Asian Journal of Advances in Agricultural Research

Aim: In a pot experiment the accumulation of zinc in Amaranthus caudatus and Corchorus olitorius from contaminated soil and its relevance for phytoextraction were studied.

Study Design: Plants were exposed to three levels of zinc concentration as zinc sulphate heptahydrate (0,150, 300, 450 ppm), laid in completely randomized design.

Place and Duration of Study: The study lasted for a total of 37 days in a housing facility used for phytoplankton culture at National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Technology New-Bussa Nigeria.

Materials and Methods: Seeds were raised in a nursery for 16 days, and transplanted to pots containing each 2 kg of air-dried and sieved soil. Zinc was artificially applied to soil for each vegetable. They were watered at 60-70 % field capacity and growth parameters measured every 7 days. Plants were carefully uprooted after 3 weeks of transplanting, washed, and weighed before and after oven drying. They were analyzed for zinc concentration.

Results: Results of this study showed decreases in growth and yield at 300 and 450 ppm zinc concentrations. Plant height for both vegetables increased at 150 ppm however these increases were significantly different (P≤0.05) with control for Corchorus only. There were also significant differences (P≤0.05) between treatments in zinc accumulation. Results further showed that zinc was accumulated in the leaves more than the roots. Concentrations of zinc in plant tissues of both vegetables followed a similar order of leaves > roots > stem indicating their efficiency in zinc translocation from roots to leaves. Translocation factors were generally greater than unity.

Conclusion: Despite their lack of hyperaccumulation properties, both vegetables exhibited good potential for phytoextraction. The higher translocation factor of C. olitorius indicated better phytoextraction potential.

China has been noted as one of the three sovereign hubs of the origin of ancient agriculture. Specifically, millets like foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) and rice (Oryza sativa), were and are imperative crops for the ancient as well as present Chinese people. In this regard, rice and millets are valuable crops in the history of China. It is also a fact that rice and millets belong to the important river such as Yellow River (North China) and Yangtze River (South China) which are the ancient centers of Chinese civilization as well. It is also unanimously accepted that rice and millets were domesticated at the same time within a solitary expanse in China but in different regions. The available archaeobotanical record also suggests the emergence and development of the mixed farming of millets and rice in different regions in China during the Neolithic age. This paper illustrates the archaeobotanical perspectives and retrospectives of the important crops such as foxtail millet, broomcorn millet, and rice. With this, the imperative archaeological sites, ancient agricultural activities, agricultural philosophy, crop dispersal, and further archaeobotanical scenarios since Pre-historic age in China are also the chief themes of this manuscript. 

Declining soil fertility is a main reason for the slow growth in food production in Africa. However, the practices of incorporating fertilizers could potentially improve soil fertility and productivity. This experiment was carried out to determine the efficacy of inorganic fertilizer on the early growth performance of Vitellaria paradoxa under a greenhouse condition set up at the Department of Forestry Technology, Federal College of Forestry Ibadan, located within the Government Reserve Area (GRA) Jericho Ibadan. The treatments included two fertilizer types, (Urea and NPK 15:15:15) at different concentration levels which were; Urea at three (3) levels; 50 mg kg¹, 100 mg kg¹and 150 mg kg¹: NPK (15:15:15) at three levels; 50 mg kg¹, 100 mg kg¹ and 150 mg kg¹, combination of Urea + NPK and Control (no application). The results showed that application of inorganic fertilizer at any rate produced higher growth in plant height and collar diameter than the control experiment. Application of different rates of fertilizer on leaf production was comparable with the control experiment. Though, there was no appreciable variation in all fertilizer rates, the highest value was obtained with the combination of NPK and urea at 150/100 mg kg¹ for plant height, leaf production and leaf area while the application of NPK/Urea: 150/150 mg kg¹ produced the highest collar diameter. From this study, nutrient supply from NPK and Urea could help enhance the growth performance of Vitellaria paradoxa seedlings and help improve the mass propagation of target species in the nursery. Further studies are recommended to validate the optimum fertilizer requirements of the plant species.

The excessive unjustified use of some kinds of fertilizers has seen some farmers realizing poor quality fruit that does not appeal to the final consumer, thus negatively affecting the effort of alleviating poverty in the Kingdom of Eswatini. This experiment was carried out at the Horticulture Department Lath House, Faculty of Agriculture, Luyengo Campus of the University of Eswatini to determine the growth, yield and shelf-life of green pepper when fertilized with kraal manure, poultry manure and inorganic fertilizer. The experiment was conducted to find the optimum levels of fertilizers that promotes the growth of pepper and to find the effects of different fertilizers on yield and quality of pepper. The treatments included kraal manure applied at 60 t/ha, [NPK (2:3:2) 37] at 370 kg/ha, chicken manure at 40 t per hectare and the control with no amendment. The results showed that growing pepper using the four treatments significantly affected its growth rate, leaf number, fruit number and its (fruit) shelf life. Pepper grown using inorganic fertilizer had the highest leaf number followed in decreasing order by chicken manure, kraal manure and lastly peppers which did not receive any amendment.  There were no significant difference in the growth rate of pepper in the inorganic fertilizer and chicken manure treatments. Similarly, there was no significant difference of pepper grown with chicken manure and chemical fertilizer in the number of days it took the harvested pepper to reach 100% decay stored at room temperature for 21 days. Yet pepper grown with kraal manure was significantly different from the two as it showed 20% decay rate in the same number of days. Although the control had the least decay, the yield was the lowest thus it is not recommended. Kraal manure at 60 t/ha is recommended in the production of pepper with a longer shelf life.

New Rice of Africa (NERICA) is drought tolerant and early maturing inter specific rice variety which was introduced in Bangladesh from Uganda in 2009. But the field record of NERICA was not very promising. In order to develop NERICA varieties suitable for agro-climatic conditions of Bangladesh different variations in yield contributing characters are required.In the experiment, physical mutagen treated (250, 300 and 350 Gy Gamma-rays) 18 NERICA mutant lines were selected from M4 to M5 generations along with 3 parents (NERICA-1, NERICA-4, NERICA-10) for morphological and molecular evaluation in orderto identify desired mutant linesusing 12 yield attributing characters and 3 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. We also estimated heritability, genetic advance and correlation among the studied morphological traits to identify besttraits based on which further selection could be made. Pearson’s correlation co-efficient of 12 morphological traits indicated that yield per plant had significant positive correlation with the number of tiller, number of effective tiller, panicle length, number of filled grainsper panicle and 1000 grain weight but negative correlation with Plant height and days to maturity. Broad sense heritability ( ) ranged from 71% to 99% while genetic advances in percent mean (GA%) varied from 10% to 60%. Yield per plant, unfilled grains per panicle, number of total tiller, number of effective tiller showed high heritability along with genetic advance as percent of the mean (GA%) value. A total of 24 alleles were detected by 3 SSR markers. The mean gene diversity and Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) values was 0.821 and 0.797, respectively.  Dendrogram constructed based on SSR markers clustered the genotypes into six distinct clusters. Combining molecular and morphological evaluation data eight mutant lines, N10/300/P-2-3-5, N10/300/P-2-3-5, N10/300/P-2-3-5-2, N1/300/P-2-3-5, N1/300/P-2-3-5, N1/250/P-7-6-4-1, N10/300/P-2(1)-4-1 and N1/250/P-7-3-7-1were selected as desired mutant lines having good yield attributing characters and could be recommended for further evaluation in rice breeding program.