Drought tolerance of and and their influence on tomato growth and potassium uptake in mica amended tropical soils under water-limiting conditions.

Drought is a significant abiotic stress that alters plant physiology and ultimately affects crop productivity. Among essential plant nutrients, potassium (K) is known to mitigate the deleterious effect of drought on plant growth. If so, K addition or inoculation of potassium solubilizing microorganisms (KSMs) that are tolerant to drought should promote plant growth during water stress.

Feasibility assessment of bentonite drilling mud to improve the physical quality of loamy sand soil and water deficit of forest plant seedlings.

Spent drilling mud (DM), a co-product during horizontal directional drilling operations, needs proper disposal to comply with social and environmental sustainability awareness, with one option being its cost-effective reuse as a soil amendment. The possibility was investigated of DM applications to improve the physical quality of loamy sand soil. The soil was treated with increasing DM contents in a laboratory at volumetric DM-to-soil ratios of 0:100 (DM0, no DM), 25:75 (DM25), 50:50 (DM50), 75:25 (DM75), and 100:0 (DM100, no soil).

Sulfur amendments to soil decrease inorganic arsenic accumulation in rice grain under flooded and nonflooded conditions: Insights from temporal dynamics of porewater chemistry and solid-phase arsenic solubility.

Rice cultivation under flooded conditions enhances arsenic (As) solubility and favors As accumulation in rice grain that poses an indisputable threat to human health worldwide. The reduction of sulfur may induce processes that decrease As solubility, but its impact on rice grain As species remains unresolved. Herein, we investigated the influence of sulfur (S)-containing materials, including chicken manure and elemental sulfur powder on As accumulation and speciation in rice grain as well as the dynamics of the porewater chemistry and solid-phase As solubility throughout the entire growth stage under continuous flooding and intermittent flooding conditions in pot experiments.

Performances of the WEPP and WaNuLCAS models on soil erosion simulation in a tropical hillslope, Thailand.

Effective soil erosion prediction models and proper conservation practices are important tools to mitigate soil erosion in hillside agricultural areas. The Water Nutrient and Light Capture in Agroforestry Systems (WaNuLCAS) and Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) models are capable tools in soil erosion simulation in the conventional and conservation cropping systems in hillslopes. We calibrated both the models in maize monocropping and simultaneously validated them in maize-chili intercropping with Leucaena hedgerow for nine rainfall events in 2010, with the aim to evaluate their performances in runoff and sediment prediction on a skeleton soil in a hillslope, Western Thailand.