures and their constituents grown as monocultures were searched in …

Evaluating Planting Green And Herbicides For Integrated Weed Management And Their Effect On Soil Properties In Corn And Soybean In Nebraska, Trey Stephens

Theses, Dissertations, and Student Research in Agronomy and Horticulture

Producers across the Midwest are finding new ways to implement cover crops into cropping systems and the practice of “Planting Green” is one of the newest uses of cover crops. When planting green, producers plant their row crops into actively growing cover crops and terminate the cover crop at time of planting or shortly after planting. This practice would allow for higher biomass accumulation of the cover crop and could aid in weed management of herbicide-resistant weeds. The objective of the first two studies was to evaluate planting green and its effect on soil-applied residual herbicides, weed management, dicamba/glyphosate-resistant soybean …

Meta-Analysis Of The Effects Of Endophytes And Their Secondary Metabolites On Herbivory From Insects, Derrick Taylor

All Theses

Endophyte-infected plants have reduced the level of herbivory. The defense to herbivory can vary due to the metabolites in the plant and the method of feeding from the pest. Secondary metabolites produced by the endophytes are mainly alkaloids. The associations between endophytes and some alkaloid groups are studied in greater detail. The lack of research of certain alkaloid groups ultimately means that some alkaloids had more data that could be analyzed. As a result, the alkaloid groups were not evenly represented in the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis analyzed the relative effectiveness of the metabolites or endophytes in each of the articles …

Genomic Selection For Yield And Seed Composition Stability In An Applied Soybean Breeding Program, Benjamin Harms

Theses, Dissertations, and Student Research in Agronomy and Horticulture

Stability traits are of primary importance in plant breeding to ensure consistency in phenotype across a range of environments. However, selection efficiency and accuracy for stability traits can be hindered due to the requirement of obtaining phenotype data across multiple years and environments for proper stability analysis. Genomic selection is a method that allows prediction of a phenotype prior to observation in the field using genome-wide marker data and phenotype data from a training population. To assess prediction of stability traits, two elite-yielding soybean populations developed three years apart in the same breeding program were used. The individuals in each …

Evaluating Form And Function Of Groundcovers And Their Environmental Impacts In Louisiana Landscapes, Thomas Maxwell Mckeown

LSU Master's Theses

Increasing environmental concerns are encouraging the adoption of sustainable landscapes that have environmental, social, and financial benefits. Ornamental groundcover systems are touted as sustainable landscape features due to the associated decreased demand of water, fertilizer, pesticide, and maintenance; however, limited research exists on soil property effects, planting density, weed density, or consumer preferences of groundcovers. This study was aimed to gain a more thorough understanding of ornamental groundcovers systems and their environmental impacts. The effects of groundcover growth habit (matting; bunching) and irrigation delivery (micro spray; overhead) on soil temperature, volumetric water content (VWC), and electric conductivity (EC) along with …

Arkansas Cotton Variety Test 2022, F. Bourland, A. Beach, B. Milano, B. Guest, C. Kennedy, L. Martin, B. Robertson

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Series

The primary goal of the Arkansas Cotton Variety Test is to provide unbiased data regarding the agronomic performance of cotton varieties and advanced breeding lines in the major cotton-growing areas of Arkansas. This information helps seed companies establish marketing strategies and assists producers in choosing varieties to plant. These annual evaluations will then facilitate the inclusion of new, improved genetic material in Arkansas cotton production. Adaptation of varieties is determined by evaluating the lines at five University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture research sites (Manila, Keiser, Judd Hill, Marianna, and Rohwer). The 2022 tests at Rohwer were adversely affected …

Experimentation On Nebraska Farms For Sustaining Soil Health Management, Fernanda Souza Krupek

Theses, Dissertations, and Student Research in Agronomy and Horticulture

Soil health management practices have increasingly been promoted across US agroecosystems to address many interrelated environmental and economic food system challenges. Sustaining conservation behavior – through farmer’s adoption and continued use of practices – is key for achieving many soil health-related intended social-ecological benefits. Using a range of scientific methods, from lab-based experiments to on-farm research to farmer interviews, the overall objective of this dissertation research was to explore soil and human dimension considerations to design farming and knowledge transfer systems for sustaining soil health management in the US Midwest. In a multivariate analysis of ten on-farm research sites, we …

Ranunculus Cut Flower Production In Utah, Shannon Rauter, Melanie Stock

All Current Publications

Ranunculus (Ranunculus asiaticus) is grown as a cool-season annual for cut flower production in Utah. Tuberous roots can be planted as early as November in a high tunnel for blooms beginning in April. For field production, plant in November with insulation or as early as possible in spring for blooms beginning in May. Flower production ceases when temperatures reach approximately 80°F, usually by early July in northern Utah. In North Logan, UT, high tunnels produced an average of 3 to 7 marketable stems per plant, compared to 1 to 2 stems per plant in the field. Profit potential …

Anemone Cut Flower Production In Utah, Shannon Rauter, Melanie Stock

All Current Publications

Anemone (Anemone coronaria) is grown as a cool-season annual for cut flower production in Utah. Tubers can be planted as early as November in a high tunnel for blooms beginning in March. For field production, plant in fall with insulation or as early as possible in spring (i.e., the soil is workable, approximately early March) for blooms beginning in May. Flower production ceases when temperatures reach approximately 80°F, usually by early July in northern Utah. In North Logan, UT, high tunnels produced an average of 2 to 7 marketable stems per plant, compared to 1 to 4 stems …

A Plea For Scale, And Why It Matters For Invasive Species Management, Biodiversity And Conservation, Nicholas A. Mcmillan, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Craig A. Davis, Robert G. Hamilton, Landon. K. Neumann, Samantha M. Cady

Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications

1. Invasive species are suspected to be major contributors to biodiversity declines worldwide. Counterintuitively, however, invasive species effects are likely scale dependent and are hypothesized to be positively related to biodiversity at large spatial scales. Past studies investigating the effect of invasion on biodiversity have been mostly conducted at small scales (<100 m²) that cannot represent large dynamic landscapes by design. Therefore, replicated experimental evidence supporting a negative effect of invasive plants on biodiversity is lacking across many landscape types, including large grasslands.

2. We collected data across eight large (333–809 ha) grassland landscapes managed with pyric herbivory—that is the recoupling …

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Soil Depth And Geographic Distance Modulate Bacterial Β-Diversity In Deep Soil Profiles Throughout The U.S. Corn Belt, Lucas Dantas Lopes, Stephanie L. Futrell, Emily E. Wright, Gerasimos J. Danalatos, Michael J. Castellano, Tony J. Vyn, Sotirios V. Archontoulis, Daniel P. Schachtman

Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications

Understanding how microbial communities are shaped across spatial dimensions is of fundamental importance in microbial ecology. However, most studies on soil biogeography have focused on the topsoil microbiome, while the factors driving the subsoil microbiome distribution are largely unknown. Here we used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to analyse the factors underlying the bacterial β-diversity along vertical (0–240 cm of soil depth) and horizontal spatial dimensions (~500,000 km²) in the U.S. Corn Belt. With these data we tested whether the horizontal or vertical spatial variation had stronger impacts on the taxonomic (Bray-Curtis) and phylogenetic (weighted Unifrac) β-diversity. Additionally, we …

Graph Convolutional Network Using Adaptive Neighborhood Laplacian Matrix For Hyperspectral Images With Application To Rice Seed Image Classification, Jairo Orozco, Vidya Manian, Estefania Alfaro, Harkamal Walia, Balpreet K. Dhatt

Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications

Graph convolutional neural network architectures combine feature extraction and convolutional layers for hyperspectral image classification. An adaptive neighborhood aggregation method based on statistical variance integrating the spatial information along with the spectral signature of the pixels is proposed for improving graph convolutional network classification of hyperspectral images. The spatial-spectral information is integrated into the adjacency matrix and processed by a single-layer graph convolutional network. The algorithm employs an adaptive neighborhood selection criteria conditioned by the class it belongs to. Compared to fixed window-based feature extraction, this method proves effective in capturing the spectral and spatial features with variable pixel neighborhood …

A Role For Heritable Transcriptomic Variation In Maize Adaptation To Temperate Environments, Guangchao Sun, Huihui Yu, Peng Wang, Martha Lopez‑Guerrero, Ravi V. Mural, Olivier N. Mizero, Marcin Grzybowski, Baoxing Song, Karin V. Van Dijk, Daniel P. Schachtman, Chi Zhang, James C. Schnable

Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications

Background: Transcription bridges genetic information and phenotypes. Here, we evaluated how changes in transcriptional regulation enable maize (Zea mays), a crop originally domesticated in the tropics, to adapt to temperate environments.

Result: We generated 572 unique RNA-seq datasets from the roots of 340 maize genotypes. Genes involved in core processes such as cell division, chromosome organization and cytoskeleton organization showed lower heritability of gene expression, while genes involved in anti-oxidation activity exhibited higher expression heritability. An expression genome-wide association study (eGWAS) identified 19,602 expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 11,444 genes. A …

Large And Stable Genome Edits At The Sorghum Alpha Kafirin Locus Result In Changes In Chromatin Accessibility And Globally Increased Expression Of Genes Encoding Lysine Enrichment, J. Preston Hurst, Abou Yobi, Aixia Li, Shirley Sato, Thomas E. Clemente, Ruthie Angelovici, David R. Holding

Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications

Introduction: Sorghum is a resilient and widely cultivated grain crop used for feed and food. However, it’s grain is deficient in lysine, an essential amino acid. This is due to the primary seed storage proteins, the alpha-kafirins, lacking lysine. It has been observed that reductions in alpha-kafirin protein results in rebalancing of the seed proteome and a corresponding increase in non-kafirin proteins which leads to an increased lysine content. However, the mechanisms underlying proteome rebalancing are unclear. This study characterizes a previously developed gene edited sorghum line, with deletions at the alpha kafirin locus.

Methods: A single consensus …

Large And Stable Genome Edits At The Sorghum Alpha Kafirin Locus Result In Changes In Chromatin Accessibility And Globally Increased Expression Of Genes Encoding Lysine Enrichment, J. Preston Hurst, Abou Yobi, Aixia Li, Shirley Sato, Thomas E. Clemente, Ruthie Angelovici

Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications

Introduction: Sorghum is a resilient and widely cultivated grain crop used for feed and food. However, it’s grain is deficient in lysine, an essential amino acid. This is due to the primary seed storage proteins, the alpha-kafirins, lacking lysine. It has been observed that reductions in alpha-kafirin protein results in rebalancing of the seed proteome and a corresponding increase in non-kafirin proteins which leads to an increased lysine content. However, the mechanisms underlying proteome rebalancing are unclear. This study characterizes a previously developed gene edited sorghum line, with deletions at the alpha kafirin locus.

Methods: A single consensus …

Assessing Functional Biodiversity For The Future Of Plants, Planet, And People, Ali Loker

Doctoral Documents from Doctor of Plant Health Program

Biodiversity plays a critical role in supporting life in global ecosystems and its links to ecosystem services and sustainability are recognized by scientific and non-scientific communities. Growing awareness of the importance of biodiversity is accelerated by discussions of its loss, and how to design interventions to conserve and mitigate a biodiversity crisis. Stakeholders are funding and implementing assessment strategies at various scales to help direct conservation efforts. There is also growing interest in measuring and communicating biodiversity outcomes.

Functional biodiversity characterizes the multiplicity of life forms into groups based on their diverse contributions to natural and agro-ecosystems. Assessing functional biodiversity …

Arkansas Corn And Grain Sorghum Performance Tests 2022, J. F. Carlin, R. B. Mulloy, R. D. Bond

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Series

Corn and grain sorghum performance tests are conducted each year in Arkansas by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. The tests provide information to companies marketing seed within the state and aid the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service in formulating recommendations for producers. The 2022 corn performance tests contained 68 hybrids and were conducted at the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center (NERREC) at Harrisburg, the Northeast Rice Research and Extension Center (NEREC) at Keiser, the Lon Mann Cotton Research Station (LMCRS) near Marianna, the Rohwer Research Station (RRS) near Rohwer, and the Rice Research and Extension Center (RREC) …