Soil is the cardinal resource for agricultural crops. Healthy soil will produce healthy plants. Since healthy soil is the important goal for the farmers, they need to select the best tillage system to achieve that goal. There are two main types of tillage systems. Conservation tillage (no-tillage farming) uses agricultural machinery that performs a double function; tillage and seed farming simultaneously. In contrast, conventional tillage farming uses multiple agricultural machines to till and seed the soil. The farmers in the northern governorates of Iraq have used the conservation farming system for a long time. However, the farmers who live in the middle and southern governorates in Iraq use conventional tillage farming. Because most of

Perennial biofuel and cover crops systems are important for enhancing soil health and can provide numerous soil, agricultural, and environmental benefits. The study objective was to investigate the effects of cover crops and biofuel crops on soil hydraulic properties relative to traditional management for claypan soils. The study site included selected management practices: cover crop (CC) and no cover crop (NC) with corn/soybean rotation, switchgrass (SW), and miscanthus (MI). The CC mixture consisted of cereal rye, hairy vetch, and Austrian winter pea. The research site was located at Bradford Research Center in Missouri, USA, and was implemented on a Mexico silt loam. Intact soil cores (76‐mm diam. by 76‐mm long) were taken from the

Glassy polymers like Poly Mathyel Metha Acrylate are usually classified as non-porous materials; they are almost considered as fully transparent. Thin samples of these materials reflect color changing followed by porous formation and consequently cracking when exposed to certain level of ?-irradiation. The more the dose is the higher the effect have been observed. The optical microscope and UV-VIS spectroscopy have clearly approved these consequences especially for doped polymers.

Energy efficiency is a significant aspect in designing robust routing protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A reliable routing protocol has to be energy efficient and adaptive to the network size. To achieve high energy conservation and data aggregation, there are two major techniques, clusters and chains. In clustering technique, sensor networks are often divided into non-overlapping subsets called clusters. In chain technique, sensor nodes will be connected with the closest two neighbors, starting with the farthest node from the base station till the closest node to the base station. Each technique has its own advantages and disadvantages which motivate some researchers to come up with a hybrid routing algorit

  Anthropogenic activities cause soil pollution with different serious pollutants, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) compounds. This study assessed the contamination of PAHs in soil samples collected from 30 sites divided into eight groups (residential areas, oil areas, agricultural areas, roads, petrol stations, power plants, public parks and electrical generators) in Basrah city-Iraq during 2019-2020. The soil characteristics including (moisture, pH, EC and TOC) were measured. Results showed the following ranges (soil moisture (0.03-0.18%),pH (6.90-8.16), EC (2.48-104.80) mS/cm and TOC (9.90-20.50%)). Gas Chromatography (GC) was used to measure PAHs in extracted soil samples. The total PAH range (499.96 - 5864.86) ng/g dr

Generally, direct measurement of soil compression index (Cc) is expensive and time-consuming. To save time and effort, indirect methods to obtain Cc may be an inexpensive option. Usually, the indirect methods are based on a correlation between some easier measuring descriptive variables such as liquid limit, soil density, and natural water content. This study used the ANFIS and regression methods to obtain Cc indirectly. To achieve the aim of this investigation, 177 undisturbed samples were collected from the cohesive soil in Sulaymaniyah Governorate in Iraq. Results of this study indicated that ANFIS models over-performed the Regression method in estimating Cc with R² of 0.66 and 0.48 for both ANFIS and Regre

In this study, low cost biosorbent ̶inactive biomass (IB) granules (dp=0.433mm) taken from drying beds of Al-Rustomia Wastewater Treatment Plant, Baghdad-Iraq were used for investigating the optimum conditions of Pb(II), Cu(II), and Ni(II) biosorption from aqueous solutions. Various physico-chemical parameters such as initial metal ion concentration (50 to 200 mg/l), equilibrium time (0-180 min), pH (2-9), agitation speed (50-200 rpm), particles size (0.433 mm), and adsorbent dosage (0.05-1 g/100 ml) were studied. Six mathematical models describing the biosorption equilibrium and isotherm constants were tested to find the maximum uptake capacities: Langmuir, Freundlich, Redlich–Peterson, Sips, Khan, and Toth models. The best fit to the P

This study synthesized nanocomposite photocatalyst materials from a mixture of Cu₂O nanoparticles, ZnO nanoparticles, and graphene oxide (GO) through coprecipitation and hydrothermal methods. This study aims to determine the optimum composition of Cu₂O/ZnO/GO nanocomposites in degrading methylene blue. The nanocomposite was synthesized in two steps:  1  the synthesis of Cu₂O and ZnO nanoparticles through the coprecipitation method and the preparation of GO through the modified Hummer method.  2  The preparation of Cu₂O and ZnO nanoparticles mixtures with GO through the hydrothermal method to form Cu₂O/ZnO/GO nanocomposites. The adsorption-photocatalysis process of methylene blue