Determination of Soil Moisture Content at Permanent Wilting for Us in Field Studies

In ecological investigations of interactions between plants and soil moisture, whether the aim is to determine fundamental plant-environment relationships or primarily to solve immediate plant production problems, the soil moisture content at permanent wilting, expressed as a percentage of the dry weight, is a basic determination. Although there is evidence that this soil moisture value may not represent the exact non-available moisture content of the soil (4, 8) it is generally agreed that it represents the limit of favorable plant growth conditions and will be considered here as non-available soil moisture

The Queue-Number of Posets of Bounded Width or Height

Heath and Pemmaraju conjectured that the queue-number of a poset is bounded by its width and if the poset is planar then also by its height. We show that there are planar posets whose queue-number is larger than their height, refuting the second conjecture. On the other hand, we show that any poset of width $2$ has queue-number at most $2$, thus confirming the first conjecture in the first non-trivial case. Moreover, we improve the previously best known bounds and show that planar posets of width $w$ have queue-number at most $3w-2$ while any planar poset with $0$ and $1$ has queue-number at most its width.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, Appears in the Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2018

Selection of Australian Root Nodule Bacteria for Broad-Scale Inoculation of Native Legumes

The unique and diverse native Australian perennial legumes are under current investigation for use as pastures in Australian agriculture. Identification of root nodule bacteria (RNB) that can fix nitrogen effectively for the plant is a critical factor for the success of a legume species in agriculture (Howieson et al., 2000). Some legumes under investigation are relatively promiscuous (Lange, 1961). This trait may allow the development of a single, broad-scale inoculant that could allow inoculation of multiple species of agricultural importance, whilst more effective, specific RNB are developed in time. Aimed to identify strains that can form effective symbioses with several native legume species of potential interest to agriculture, this experiment screened putative indigenous RNB on 5 native legumes

Complete genome sequence of the Medicago microsymbiont Ensifer (Sinorhizobium) medicae strain WSM419

Ensifer (Sinorhizobium) medicae is an effective nitrogen fixing microsymbiont of a diverse range of annual Medicago (medic) species. Strain WSM419 is an aerobic, motile, non-spore forming, Gram-negative rod isolated from a M. murex root nodule collected in Sardinia, Italy in 1981. WSM419 was manufactured commercially in Australia as an inoculant for annual medics during 1985 to 1993 due to its nitrogen fixation, saprophytic competence and acid tolerance properties. Here we describe the basic features of this organism, together with the complete genome sequence, and annotation. This is the first report of a complete genome se-quence for a microsymbiont of the group of annual medic species adapted to acid soils. We reveal that its genome size is 6,817,576 bp encoding 6,518 protein-coding genes and 81 RNA only encoding genes. The genome contains a chromosome of size 3,781,904 bp and 3 plasmids of size 1,570,951 bp, 1,245,408 bp and 219,313 bp. The smallest plasmid is a fea-ture unique to this medic microsymbiont