Salinity stress mitigation of some canola cultivars grown under South Sinai conditions using magnetic water technology

Salinity stresses either in irrigation water and/or soil is one of the most serious agricultural problems facing farmers in arid and semi-arid regions included Egypt.  Many areas in the Sinai region depend mainly on the underground water of various degrees of salinity that prevent cultivated crops from reach to the full yield. Under these conditions, a split-plot field experiment using three canola cultivars; Pactol, Serw-4 and Serw-6 under three irrigation water treatments: i) Brackish-water (BW), ii) Magnetic-BW1; brackish water after magnetization through passing a three inch static-magnetic unit,3.75 mT, produced by Delta Water Company, Egypt and iii) Magnetic-BW2; brackish water after magnetization through passing a three inch static magnetic unit, 0.75 mT, produced by Magnetic-Technologies Company, UAE, was carried out at Agricultural Experimental Station of Desert Research Centre, Ras Sidr region, South Sinai Governorate, Egypt during the 2017/18 winter season. The results showed that irrigation with M-BW1 or M-BW2 surpassed irrigation with BW in all tested growth parameters (plant height, branches and leaf number/plant, leaf area, dry matter of leaves, stem and total plant, and total chlorophyll); leaf anatomy (instance, midvein and lamina thickness, length and width of leaf vascular bundle and lower and upper epidermis thickness); stem anatomy (stem diameter and thickness of cortex, xylem and phloem in addition pith diameter) and chemical analysis for mineral content (N, P, K, Mg, Fe, Cu, Zn ) at 85 days after sowing (DAS). As an average of both magnetically brackish-water treatments over tested three canola varieties, the percent of improvement compared to irrigation with brackish-water ranged between 10.78-16.02% for growth parameters, 28.33-31.76% for dry matter of plant; 15.58 -80.81% for leaf ; 10.71-63.88% for stems and 2.42-54.48% for mineral content of leaves at 85 DAS. Reverse trends were observed in the best indicators for alleviation salinity stress (Na, and proline), where these decreased under both magnetic brackish water treatments by 66.08 and 43.75%, respectively (average of both magnetically  brackishwater treatments compared to BW water treatment). Generally, the three tested canola varieties showed a positive response under magnetic brackish water treatments. The positive results in above-mentioned parameters of vegetative growth reflected improvement in canola yield and its components. The percent of improvement ranged between 9.35 and 35.98 for yield components and reached1.29,19.66 and 21.30% in seed oil percentage, seeds and oil yield (kg fed-1; fed=4200 m2), respectively compared to brackish water.&nbsp

Field and modelling study for deficit irrigation strategy on roots volume and water productivity of wheat

In many regions of the world, including Egypt, water shortages threaten food production. An irrigation deficient strategy in dry areas has been widely investigated as a valuable and sustainable approach to production. In this study, the dry matter and grain yield of wheat was decreased by reducing the amount of irrigation water as well as the volume of the root system. As a result of this, there was an increase the soil moisture stress. This negatively affected the absorption of water and nutrients in the root zone of wheat plants, which ultimately had an effect on the dry matter and grain yield of wheat. The values of dry matter and grain yield of wheat increased with the ʻSakha 94ʼ variety compared to the ʻSakha 93ʼ class. It is possible that this was due to the increase in the genetic characteristic of the root size with the ʻSakha 94ʼ variety compared to the ʻSakha 93ʼ class, as this increase led to the absorption of water and nutrients from a larger volume of root spread. Despite being able to increase the water productivity of wheat by decreasing the amount of added irrigation water, the two highest grain yield values were achieved when adding 100% and 80% of irrigation requirements (IR) needed to irrigate the wheat and no significant differences between the yield values at 100% and 80% of IR were found. Therefore, in accordance with this study, the recommended irrigation for wheat is at 80% IR which will provide 20% IR. When comparing the water productivity of two wheat varieties in study, it becomes clear that ʻSakha 94ʼ was superior to ʻSakha 93ʼ when adding the same amount of irrigation water, and this resulted in increased wheat productivity for ʻSakha 94ʼ. The SALTMED results confirmed good accuracy (R2: 0.92 to 0.98) in simulating soil moisture, roots volume, water application efficiency, dry matter, and grain yield for two varieties of wheat under deficit irrigation conditions. Whilst using sprinkler irrigation system under sandy soils in Egypt

Gating of false identifications in electrocardiogram based biometric system

A signal-to-noise ratio based false identification reduction system was proposed for an ECG based biometric system. The system generated a signal quality index (SQI) based on the 25th percentile of the signal-to-noise ratios of the individual beats within a 20 s segment of ECG data. Identifications generated from ECG segments with SQIs below a set threshold were gated. The system was tested using 642 ECG segments collected from 32 subjects while standing still and while jogging. With no gating the biometric system attained a precision of 0.49. Following the application of the gating system at a threshold of 1 dB, the precision increased to 0.68. The system eliminated 98.7% (155/157) of the false identification during the noise corrupted (jogging) interval while maintaining the count of the true identifications (2/2). During the clean (standing still) intervals, the system gated 57.8% (193/334) of the false identifications and 8.14% (25/307) of the true identifications