251 research outputs found
Effects of the second crop on maize yield and yield components in organic agriculture
The second crop use in organic agriculture is a known method of maintaining the soil tilth, soil protection against environmental deterioration, soil nutrients conservation and even the weed control. The nitrogen conservation from previous leguminose crop is even more important, especially in the organic agriculture where use of N-fertilizers is the strictly forbiden, and second crops can be used as a catch crops for nutrients in rotation prior to the crops with the high N requirement. The choice of the proper second crop has, however, been insufficiently investigated, especially for agri-environmental conditions of the Panonian agricultural area in Croatia. The second crop experiment was established in Valpovo, Croatia, in the eutric brown soil type, during the years 2005 and 2006. The aim of the experiment was to investigate the effects of different second crops and their combinations on maize (Zea mais L.) yield and yield components in organic agriculture after soybean (Glycine max L.) in crop rotation. The experimental design was set up as a CRBD in four repetitions, with soybean as a previous crop in crop rotation.
The six second crop treatments were: O – Control, without second crop; WW – winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) second crop; RY – rye (Secale cereale L.) second crop; FP – fodder pea (Pisum arvense L.) second crop; WP – mixture of the WW and FP; and RP – mixture of RY and FP. The WW treatment had the highest second crop dry mass, whereas FP had the lowest dry mass. The highest plant density was recorded for FP, and it was higher than the RP plant density, which also had the lowest plant height. The achieved maize yields were the highest for RY, but they were not significanlty different from the O, RP, and WW treatments. However, the yield achieved by RY treatment was significantly higher than the yields recorded for WP and FP treatments. The absolute mass and hectolitre mass did not show any statistical differences among treatments
The economic sustainability of second crops implementation in organic maize production
Although organic crop production has numerous advantages, concerns about economic sustainability, both environmental and financial, make farmers reluctant to convert their conventional production into the organic production. Certain agricultural methods, such as second crop use, can alleviate some problems regarding soil tilth, erosion prevention, nutrients availability and weed control, thus contributing toward more sustainable crop production. Also, the added value crop growth, such as maize (Zea mais L.) hybrid's parental line production, with lower yields but higher prices, can contribute to sustainability of organic production. In order to test the hypothesis that the use of second crops can contribute toward the sustainability of organically grown maize after soybean (Glycine max L.) as a previous crop in the crop rotation, the experimental site was established in Valpovo, Croatia, in the eutric brown soil type, during the years 2005 and 2006. The experimental design was set up as a CRBD in four repetitions, with six second crop treatments: CT – Control, without second crop; WW – winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) second crop; RY – rye (Secale cereale L.) second crop; FP – fodder pea (Pisum arvense L.) second crop; WP – mixture of WW and FP; and RP – mixture of RY and FP. In order to assess the soil surface protection and evaluate the weed suppression, the second crop coverage had been recorded. Regarding the economic sustainability, the second crop use depending costs were analysed in relation to the extra produced maize yield. The RY treatment had the highest profitability, followed by WW, RP and O. The WP and FP revealed lower relative profitability than O, thus presenting the evidence of sustainability risk of these treatments
Comparison of two soil tillage treatments for winter barley-soybean growing based only on residual nitrogen after soybean
The winter barley crop growing has not been adequately researched regarding soil tillage systems, especially in crop rotation with the soybean, both crops gaining importance as food or fodder. Also, productivity of such crop rotation in low nitrogen environment is especially interesting for organic crop growing, where mineral nitrogen fertilization is not allowed. The research on two soil tillage systems, the conventional one, based on mouldboard ploughing (PLOW) and reduced soil tillage, based on discharrowing (DISC), with no other nitrogen source except symbiotic soybean bacterial fixation, was conducted at the experimental site Bokšić (Croatia), during the seasons 2004/05 and 2005/06. Results showed low but stable yields of winter barley, between 2.1 and 2.6 t ha-1, where PLOW treatment recorded lower yield than DISC in 2005, and usual soybean yields (between 2.8 and 3.4 t ha-1), with higher soybean grain yields for PLOW only in 2006. The absolute mass and hectolitre mass did not show any statistical differences among treatments either
Critical renormalized coupling constants in the symmetric phase of the Ising models
Using a novel finite size scaling Monte Carlo method, we calculate the four,
six and eight point renormalized coupling constants defined at zero momentum in
the symmetric phase of the three dimensional Ising system. The results of the
2D Ising system that were directly measured are also reported. Our values of
the six and eight point coupling constants are significantly different from
those obtained from other methods.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
Edge Tunneling of Vortices in Superconducting Thin Films
We investigate the phenomenon of the decay of a supercurrent due to the
zero-temperature quantum tunneling of vortices from the edge in a thin
superconducting film in the absence of an external magnetic field. An explicit
formula is derived for the tunneling rate of vortices, which are subject to the
Magnus force induced by the supercurrent, through the Coulomb-like potential
barrier binding them to the film's edge. Our approach ensues from the
non-relativistic version of a Schwinger-type calculation for the decay of the
2D vacuum previously employed for describing vortex-antivortex pair-nucleation
in the bulk of the sample. In the dissipation-dominated limit, our explicit
edge-tunneling formula yields numerical estimates which are compared with those
obtained for bulk-nucleation to show that both mechanisms are possible for the
decay of a supercurrent.Comment: REVTeX file, 15 pages, 1 Postscript figure; to appear in Phys.Rev.
Duality symmetry, strong coupling expansion and universal critical amplitudes in two-dimensional \Phi^{4} field models
We show that the exact beta-function \beta(g) in the continuous 2D g\Phi^{4}
model possesses the Kramers-Wannier duality symmetry. The duality symmetry
transformation \tilde{g}=d(g) such that \beta(d(g))=d'(g)\beta(g) is
constructed and the approximate values of g^{*} computed from the duality
equation d(g^{*})=g^{*} are shown to agree with the available numerical
results. The calculation of the beta-function \beta(g) for the 2D scalar
g\Phi^{4} field theory based on the strong coupling expansion is developed and
the expansion of \beta(g) in powers of g^{-1} is obtained up to order g^{-8}.
The numerical values calculated for the renormalized coupling constant
g_{+}^{*} are in reasonable good agreement with the best modern estimates
recently obtained from the high-temperature series expansion and with those
known from the perturbative four-loop renormalization-group calculations. The
application of Cardy's theorem for calculating the renormalized isothermal
coupling constant g_{c} of the 2D Ising model and the related universal
critical amplitudes is also discussed.Comment: 16 pages, REVTeX, to be published in J.Phys.A:Math.Ge
Finsler geometry modeling of reverse piezoelectric effect in PVDF
We apply the Finsler geometry (FG) modeling technique to study the electric field-induced strain in ferroelectric polymers. Polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) has a negative longitudinal piezoelectric coefficient, which is unusual in ferroelectrics, and therefore the shape changes in this material are hard to predict. We find that the results of Monte Carlo simulations for the FG model are in good agreement with experimental strain-electric field curves of PVDF-based polymers in both longitudinal and transverse directions. This implies that FG modeling is suitable for reproducing the reverse piezoelectric effect in PVDF
Low-temperature renormalization group study of uniformly frustrated models for type-II superconductors
We study phase transitions in uniformly frustrated SU(N)-symmetric
-dimensional lattice models describing type-II superconductors
near the upper critical magnetic field . The low-temperature
renormalization-group approach is employed for calculating the beta-function
with an arbitrary rational magnetic frustration. The
phase-boundary line is the ultraviolet-stable fixed point found
from the equation , the corresponding critical exponents being
identical to those of the non-frustrated continuum system. The critical
properties of the SU(N)-symmetric complex Ginzburg-Landau (GL) model are then
examined in dimensions. The possibility of a continuous phase
transition into the mixed state in such a model is suggested.Comment: REVTeX, 12 pages, to appear in the Phys.Rev.
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