Cyanobacteria are prokaryotic photosynthetic communities which are used in biofertilization of many plants especially rice plant. Cyanobacteria play a vital role to increase the plant's ability for salinity tolerance. Salinity is a worldwide problem which affects the growth and productivity of crops. In this work three cyanobacteria strains (Nostoc calcicola, Anabaena variabilis, and Nostoc linkia) were isolated from saline soil at Kafr El-Sheikh Governorate; North Egypt. The propagated cyanobacteria strains were used to withstand salinity of the soil and increase rice plant growth (Giza 178). The length of roots and shoot seedlings was measured for seven and forty days of cultivation, respectively. The results of this investigation showed that the inoculation with Nostoc calcicola, Anabaena variabilis, and Nostoc linkia increased root length by 27.0, 4.0, 3.0 % and 39, 20, 19 % in EC5 and 10 (ds/m), respectively. Similarly, they increased shoot length by 121, 70, 55 %, 116, 88, 82 % in EC5 and 10 (ds/m), respectively. In EC15and more concentrations, control rice plants could not grow while those to which cyanobacteria were inoculated could withstand only EC15 but not other elevated concentrations. These results encourage using Nostoc calcicola,Anabaena variabilis, and Nostoc linkia as biofertilizer for rice plant in the saline soil for increasing growth and decrease soil electrical conductivity.
Gypseous soil is prevalent in arid and semi-arid areas, is from collapsible soil, which contains the mineral gypsum, and has variable properties, including moisture-induced volume changes and solubility. Construction on these soils necessitates meticulous assessment and unique designs due to the possibility of foundation damage from soil collapse. The stability and durability of structures situated on gypseous soils necessitate close collaboration with specialists and careful, methodical preparation. It had not been done to find the pattern of failure in the micromechanical behavior of gypseous sandy soil through particle image velocity (PIV) analysis. This adopted recently in geotech
The best design of subsurface trickle irrigation systems requires knowledge of water and salt distribution patterns around the emitters that match the root extraction and minimize water losses. The transient distribution of water and salt in a two-dimensional homogeneous Iraqi soil domain under subsurface trickle irrigation with different settings of an emitter is investigated numerically using 2D-HYDRUS software. Three types of Iraqi soil were selected. The effect of altering different values of water application rate and initial soil water content was investigated in the developed model. The coefficient of correlation (R2) and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) was used to validate the predicted numerical res
... Show MoreThe pretreatment process can be considered one of the important processes in wastewater treatment, especially coagulation process to decrease the strength of many pollutants. This paper focused on using powdered date seeds as natural coagulant in addition to chemical coagulants (alum and ferric chloride) to find the optimum dosage of each coagulant that makes efficient removal of turbidity and chemical oxygen demand (COD) from domestic wastewater as a pretreatment process, then finding the optimum combined dosages of date seeds with alum, date seeds with ferric chloride that make efficient removal for both pollutants. Concerning turbidity, the optimum dosage for date seeds, alum and ferric chloride were 40 mg/l (79%), 70
... Show MoreThis work focused on anthropogenic influences of the trace metals distribution in the soils of Kirkuk city. Sequential extraction technique was used to determine the distribution of the chemical fractions of Ag, Cd, Co, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn, As, Cr and V in soil of Kirkuk city. This area is affected mainly by burning oil trash. Results show that these heavy metals were primarily restricted to surface horizons and mostly associated with the residual fraction (28.8 – 50%). The remnant fractions (13.8 – 33.1%) linked to the organic matter, 7.9 – 27.2% was bound to Fe-Mn oxide, 0.7 – 27.9 was bound to carbonate. Only a small amount of the total metals in the soil is exchangeable (0.5 – 4.2%) and water soluble (0 – 4.1%) fractions.
... Show MoreThere are many aims of this book: The first aim is to develop a model equation that describes the spread of contamination through soils which can be used to determine the rate of environmental contamination by estimate the concentration of heavy metals (HMs) in soil. The developed model equation can be considered as a good representation for a problem of environmental contamination. The second aim of this work is to design two feed forward neural networks (FFNN) as an alternative accurate technique to determine the rate of environmental contamination which can be used to solve the model equation. The first network is to simulate the soil parameters which can be used as input data in the second suggested network, while the second network sim
... Show MoreIn the case where a shallow foundation does not satisfy with design requirements alone, the addition of a pile may be suitable to improve the performance of the foundation design. The lack of in-situ data and the complexity of the issues caused by lagging in the research area of pile foundations are notable. In this study, different types of piles were used under the same geometric conditions to determine the load-settlement relationships with various sandy soil relative densities. The ultimate pile capacity for each selected pile is obtained from a modified California Bearing Ratio (CBR) machine to be suitable for axial pile loading. Based on the results, the values of Qu for close-ended square pile were increased by 15
... Show MoreThis review focuses on conservation agriculture (CA) and its effects on increasing the soil’s resistance to erosion. CA involves minimum soil disturbance (minimum tillage/ no-till), diversified crop rotation, and maintenance of the soil cover to increase soil fertility and reduce erosion. CA reduces soil loss by up to 90% and water erosion by approximately 50 to 70% from runoff as it increases the health of the soil, yield of crops, and water-retention capacity of the soil by incorporating soil organic matter and promoting biodiversity. Crop rotation prevents the replenishment and depletion of soil nutrients by atmospheric fixation of nitrogen/biological nitrogen fixation. Controlled traffic farming (CTF) is a new strategy in which travel
... Show MoreHere we report for the first time the presence of Apoleptomastix bicoloricornis (Girault, 1915) (Hymenoptera, Encyrtidae), as parasitoid of the rice mealybug, Brevennia rehi (Lindinger, 1943) (Hemiptera, Psedococcidae) in Iraq. Brief notes are provided in distinguishing the parasitoid from other closely allied species.