Fungicide application timing for management of Ascochyta blight in chickpea

Non-Peer ReviewedAscochyta blight of chickpea [Ascochyta rabiei] is an extremely destructive disease capable of causing high yield and quality losses. The disease is widespread in chickpea growing areas of the prairies, and the pathogen can survive in crop debris for several years. Although partially resistant cultivars are available, the disease can still be devastating if weather conditions are favourable, making fungicides an important disease management tool. Trials investigating the effectiveness of different fungicide application timings and sequences were conducted on the desi cv. Myles and the kabuli cv. CDC Yuma at Saskatoon in 2003. The products used included Bravo 500, Headline, and Lance. The first application was made prior to flowering, when disease pressure was still extremely low. Additional applications were made at early flower, mid-flower, late flower or podding, with a maximum of three applications per treatment. In both cultivars, treatments without a pre-flower application of fungicide had higher disease severity and lower yields than treatments with a pre-flower application. Treatments without a pre-flower application that were sprayed three times were still inferior to treatments with a pre-flower application that were only sprayed twice. These results emphasize the need for early and frequent scouting for disease symptoms in chickpea to allow for early fungicide application if it is appropriate

Comparison of ground and aerial application of fungicide for control of Ascochyta blight in chickpeas

Non-Peer ReviewedAscochyta rabiei control from aerial and ground application was assessed near Saskatoon in 2003 and 2004. Each year, a site of about 12 ha was seeded to kabuli (cv. CDC Xena) chickpeas. At the first sign of disease, applications of fungicide were commenced and maintained at approximately 10-day intervals. In 2003, four applications (two with Headline (pyraclostrobin), two with Lance (boscalid)) were conducted. In 2004, the last Lance application was not done. Aerial application was made using a Cessna AgTruck applying 37 L/ha using CP nozzles emitting a spray with a VMD of approximately 271 μm. Ground applications were conducted using a Melroe SpraCoupe applying 100 L/ha using XR8003 nozzles with a VMD of approximately 246 μm. Disease ratings were done throughout the season, and seed yields were taken at crop maturity. Disease incidence progressed to 80 to 90% in the untreated plots, and fungicide application reduced disease incidence (to 20 to 30%) and increased seed yield in both years. Disease incidence and seed yield were not affected by application method in either season

Disease management strategies for Ascochyta blight of chickpea

Non-Peer ReviewedManagement of chickpea ascochyta blight is a difficult task that requires ongoing attention and utilization of all possible techniques. Starting with clean seed of a resistant cultivar is critical, but even with this sound foundation, fungicide application is often necessary. Optimizing fungicide application strategies in chickpea is essential to protect the crop while simultaneously keeping costs as low as possible. Field experiments showed that early application of fungicide is crucial, and often additional applications were necessary for effective disease management. Of the product sequences tested, those including two strobilurin applications and two other applications during the season gave superior disease control in several cases, but this did not always confer higher yields. Nozzle type had no effect on disease development or yield in any of the field site-years. Similarly in the laboratory study, nozzle types had no effect on the amount of spray coverage or the degree of spray penetration into the crop canopy. A similar laboratory study comparing carrier volumes showed that using a higher carrier volume (>100 L ha-1) improves penetration of a fern leaf-type canopy, but offered no benefit in a unifoliate canopy. In the field, increasing carrier volume did not improve disease control when disease pressure was low to moderate. In some cases under high disease pressure, higher carrier volumes were important for achieving disease control

Compressible Sub-Alfvenic MHD turbulence in Low-beta Plasmas

We present a model for compressible sub-Alfvenic isothermal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in low-beta plasmas and numerically test it. We separate MHD fluctuations into 3 distinct families - Alfven, slow, and fast modes. We find that, production of slow and fast modes by Alfvenic turbulence is suppressed. As a result, Alfven modes in compressible regime exhibit scalings and anisotropy similar to those in incompressible regime. Slow modes passively mimic Alfven modes. However, fast modes show isotropy and a scaling similar to acoustic turbulence.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett., in pres

Thrombosis Is Reduced by Inhibition of COX-1, but Unaffected by Inhibition of COX-2, in an Acute Model of Platelet Activation in the Mouse

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

NUV/Blue spectral observations of sprites in the 320-460 nm region: N2{\mathrm N_2} (2PG) Emissions

A near-ultraviolet (NUV) spectrograph (320-460 nm) was flown on the EXL98 aircraft sprite observation campaign during July 1998. In this wavelength range video rate (60 fields/sec) spectrographic observations found the NUV/blue emissions to be predominantly N2 (2PG). The negligible level of N2+ (1NG) present in the spectrum is confirmed by observations of a co-aligned, narrowly filtered 427.8 nm imager and is in agreement with previous ground-based filtered photometer observations. The synthetic spectral fit to the observations indicates a characteristic energy of ~1.8 eV, in agreement with our other NUV observations.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, JGR Space Physics "Effects of Thunderstorms and Lightning in the Upper Atmosphere" Special Sectio

Spacings of Quarkonium Levels with the Same Principal Quantum Number

The spacings between bound-state levels of the Schr\"odinger equation with the same principal quantum number $N$ but orbital angular momenta $\ell$ differing by unity are found to be nearly equal for a wide range of power potentials $V = \lambda r^\nu$, with $E_{N \ell} \approx F(\nu, N) - G(\nu,N) \ell$. Semiclassical approximations are in accord with this behavior. The result is applied to estimates of masses for quarkonium levels which have not yet been observed, including the 2P $c \bar c$ states and the 1D $b \bar b$ states.Comment: 20 pages, latex, 3 uuencoded figures submitted separately (process using psfig.sty

Kinetic Turbulence

The weak collisionality typical of turbulence in many diffuse astrophysical plasmas invalidates an MHD description of the turbulent dynamics, motivating the development of a more comprehensive theory of kinetic turbulence. In particular, a kinetic approach is essential for the investigation of the physical mechanisms responsible for the dissipation of astrophysical turbulence and the resulting heating of the plasma. This chapter reviews the limitations of MHD turbulence theory and explains how kinetic considerations may be incorporated to obtain a kinetic theory for astrophysical plasma turbulence. Key questions about the nature of kinetic turbulence that drive current research efforts are identified. A comprehensive model of the kinetic turbulent cascade is presented, with a detailed discussion of each component of the model and a review of supporting and conflicting theoretical, numerical, and observational evidence.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures, 99 references, Chapter 6 in A. Lazarian et al. (eds.), Magnetic Fields in Diffuse Media, Astrophysics and Space Science Library 407, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg (2015

Terahertz underdamped vibrational motion governs protein-ligand binding in solution

Low-frequency collective vibrational modes in proteins have been proposed as being responsible for efficiently directing biochemical reactions and biological energy transport. However, evidence of the existence of delocalized vibrational modes is scarce and proof of their involvement in biological function absent. Here we apply extremely sensitive femtosecond optical Kerr-effect spectroscopy to study the depolarized Raman spectra of lysozyme and its complex with the inhibitor triacetylchitotriose in solution. Underdamped delocalized vibrational modes in the terahertz frequency domain are identified and shown to blue-shift and strengthen upon inhibitor binding. This demonstrates that the ligand-binding coordinate in proteins is underdamped and not simply solvent-controlled as previously assumed. The presence of such underdamped delocalized modes in proteins may have significant implications for the understanding of the efficiency of ligand binding and protein–molecule interactions, and has wider implications for biochemical reactivity and biological function

Theory and Applications of Non-Relativistic and Relativistic Turbulent Reconnection

Realistic astrophysical environments are turbulent due to the extremely high Reynolds numbers. Therefore, the theories of reconnection intended for describing astrophysical reconnection should not ignore the effects of turbulence on magnetic reconnection. Turbulence is known to change the nature of many physical processes dramatically and in this review we claim that magnetic reconnection is not an exception. We stress that not only astrophysical turbulence is ubiquitous, but also magnetic reconnection itself induces turbulence. Thus turbulence must be accounted for in any realistic astrophysical reconnection setup. We argue that due to the similarities of MHD turbulence in relativistic and non-relativistic cases the theory of magnetic reconnection developed for the non-relativistic case can be extended to the relativistic case and we provide numerical simulations that support this conjecture. We also provide quantitative comparisons of the theoretical predictions and results of numerical experiments, including the situations when turbulent reconnection is self-driven, i.e. the turbulence in the system is generated by the reconnection process itself. We show how turbulent reconnection entails the violation of magnetic flux freezing, the conclusion that has really far reaching consequences for many realistically turbulent astrophysical environments. In addition, we consider observational testing of turbulent reconnection as well as numerous implications of the theory. The former includes the Sun and solar wind reconnection, while the latter include the process of reconnection diffusion induced by turbulent reconnection, the acceleration of energetic particles, bursts of turbulent reconnection related to black hole sources as well as gamma ray bursts. Finally, we explain why turbulent reconnection cannot be explained by turbulent resistivity or derived through the mean field approach.Comment: 66 pages, 24 figures, a chapter of the book "Magnetic Reconnection - Concepts and Applications", editors W. Gonzalez, E. N. Parke