Agronomic benefits of long-term trials

Long-term trials are established in order to explore and observe plant and soil interrelationships in situ. Long-term trials can be described as live instruments providing ceteris paribus conditions in temporal sequences. This review provides an introduction to major long-term trials in Hungary and in other parts of the world. It gives a brief summary of the origins of plant nutritional research, beginning with some data from Homer and the willow tree experiment of van Helmont, as well as the discovery of physiological processes by von Liebig, Lawes and Boussingault. The most profound long-term trials, like the Orto Botanico in Padova, the Linné Garden in Uppsala and the Broadbalk in Rothamsted are presented in the paper. The agronomic, educational and scientific benefits of the major Hungarian long-term trials are also discussed, from Westsik (1929) to Martonvásár and the National Plant Nutrition Trials (OMTK) set up in 1963. There is a list of experimental sites giving information on the most important recent long-term trial locations and their activities

Climatic aspects of agri-environmental pollution

Agriculture is highly affected by climate change. Climate change impacts may influence almost all fields of agricultural activities; production efficiency, quantitative and qualitative deterioration of crop yields produced for alimentary purposes, and determine post-harvest manifestation of agricultural products inducing hazard in the field of food safety, transport, storage and distribution. Soil-climatic conditions, amount and distribution of precipitation, anomalies and extremities of temperature as well as various manifestation of air movement from stand still to storms are some of the main factors that may influence agriculture. Pollution has been considered solely as the presence of unfavourable alien matter in the environment, but in reality pollution is far more than that. Agri-environmental pollution is largely independent of mankind, since many pollution or degradation processes may begin with no direct relationship to human activities. Soil degradation, or irreversible damage to natural ecosystems by climatic factors (drought, flood, water logging, salinity) are the most frequent consequences. Biological pollution, like weed infestation, epidemics and gradations, pollen allergy, the poisonous effect of mycotoxins on farm animals and humans, new pests and diseases, the emission of greenhouse gases, and biological factors which cause quality deterioration represent an increasing pressure on agri-environment. This paper is intended to give an overview of some research activities and their results in relation with climatic aspects of agri-environmental pollution in Hungary

The effect of nitrogen fertilization and crop year precipitation on the protein and wet gluten content of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grain

Winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) yield samples taken from a consecutive series of crop years representing drought, normal and moist conditions at the Nagygombos experimental site of the Szent István University have been evaluated. The impact of N topdressing and crop year conditions on the performance of protein and wet gluten content were studied.The results suggest that ascending levels of N topdressing, and increased number of applications had a beneficial effect on the protein content, as well as on wet gluten values. Crop year had a significant effect on quality manifestation. The drier the crop year, the better the recorded quality performance. The magnitude of changes was bigger in case of gluten than in that of protein values. There were minor differences between the two varieties examined, especially in their response patterns to nitrogen supply. Dough formation depends mainly on the gliadin/ glutenin ratio, but there is less information on the agronomic and climatic impacts that may cause alterations in that