Common Stalk Rot Diseases of Corn

Extension Circular 1898 (EC1898) Stalk rot diseases of corn are common, occurring in every field to some extent. Each year stalk rot diseases cause about 5 percent yield loss. Under some conditions, losses can exceed 10–20 percent, and in isolated areas losses have been as high as 100 percent. Stalk rot diseases reduce yield both directly and indirectly. Plants with prematurely rotted stalks produce lightweight, poorly filled ears because of the plant’s limited access to carbohydrates during grain fill. Infected stalks are converted from sturdy, solid rods to hollow tubes as the stalk pith pulls away from the outer rind, compromising stalk strength. Rotted, weakened stalks are prone to lodging, particularly if decay occurs below the ear. Stalk rot diseases tend to be more common in higher yielding hybrids that produce large, heavy ears. During times of stress, such as when foliar diseases cause substantial loss of leaf area, these large ears may cannibalize carbohydrates from the stalk and weaken it. Large, heavy ears also can predispose the stalk to lodging with the added weight supported above weakened lower stalk tissue. Lodging indirectly reduces yield through harvest complications and ear loss. Stalk rot diseases can be caused by many fungi and bacteria. Most of these pathogens occur commonly in the field and behave opportunistically by primarily infecting senescing, injured, or stressed plants. A single plant often may be infected by multiple stalk rot pathogens which cause other diseases of corn and other crops. Each pathogen is favored by particular environmental conditions

A Signature of Cosmic Strings Wakes in the CMB Polarization

We calculate a signature of cosmic strings in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We find that ionization in the wakes behind moving strings gives rise to extra polarization in a set of rectangular patches in the sky whose length distribution is scale-invariant. The length of an individual patch is set by the co-moving Hubble radius at the time the string is perturbing the CMB. The polarization signal is largest for string wakes produced at the earliest post-recombination time, and for an alignment in which the photons cross the wake close to the time the wake is created. The maximal amplitude of the polarization relative to the temperature quadrupole is set by the overdensity of free electrons inside a wake which depends on the ionization fraction $f$ inside the wake. The signal can be as high as $0.06 {\rm \mu K}$ in degree scale polarization for a string at high redshift (near recombination) and a string tension $\mu$ given by $G \mu = 10^{-7}$.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Inorganic nitrogen and glucose additions alter the short-term formation efficiency of mineral associated organic matter carbon

Carbon within mineral associated organic matter (MAOM) is an important persistent form of soil organic carbon (SOC). However, processes driving the retention of new labile C in MAOM are not fully understood. We investigated the effects of glucose and ammonium nitrate (AN) addition on the short-term (72 h) retention of applied 13C-glucose within MAOM. We found an interactive effect of AN addition with the glucose addition rate. Higher rates of glucose addition resulted in proportionally less glucose-C retained, indicating lower MAOM-C formation efficiency. Addition of AN only altered the proportional retention of glucose where glucose was applied at the lowest rate. In this instance glucose-13C recovery increased with AN addition. However, after 72 h there was no treatment difference in total MAOM-C, indicating that any changes in formation efficiency as a result of AN and glucose additions, did not result in differences in total MAOM-C in the short-term. Whether and how this affects the medium and longer-term dynamics of MAOM-C requires further investigation

Just the tonic! Legume biorefining for alcohol has the potential to reduce Europe’s protein deficit and mitigate climate change

Industrialised agriculture is heavily reliant upon synthetic nitrogen fertilisers and imported protein feeds, posing environmental and food security challenges. Increasing the cultivation of leguminous crops that biologically fix nitrogen and provide high protein feed and food could help to address these challenges. We report on the innovative use of an important leguminous crop, pea (Pisum sativum L.), as a source of starch for alcohol (gin) production, yielding protein-rich animal feed as a co-product. We undertook life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental footprint of 1 L of packaged gin produced from either 1.43 kg of wheat grain or 2.42 kg of peas via fermentation and distillation into neutral spirit. Allocated environmental footprints for pea-gin were smaller than for wheat-gin across 12 of 14 environmental impact categories considered. Global warming, resource depletion, human toxicity, acidification and terrestrial eutrophication footprints were, respectively, 12%, 15%, 15%, 48% and 68% smaller, but direct land occupation was 112% greater, for pea-gin versus wheat-gin. Expansion of LCA boundaries indicated that co-products arising from the production of 1 L of wheat- or pea-gin could substitute up to 0.33 or 0.66 kg soybean animal feed, respectively, mitigating considerable greenhouse gas emissions associated with land clearing, cultivation, processing and transport of such feed. For pea-gin, this mitigation effect exceeds emissions from gin production and packaging, so that each L of bottled pea gin avoids 2.2 kg CO2 eq. There is great potential to scale the use of legume starches in production of alcoholic beverages and biofuels, reducing dependence on Latin American soybean associated with deforestation and offering considerable global mitigation potential in terms of climate change and nutrient leakage — estimated at circa 439 Tg CO2 eq. and 8.45 Tg N eq. annually

Data for life cycle assessment of legume biorefining for alcohol

Benchmarking the environmental sustainability of alcohol produced from legume starch against alcohol produced from cereal grains requires considering of crop production, nutrient cycling and use of protein-rich co-products via life cycle assessment. This article describes the mass balance flows behind the life cycle inventories for gin produced from wheat and peas (Pisum sativum L.) in an associated article summarising the environmental footprints of wheat- and pea-gin [1], and also presents detailed supplementary results. Activity data were collected from interviews with actors along the entire gin value chain including a distillery manager and ingredient and packaging suppliers. Important fertiliserand animal-feed substitution effects of co-product use were derived using detailed information and models on nutrient flows and animal feed composition, along with linear optimisation modelling. Secondary data on environmental burdens of specific materials and processes were obtained from the Ecoinvent v3.4 life cycle assessment database. This article provides a basis for further quantitative evaluation of the environmental sustainability of legume-alcohol value chains

BATSE Observations of Gamma-Ray Burst Spectra. IV. Time-Resolved High-Energy Spectroscopy

We report on the temporal behavior of the high-energy power law continuum component of gamma-ray burst spectra with data obtained by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment. We have selected 126 high fluence and high flux bursts from the beginning of the mission up until the present. Much of the data were obtained with the Large Area Detectors, which have nearly all-sky coverage, excellent sensitivity over two decades of energy and moderate energy resolution, ideal for continuum spectra studies of a large sample of bursts at high time resolution. At least 8 spectra from each burst were fitted with a spectral form that consisted of a low-energy power law, a spectral break at middle energies and a high-energy continuum. In most bursts (122), the high-energy continuum was consistent with a power law. The evolution of the fitted high-energy power-law index over the selected spectra for each burst is inconsistent with a constant for 34% of the total sample. The sample distribution of the average value for the index from each burst is fairly narrow, centered on -2.12. A linear trend in time is ruled out for only 20% of the bursts, with hard-to-soft evolution dominating the sample (100 events). The distribution for the total change in the power-law index over the duration of a burst peaks at the value -0.37, and is characterized by a median absolute deviation of 0.39, arguing that a single physical process is involved. We present analyses of the correlation of the power-law index with time, burst intensity and low-energy time evolution. In general, we confirm the general hard-to-soft spectral evolution observed in the low-energy component of the continuum, while presenting evidence that this evolution is different in nature from that of the rest of the continuum.Comment: 30 pages, with 2 tables and 9 figures To appear in The Astrophysical Journal, April 1, 199

INFLUENCE OF NANO Al2O3 TO IMPROVE THE YIELD OF DOUBLE SLOPE SOLAR STILL

Purpose:The supply of pure fresh water is becoming a rising issue is many areas of the world. Clean water being a basic requirement is still unavailable to a large number of people. The fast development and growth in population and agriculture has helped to increase the need of clean water. The solar distillation is one of the most cost efficient ways to accomplish this. Methodology:When water evaporates from the basin of the still, it leaves the various impurities behind resulting in clean palatable water. Solar stills have a comparatively low yield but can be used to provide safe water options to rural areas of the world. To increase the yield of the solar still nano Al2O3 fluid is used,which is prepared using a dispersant of Sodium Dodecyl Benzene Sulphonate (SDBS). The still is a double slope basin type solar still with black paint coating on the inside and external reflecting mirrors, to enhance the yield. Main Findings:This project compares the efficiency and output of double slope solar still with and without the nanofluid. The single basin double slope solar still was fabricated using low cost durable materials and the 0.01 vol. % Al2O3 water based nanofluid was prepared. The results showed a positive outcome of a 15% increase in the rate of distillate collected with the use of nanofluids. The payback period was calculated to be less than 2 weeks without nanofluid and one week with the use of nanofluid. Implications:The present study is useful for obtaining pure drinking water at remote locations in Sultanate of Oman where solar energy is abundance. Novelty of Study: Nanofluids are used to enhance the distillation rate when compared to the conventional solar stills. &nbsp

Challenges for creating magnetic fields by cosmic defects

We analyse the possibility that topological defects can act as a source of magnetic fields through the Harrison mechanism in the radiation era. We give a detailed relativistic derivation of the Harrison mechanism at first order in cosmological perturbations, and show that it is only efficient for temperatures above T ~ 0.2 keV. Our main result is that the vector metric perturbations generated by the defects cannot induce vorticity in the matter fluids at linear order, thereby excluding the production of currents and magnetic fields. We show that anisotropic stress in the matter fluids is required to source vorticity and magnetic fields. Our analysis is relevant for any mechanism whereby vorticity is meant to be transferred purely by gravitational interactions, and thus would also apply to dark matter or neutrinos.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure; minor corrections and additions; accepted for publication in Physical Review