Coupled Irrigation–Drainage Management Practice for HYV Rice Cultivation with Saline-Irrigation Water: Evidence from Lysimeter Experiment

Irrigation with saline water adversely affects rice production and degrades land productivity in the coastal zones of many countries in the world. This study aimed at developing a suitable irrigation management practice to reduce the harmful effects of salinity on rice production under saline water irrigation. An experiment in raise-bed lysimeters was set in a split-split-plot design with irrigation–drainage practice as the main factor, irrigation water salinity as the sub-factor and rice variety as sub-sub factor; main factor and sub-factor comprised four treatments and the sub-sub factor comprised three treatments, each with three replications. The treatments of the main factor were – T1: 2-5 cm continuous ponding, T2: continuous saturation, T3: changing irrigation water after 3 days of application by maintaining 2-5 cm ponding depth, and T4: changing irrigation water after 5 days of application by maintaining 2-5 cm ponding depth. The sub-factor comprised – SL1: fresh water as control, SL2: saline water of 6 dS m-1, SL3: saline water of 9 dS m-1, and SL4: saline water of 12 dS m-1. The sub-sub factor comprised three salt-tolerant rice varieties V1: Binadhan-8, V2: Binadhan-10, and V3: BRRI dhan-47. The irrigation–drainage practices T2 and T3 provided significantly (p£0.05) improved growth and yield attributes of the rice varieties under salinity water level SL3 and SL4 compared to T1 and T4 treatments. The treatment T3 maintained least exposure of the crop to high degree of salinity and produced satisfactory plant attributes by inhibiting the detrimental effects of salinity. Therefore, T3 is suggested for adoption in practical fields when provision for removing high saline water from the rice fields can be arranged

Smart Grid Surveillance With Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Using K-Resiliency Modeling

Smart grid being a widely distributed engineering system may run through deep forests to long rivers, and over the cities as well. Physical damage to the power line from natural calamities or, cyber attacks by malicious people on the control system will hamper the functional integrity of the power grid. To ensure the usual operational flow, the control center needs to take immediate steps caused by these phenomena. Hence, inspection of the power line provides a means for the smart grid surveillance. Since any physical damage to the power network can be occurred in hardly reachable remote areas, understanding the amount of impairment will be time-consuming. Autonomous systems like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), instead of the traditional human patrol, are one way to enable regular monitoring of the safety critical situations. The critical lines will be monitored by a fleet of UAVs to ensure a resilient surveillance system. In this work, we present a formal model for UAV surveillance resiliency over the power lines with a set of k UAVs from the whole set. The proposed approach at first considers the n-1 contingency analysis using actual system data, and state estimation procedures. By using linear sensitivity factors, we find the critical transmission lines in the smart grid and in accordance with that, placements and communication topology of the UAVs are done. Then, we evaluate k-resiliency for the UAV surveillance to cover all the critical lines satisfying the circumstances in case of k failure in the fleet of UAVs

Soil amendments in suppressing salinity effects on HYV rice cultivars

Suppressing the harmful effects of salinity is a critical issue for expanding rice acreage in saline areas under demographic pressure and climate change contexts. In need of comprehensive information, this study evaluated the effectiveness of cowdung and gypsum (CaSO4.2H2O) for their individual and combined usages in ameliorating salinity stress for cultivation of Binadhan-8 (V1), Binadhan-10 (V2), and BRRI dhan47 (V3) rice cultivars with standard fertilizer doses under irrigation with four salinity levels: fresh water (SL1, control), 6 dS m-1 (SL2), 9 dS m-1 (SL3), and 12 dS m-1 (SL4). A pot experiment was laid in a Split-Split arrangement in a completely randomized design (CRD) with three factors (soil amendments, salinity levels, and rice cultivars) and three replications. The amendment treatments included: no amendment (T1, control), cowdung @ 6 t ha–1 (T2), gypsum @ 150 kg ha–1 (T3), and combination of cowdung @ 6 t ha–1 and gypsum @ 150 kg ha–1 (T4). SL4 significantly (p£0.05) suppressed all attributes of the rice cultivars. Treatments T3 and T4 most effectively reduced salinity stress on the rice cultivars, which could tolerate up to 12 dS m–1 irrigation-water salinity without significant yield loss, with T3 performed the best. The generated information would help rice cultivation under irrigation with saline water, specifically in the coastal region having limited fresh water for irrigation