Investigating the probable consequences of super absorbent polymer and mycorrhizal fungi to reduce detrimental effects of lead on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

ArticleIn many parts of the world, agricultural use of soils is restricted due to heavy metal contamination. Absorption of heavy metals, such as (Pb), in the tissue of plants increases the plant’s metabolism and causes physiological disorders or even death. In order to study the potential of super absorbent polymers (SAP) and mycorrhiza fungi application to mitigate adverse effects of lead (Pb) on wheat, a greenhouse experiment was conducted. The experiment was setup as a completely randomized design, with two treatments arranged in a factorial scheme with three levels of lead (0, 100 and 200 mg per kg soil) and four levels of SAP and mycorrhiza fungi application (without SAP and mycorrhiza fungi application, SAP application alone, mycorrhiza fungi application alone, SAP and mycorrhiza fungi application combined). The results showed that Pb significantly affected all parameters measured of wheat. The Pb-contamination caused a significantly decreasing in plant height, total dry weight per plant and total chlorophyll contents. And also, the results indicated that the combined use of superabsorbent and mycorrhiza reduced the amount of superoxide dismutase enzyme. As well as, our results show that the application of super absorbent polymer and mycorrhizal fungi seems to be a promising path to reduce detrimental effects of heavy metal pollution of agricultural soils on plant performance.http://dx.doi.org/10.15159/ar.18.00

Synthesis of Regulation Compliant Business Processes

Organisations have to cope with large numbers of business rules and existing regulations governing the business in which they operate. Such rules are difficult to maintain due to their size and complexity, and it is increasingly challenging to ensure that each business process adheres to those rules. As such, automated extraction of business processes from rules has three clear advantages: (1) visualisation of all possible executions allowed by the rules, (2) automated execution and compliance by design, (3) identification of "inefficiencies" in the business rules. Existing approaches, however, only allow for the generation of partial traces based on input specifications and cannot handle many different input cases resulting in a full process. This paper presents a formal method to visualise and operationalise such sets of rules as a verifiable business process that is compliant by design, which allows us to analyse all possible execution paths. Additionally, we formally prove correctness of the business processes generated by our method. The approach is implemented in a tool and evaluated on both performance and correctness, showing that even for highly complex sets of rules the approach performs well and outperforms a well-known state-of-the-art approach. Evaluation on a real-life process shows the feasibility of the presented approach

Visualisation of compliant declarative business processes

Organisations typically have to cope with large numbers of business rules and existing regulations governing the business in which they operate. Due to the size and complexity of those rules, maintenance is difficult and it is increasingly complicated to ensure that each business process adheres to those rules. As such, automated extraction of business processes from rules has a number of clear advantages: (1) visualisation of all possible executions allowed by the rules, (2) automated execution and compliance by design, (3) identification of "inefficiencies" in the business rules. Existing approaches, however, only allow to generate partial traces based on input specifications and cannot handle many different input cases resulting in a full process. This paper presents a formal method to visualise and operationalise such sets of rules as a verifiable business process that is compliant by design and allows us to analyse all possible execution paths. In addition, it maintains information of all distinct input cases, to preserve dependencies between consecutive exclusive paths

The effects of irrigation regimes and nitrogen rates on some agronomic traits of canola under a semiarid environment

This study was aimed to investigate dual effects of irrigation regimes and N fertilizer rates on some agronomic traits (with emphasis on yield qualitative and quantitative characteristics) and finding optimized irrigation level and N application rate for two canola (Brassic napus L.) cultivars. For this purpose, two variety of canola (Zarfam and Modena), four irrigation regimes including 30%, 45%, 60% and 75% (I1-I4) of maximum allowable depletion (MAD) of available soil water (ASW) and four nitrogen rates (viz. 0, 90, 180 and 270 kg N ha-1 (N1-N4) were involved in Karaj, Iran for two successive years (2007-2008). Our results revealed special fertilizer threshold for each irrigation regime in respect to seed yield. Response rate to fertilizers was ceased in lower fertilizer rates by prolonging irrigation. The response rate showed a decrease of 15.4%, 17.2% and 30.7% in I2, I3 and I4 in comparison with I1, but I2 response to fertilizer ceased in higher N rate as Ncritical (189.8 kg N ha-1). This implies that I2 improved response of canola cultivars to N fertilizer, which was accompanied by its higher WUE. Also, all estimated Ncriticals for all irrigation levels were higher than the current recommendation of 130 kg N ha-1. This show the capability of increasing canola cultivars yield in study region by reasonable increasing of fertilizer rate (decreasing gap between recommended N rate and estimated values) in advisable irrigation regime (I2). Cultivars tended to respond similarly to irrigation and nitrogen for seed yield in both years, but Zarfam was more efficient than Modena in respect to response to diverse treatments.Maximum available depletion Leaf area index Seed oil content Seed yield Cultivar Above-ground dry matter

Agronomic and Physiological Characteristics of Forage Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) under Water Deficit Stress and Silicon Fertilizer

IntroductionThe quantity and quality of forage plants are beneficial and useful due to their role in animal husbandry, reproduction and other livestock products. Due to the limitation of water resources, water-deficit as a significant biotic stress is the most severe threat to world food security and is responsible for many yield losses. Plants constantly modify their physiological processes in response to various biotic and abiotic stress to regulate the balance between plant growth and defense response. Many researchers have documented that plant nutrients are involved in biological processes of plants. It has been stated that the use of silicon by increasing the ability to absorb water can be useful to improve drought tolerance of sorghum, sorghum can with the help of silicon extract more water from dry soil and maintain more stomatal conductance.Materials and MethodsIn order to evaluate the effect of silicon fertilizer on the quantitative and qualitative yield of forage sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) under water-deficit stress, a split-plot experiment was performed in a randomized complete block design in at the research farm of Varamin, Iran in 2017-2018. The treatments included irrigation in three levels irrigation in field capacity and irrigation at 60% and 45% of field capacity (which were named as full irrigation, moderate and severe water-deficit stress, respectively) as the main plot and silicon fertilizer (Potassium Silicate) in three levels, non-use (control), silicon foliar spraying (three per thousand), and silicon fertigation (10 L ha-1) as the subplot. Silicon spraying with a ratio of three per thousand and silicon irrigation fertilizer at the rate of 10 liters per hectare were considered in three stages.Results and DiscussionThe highest (4.51) and lowest (2.88) leaf area index were achieved in silicon fertigation treatment under full irrigation and none fertilizer treatment and severe water-deficit conditions, respectively. Based on the obtained results, the highest total chlorophyll content (1.73 mg g-1 FW), relative water content of leave (88.08%), stomatal conductance (2.46 cm s-1) were achieved in fertigation treatment under full irrigation conditions. The results show that the amount of electrolyte leakage increased due to water-deficit stress, but silicon fertilizer decreased the adverse effect of stress conditions. The lowest level of electrolyte leakage (341.3 µS cm-1) was obtained from the full irrigation and fertigation treatment. The highest crude protein (11.41%) which was higher than full irrigation condition by 1.39% related to severe water-deficit stress. Water-deficit stress caused the increase of cyanuric acid in shoot and increased the content of cyanuric acid by 41.8% compared to full irrigation conditions. Silicon fertilizer led to a decrease in digestible dry matter under water stress conditions, but on the other hand, it led to an increase in the amount of crude protein and also a decrease in the amount of toxic cyanide acid in the shoot production. The results of this study show that the use of silicon fertilizer in all irrigation regimes increased the auxin content compared to the non-use of silicon fertilizer. The highest content of auxin was achieved in the conditions of full irrigation and fertigation treatment (131.4 nmol g-1 of protein) followed by foliar fertilizer treatment (128.2 nmol g-1 of protein). The highest sorghum dry matter production was obtained from the full irrigation treatment with an average of 23.7 ton ha-1, which was 20 and 54% higher than the treatment of moderate and severe water-deficit treatment, respectively.ConclosionIn general, it can be concluded that silicon fertilizer in the form of foliar spraying should be considered by farmers to maintain the natural growth and development of sorghum plant, especially in areas arid and semi-arid. However, its widespread use in other farm crops needs to be investigated