The Importance of Forage Legume Epigenetics in the Anthropocene

As climates change and economic as well as ecological pressures to produce more ruminant product on less land in the Anthropocene increase, the importance of using cutting-edge methods for forage legume improvement grows. The immediate return rate and turnaround on investment is likely greater for multi-species incorporation into grasslands but focusing on intraspecific variability and diversity could also contribute. The role of forage legumes in cultivated pasture and rangeland biodiversity as well as stability depends on genetics as well as management. Their epigenetics, however, may become increasingly important as climatic extremes and ecological pressures grow due to human-induced factors. Unfortunately, in many cases, forage legume epigenetics remain a black box. As we deal with the need for increasingly diverse forage legume species, should we be planning for this future in which genetic selection and improvement must also factor in epigenetic impacts in diverse edaphoclimatic and management systems

Annual Forage Legume Response to Herbicides Labelled for Lucerne Establishment

Weed competition reduces stand establishment, thus lowering forage production and quality. However, there are no herbicides labelled for annual legume establishment, despite several labelled for the establishment of lucerne (Medicago sativa). Some of these may be useful in the establishment and production of annual forage legumes. Lucerne herbicides have greater potential for use on other legumes, since they have grazing and feeding clearance. The objective of this paper is to summarize annual legume yield response trials to herbicides labelled for lucerne establishment

Functionally dissociating aspects of event memory: the effects of combined perirhinal and postrhinal cortex lesions on object and place memory in the rat.

Reciprocal interactions between the hippocampus and the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices form core components of a proposed temporal lobe memory system. For this reason, the involvement of the hippocampus in event memory is thought to depend on its connections with these cortical areas. Contrary to these predictions, we found that NMDA-induced lesions of the putative rat homologs of these cortical areas (perirhinal plus postrhinal cortices) did not impair performance on two allocentric spatial tasks highly sensitive to hippocampal dysfunction. Remarkably, for one of the tasks there was evidence of a facilitation of performance. The same cortical lesions did, however, disrupt spontaneous object recognition and object discrimination reversal learning but spared initial acquisition of the discrimination. This pattern of results reveals important dissociations between different aspects of memory within the temporal lobe. Furthermore, it shows that the perirhinal-postrhinal cortex is not a necessary route for spatial information reaching the hippocampus and that object familiarity-novelty detection depends on different neural substrates than do other aspects of event memory

Characterization of Forage Selected by Cattle on Communal Range in Manhiça, Mozambique

Forage selection by 10 cattle herds was observed monthly over 2 years on a communal rangeland. Plants grazed were hand-plucked as representative of both species and plant portions being cropped by cattle. Herds were led to green pasture year-round. Nutrient concentration of species and plant portions selected by cattle indicated adequate crude protein and calcium but phosphorus deficiency during the dry season. Well-drained escarpments and uplands were more important during the rains while upland depressions and the Nkomati valley were essential for adequate forage intake during the dry seasons

Trailing and smooth-seeded wild beans: native annual warm season legumes for Texas

Last updated: 10/22/201

The effect of dairy manure on summer annual broadleaves grown as alternative silages in the Cross Timbers

Last updated: 10/19/201

Corn variety performance at Stephenville under irrigation as affected by manure application

Last updated: 10/19/201

The effect of dairy manure on summer annual grasses grown as alternative silages in the Cross Timbers

Last updated: 10/19/201

Development of Stresses in Cohesionless Poured Sand

The pressure distribution beneath a conical sandpile, created by pouring sand from a point source onto a rough rigid support, shows a pronounced minimum below the apex (`the dip'). Recent work of the authors has attempted to explain this phenomenon by invoking local rules for stress propagation that depend on the local geometry, and hence on the construction history, of the medium. We discuss the fundamental difference between such approaches, which lead to hyperbolic differential equations, and elastoplastic models, for which the equations are elliptic within any elastic zones present .... This displacement field appears to be either ill-defined, or defined relative to a reference state whose physical existence is in doubt. Insofar as their predictions depend on physical factors unknown and outside experimental control, such elastoplastic models predict that the observations should be intrinsically irreproducible .... Our hyperbolic models are based instead on a physical picture of the material, in which (a) the load is supported by a skeletal network of force chains ("stress paths") whose geometry depends on construction history; (b) this network is `fragile' or marginally stable, in a sense that we define. .... We point out that our hyperbolic models can nonetheless be reconciled with elastoplastic ideas by taking the limit of an extremely anisotropic yield condition.Comment: 25 pages, latex RS.tex with rspublic.sty, 7 figures in Rsfig.ps. Philosophical Transactions A, Royal Society, submitted 02/9

The influence of harvest timing on forage sorghum silage yield and quality

Last updated: 10/19/201