Search Results (670)

Saline–alkali soils are important reserve resources for agricultural production. In western Jilin Province, China, large areas of saline–alkali land have been reclaimed as paddy fields; however, their carbon cycling responses to long-term rice cultivation and warming remain unclear. Using a space-for-time chronosequence approach, a laboratory incubation experiment was conducted at 15 °C and 25 °C using soils collected from two soil layers (0–20 and 20–40 cm) in fields with 2, 5, 10, and 12 years of rice cultivation, together with an uncultivated reference field (CK). The results showed that cumulative potential soil carbon dioxide (CO₂) production was generally higher in cultivated soils than in CK, peaking at 5 years under 15 °C and at 10 years under 25 °C. It subsequently declined in the 10- and 12-year treatments at 15 °C and decreased slightly at 12 years at 25 °C. Soils with longer rice cultivation histories generally exhibited relatively high apparent temperature sensitivity (Q₁₀) at several stages of incubation, particularly in the 0–20 cm soil layer. Hydrolytic enzyme activities generally increased along the rice cultivation chronosequence, whereas polyphenol oxidase activity showed an overall declining trend, reflecting differences in potential enzymatic capacity for carbon transformation among cultivation duration treatments. Bacterial and fungal alpha diversity was generally higher in cultivated soils, particularly from the 5-year stage onward, and they also differed significantly among rice cultivation duration groups in both soil layers, although the fungal pattern in the 20–40 cm layer was partly influenced by heterogeneous within-group dispersion. Partial least squares path modeling showed that enzyme activity was strongly associated with cumulative potential soil CO₂ production at 25 °C and Q₁₀. These findings indicate that potential SOC mineralization across the rice cultivation chronosequence showed clear temperature-dependent patterns. This study provides insights into carbon cycling and its temperature response in reclaimed saline–alkali paddy soils and may inform their sustainable management under changing temperature conditions. Full article

The central point of evolutionary ecology is understanding the drivers of variation in life-history strategies among organisms. The post-fledging dependence period is a critical life-history stage in the life cycle of altricial birds, influencing their future long-term survival, fitness, and reproduction. This period represents the transition between fledging and the onset of natal dispersal or migration, when offspring are highly dependent on parental care. In this study, we used GPS-GSM telemetry to analyze for the first time the duration of this phase and the size of the ranging area of Lesser Spotted Eagles during the dependence period, testing the importance of various extrinsic (habitat type, territory, region) and intrinsic (body condition, sex, fledging date, fledging age) factors. Our survey was conducted between 2020 and 2025 in Bulgaria, SoutheastEurope. The mean duration of the post-fledging dependence period (PFDP) in the juveniles was 47 ± 5 days (SD) (n = 14). The age of independence of eagles ranged from 71 to 110 days (median = 95 days). Our results show that the fledging date is the main determinant shaping the dependence period both temporally and spatially. The size of the ranging area (90% home range) of juveniles during the PFDP varied from 0.03 to 16.72 km², with a mean value of 2.41 km² ± 4.34 SD (n = 14). Home range was influenced mainly by surrounding habitats (grassland types and forests). In line with our hypothesis, we found that birds are habitat-selective, strongly preferring forests and avoiding human-modified landscapes (infrastructure and agricultural fields) during this early life-history stage. We established a relatively small ranging area inhabited by eagles and a low-mobility pattern with a gradual increase in movements that is highly individual-specific. In general, forests occupied the largest share of the home range of eagles, ranging from 0.38% to 87.45%, with a mean value of 49.47% ± 26.57. The duration of the post-fledging dependence period and the size of the ranging area were constrained by the onset of first migration, coinciding with the beginning of birds’ independence. The home range overlap of eagles varied from 56.35% to 100%, with an average value of 87.94%. The high similarity among ranging areas identified in this study emphasizes the importance and consistency of environmental conditions, such as habitat features, compared to others that would vary yearly. The key aspects (spatial and temporal) of the post-fledging dependence pattern, identified by our study, are important for species conservation and must be integrated into future landscape planning. Our results also contribute to a better understanding of the complex factors shaping raptors’ space-use pattern in this key, a poorly studied life-history trait of raptors, thus enhancing knowledge for similar species of conservation concern. Full article

Soil health assessment is increasingly used to support sustainable land management and agronomic decision-making, but generic indicator lists and universal scoring systems may be inadequate for highly reactive volcanic soils. This critical methodological review proposes an integrated methodological framework for volcanic island agroecosystems that explicitly separates analytical measurement from interpretation. The framework links assessment objectives and site context to fit-for-purpose analytical levels and classifies evidence as method-matched thresholds, local or reference benchmarks, relative or temporal comparisons, mechanistic evidence and plant–soil response validation. The reviewed evidence shows that standardized measurements do not necessarily support transferable diagnostic criteria and that volcanic-soil and andic properties can affect both analytical behavior and the functional meaning of indicator values. Rather than assigning universal scores, indicators are integrated by soil function and interpreted in relation to soil mineralogy, crop requirements, management history, and disturbance or recovery trajectories. This approach helps distinguish intrinsic volcanic-soil properties from management-induced degradation, identify functionally relevant constraints and make diagnostic confidence explicit. The framework provides a practical basis for routine monitoring, targeted diagnosis, and the development of locally validated soil health reference systems in volcanic island agriculture. Full article

Draining peatlands for agricultural purposes accelerates land subsidence, greenhouse gas emissions, and the degradation of surrounding wetlands. To achieve sustainable peatland agriculture, land management must consider not only crop productivity but also the global environment. Peatlands account for approximately 1% of Japan’s land area, with about 61% of that 1% located in Hokkaido. This review summarizes the history of agricultural land use on peatlands in Japan and efforts to address land subsidence, greenhouse gas emissions, and the degradation of wetlands surrounding farmland, focusing primarily on case studies from Hokkaido. To allow peatlands to be used for agriculture, drainage, and mineral soil dressing have been carried out. The drying, shrinkage, consolidation, and decomposition of peat resulting from drainage cause land subsidence. Paddy rice cultivation and cyclic irrigation are land management methods that balance the mitigation of land subsidence with food production. Drainage from farmland degrades the vegetation of any surrounding wetlands. On forage-harvesting farmland, buffer zones are established between the farmland and any surrounding wetlands to mitigate the degradation of these wetlands. Lowering the groundwater level increases CO₂ and N₂O emissions, while raising it increases CH₄ emissions. A global meta-analysis has reported that maintaining the groundwater level between −20 cm and −40 cm results in the lowest total greenhouse gas emissions. However, data on greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands used for agricultural purposes with mineral soil coverage in Japan and the reduction in such emissions are limited. In Hokkaido, the introduction of groundwater level control systems has recently been progressing; the challenge of verifying the effectiveness of subsidence control and peat decomposition control through subsurface irrigation on fields other than paddy fields remains. Full article

Moruga Hill Rice (MHR) is an African rice (Oryza glaberrima Steud.) brought to Trinidad by formerly enslaved African Americans and has been grown for many generations in Trinidad at subsistence and commercial scale. Despite its historical and agricultural significance, genomic resources specific to MHR remain unexplored, and its genetic composition, evolutionary history, and potential agronomic traits have not been characterized. This current study presents the first draft genome assembly of the MHR genome using a hybrid sequencing approach. The MHR genome size was found to be ~372.9 Mb with 56,073 predicted genes. Variant analysis revealed a total of 3,318,242 variants, of which 2,440,476 were SNPs, and 877,766 were InDels. Several candidate genes encoding proteins with orthology to previously characterized biotic resistance and abiotic stress-responsive genes in rice were identified. Potential gene families identified prompt further investigation of their roles in MHR drought and salt stress responses. Phylogenomic analysis of O. glaberrima landraces suggests that MHR shares close genetic affinity with the IRGC−104595 Malian landrace, consistent with historical records. This assembly thus expands the African rice genomic repository, providing a foundation to understand the genetic architecture underlying key phenotypic traits and identifying potential novel gene sources in MHR for rice improvement in the Caribbean region. Full article

The transition from conventional silica nanoparticle (SiNP) production based on purified alkoxysilanes and high-temperature flame hydrolysis of silicon tetrachloride to renewable and waste-derived silicon resources requires more than precursor substitution. It requires a mechanistic understanding of how feedstock mineralogy, silicon speciation, impurity chemistry, and processing history propagate through dissolution, nucleation, condensation, gelation, aging, drying, and pore evolution to determine material performance, environmental burden, and manufacturing feasibility. Although previous reviews have established the technical feasibility of producing silica from secondary resources, their predominant organization by feedstock, synthesis route, or application provides limited ability to explain why nominally similar processes generate materials with markedly different structural and functional properties. This review addresses these through a resource-pull, feedstock-to-function framework that links resource chemistry and process design to critical material attributes, application-specific specifications, sustainability, and scale-up requirements. Agricultural residues, industrial by-products, geothermal resources, waste glass, and fluorosilicate streams are critically compared according to silicon form and phase, reactivity, impurity profile, compositional variability, purification demand, and attainable product quality. Particular attention is given to waste-derived alkaline silicate systems, in which molecular, oligomeric, and colloidal silica coexist and therefore require characterization beyond bulk SiO₂ concentration. Established and emerging processing strategies, including controlled combustion and alkaline extraction, alkali fusion, ambient-pressure drying, microwave and mechanochemical activation, biogenic and biomimetic templating, and continuous processing, are evaluated according to their mechanistic effects, technological maturity, structural control, and demands for energy, reagents, water, solvents, effluent treatment, and capital. Across these routes, gelation and aging emerge as critical transfer stages through which feedstock composition is translated into network connectivity, pore architecture, shrinkage behavior, and ultimately functional performance. Evidence from secondary-source aerogels further shows that properly controlled waste-derived systems can attain BET surface areas of approximately 350–500 m² g⁻¹, within the textural range of many alkoxide-derived materials, indicating that feedstock variability, impurity management, and process control are more important constraints than an inherently lower performance ceiling. On this basis, this review proposes a minimum evidence framework comprising feedstock traceability, intermediate-speciation and colloidal characterization, silicon mass balance, gelation and aging metrics, application-specific qualification criteria, performance-normalized life cycle and techno-economic assessment, process analytical control, and staged pilot validation. Collectively, these principles provide a mechanistically grounded basis for moving sustainable silica synthesis beyond isolated proof-of-concept demonstrations toward reproducible, scalable, application-matched, and commercially credible manufacturing platforms. Full article

The population genetic diversity and demographic history of Hypomeces pulviger in Thailand were examined based on mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) and 16S ribosomal DNA (16S rDNA) sequence data. A total of 171 and 104 individuals from multiple populations were analyzed using CO1 and 16S rDNA sequences, respectively. The CO1 sequence dataset revealed high haplotype diversity (Hd = 0.999) and moderate nucleotide diversity (Nd = 0.0323), whereas the 16S rDNA showed lower diversity (Hd = 0.750, Nd = 0.0026). Population structure analyses showed low to moderate differentiation in CO1 sequences with a significant isolation-by-distance pattern, suggesting distance-limited gene flow, while 16S rDNA sequences showed weaker structure. Neutrality tests and mismatch distribution analyses supported a recent population expansion, as indicated by significantly negative Fu’s Fs and a unimodal distribution. Haplotype network and phylogenetic analyses further demonstrated greater resolution in the CO1 gene compared to the 16S rRNA gene. Collectively, H. pulviger populations in Thailand are genetically diverse, connected, and expanding, likely facilitated by both natural dispersal and agricultural activities. These findings provide important insights for understanding pest dynamics and developing effective management strategies. Full article

This examines the development of the saltpeter industry in Chile after the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), a conflict between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance. Chile’s victory meant the annexation of the territories of Antofagasta and Tarapacá, effectively controlling the production of sodium nitrate and the global saltpeter monopoly. Industrial development was reflected through changes in foreign and Chilean capitals, technologies, and work practices. In Tarapacá, the most important investments in the 19th century were British and German. In Antofagasta, Chilean, English, German, and Croatian investments were prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries. And since 1926, American capitals have occupied the spotlight. The dominant technologies were the Shanks system between 1880–1926, the Guggenheim from 1926–1954, and the introduction of Solar Evaporation in the 1950s. Work evolved from manual artisanal labor without legal protection to mechanization under social laws. Saltpeter represented, in the social and economic history of Chile, the rise of the proletariat, communal social movements, a strong labor press, and a series of strikes and massacres. From the saltpeter era sprouted powerful literature, poetry, and music throughout the 20th century until today. The nitrate industry reached its peak between 1881 and 1917. During this period, it had to confront competition from synthetic nitrate and ceased to be the main source of revenue for the national treasury of Chile. This was followed by a period of decline and crisis from 1918 to 1931, the latter intertwined with the global financial crisis. Various state and business measures made it possible for a small number of nitrate oficinas (processing plants and settlements) in Tarapacá and Antofagasta to continue operating until the nationalization of the nitrate industry in 1971. The nitrate industry took place during the first globalization of liberalism, one that brought flows of capital, migration from Europe to the American Continent, changes to marine navigation, and the opening of various markets in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Nitrate became the most effective fertilizer for agriculture and replaced guano in crop production. In order to analyze this topic, we will utilize the results of the main monographic studies, texts used for historical and political context, and works with interpretative theses about specific periods of nitrate production. Full article

Lethal foodborne illness outbreaks represent a critical intersection of public health surveillance, environmental health, and forensic toxicology. When acute gastrointestinal syndromes lead to sudden death, traditional postmortem investigation techniques are often hindered by tissue autolysis and the overgrowth of putrefactive microflora, which complicate conventional microbiological assays. This review establishes a comprehensive framework for chemical forensics by evaluating the utility of stable isotope analysis (SIA) as a supportive, probabilistic chemical proxy to complement traditional epidemiological investigations of postmortem food contamination sources. Following JBI scoping review guidelines and the PRISMA-ScR reporting framework, data from 42 peer-reviewed articles (2000–2026) were charted and synthesized to map natural isotopic variations (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N, δ¹⁸O, δ²H and δ³⁴S) across both forensic decedents and environmental reservoirs. The findings outline a structured, multi-tissue diagnostic cascade governed by biological metabolic turnover rates: unabsorbed gastric chyme provides a direct chemical match to contaminated source food items within a hyper-acute 0–6 h window; high-turnover visceral matrices (liver, blood plasma) shift to reflect acute exposure profiles within 1–7 days; and continuously fixed keratinized matrices (hair, nails) archive multi-month dietary and transcontinental transit histories. Furthermore, compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) of individual amino acids offers unprecedented structural resolution, utilizing the carbon discrimination metric (Δ¹³C_glu-phe) to differentiate pristine agricultural signatures from endogenous metabolic distortions while biochemically verifying pre-mortem physiological stress and hyper-catabolic muscle wasting. Taphonomic thresholds were explicitly defined, establishing that bulk visceral soft tissues remain isotopically stable (±0.3‰) for up to 48 h at room temperature (~21 °C) before microbially induced nitrogen enrichment (δ¹⁵N > +2.8‰) alters native profiles, whereas hair and nail keratin maintain absolute isotopic stability for over 180 days postmortem. When pristine multi-isotope signatures are coupled with mandatory chloroform–methanol lipid extraction and processed through spatial Bayesian assignment models, geographic provenance tracking via environmental isoscapes achieves a predictive accuracy of 97%. This review introduces a standardized environmental health protocol designed to harmonize field environmental sampling with medical autopsies. This protocol provides a legally robust strategy for investigating unresolved lethal foodborne illness case-outbreaks, particularly those involving pediatric mortalities linked to the consumption of counterfeit or fraudulent food products in low- and middle-income countries. Furthermore, it aims to strengthen national and municipal legal frameworks and international biosecurity enforcement. Full article

Rural land is the spatial embodiment and physical manifestation of nostalgia. When people settle in cities, they become rural sojourners, returning to rural landscapes through travel. The rural history embedded in traditional landscapes is a treasure trove, and these landscapes provide ideal sites for nostalgic research. Tourism has proven to be a major driver for the development of traditional landscapes. This paper focuses on traditional villages with rich rural heritage and high cultural representativeness in the Huizhou region. This paper examined the nostalgic factors among 518 rural visitors to traditional villages. The results indicate that natural landscape (β = 0.30) and traditional agriculture (β = 0.20) directly influence visitors’ nostalgic experiences, while rural architecture and vernacular culture contribute to it indirectly through mediated pathways. The results also show that spiritual and historical nostalgia are the dominant aspects, while homeland nostalgia is relatively less significant in the Huizhou context. The study contributes to a better understanding of nostalgic experience in traditional villages and provides practical insights for balancing heritage protection and tourism development. Full article

Global climate change has posed a serious threat to agricultural production and food security. Crop growth models, with their excellent simulation and prediction capabilities, have become one of the important tools for guiding agricultural production and ensuring food security. This study provides a review of the research progress in crop growth models. The development history of the models is summarized into four stages, including process modeling, system simulation, model application, and algorithm expansion. According to different driving factors, the crop growth models can be categorized into solar radiation-driven, soil moisture content-driven, meteorological factor-driven, and integrated factor-driven models. In terms of the countries of development, the models mainly include those from the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, and China. Regarding applications, crop growth models are primarily applicable to adaptability assessment, agricultural resource and crop cultivation management, and climate change evaluation. Since their initial development, these models have enhanced their mechanistic nature through various approaches, such as incorporating surface mulching modules, considering the response of root water uptake to soil salt stress, and preliminarily introducing physiological regulation processes. By integrating with remote sensing technology, the spatial scale of the models has been expanded from the point scale to the regional or even global scale, and the accuracy of regional-scale yield estimation has been significantly improved through assimilation with remote sensing. Meanwhile, crop growth models have also been combined with intelligent algorithms to optimize irrigation scheduling, and to perform model parameter optimization. Looking forward, potential future research directions of crop growth models include extending the soil submodule from one-dimensional to two/three-dimensional water–heat–solute transport, moving toward a more mechanistic crop growth modeling, integration with remote sensing, and incorporating artificial intelligence. This study serves as a reference for further development and application of crop growth models, and provides technical support for the development of sustainable agriculture. Full article

Aphids are among the most economically important pests affecting agricultural productivity worldwide. Despite various control strategies, managing aphid populations remains a challenge due to their rapid reproduction, ability to transmit pathogenic plant viruses, and their resistance to insecticides. The present article presents the current major difficulties experienced in the control of aphid pests, detailing various case studies, whilst recent scientific findings from Europe, the United States of America, and other global regions are described in order to clarify the challenges and the possibilities in sustainable pest management. Overall, we conclude that the complexity of aphid pest control demands integrated management strategies supported by robust policy frameworks. Enhanced collaboration between researchers, policymakers, farmers, and industry stakeholders is essential to develop sustainable solutions that address both immediate pest control needs and long-term agroecosystem resilience. Furthermore, studies are necessary, which especially include molecular genetics and ecological assessments, in order to understand the life history and rapid evolution of aphids, and hence, formulate the most rational means to combat them, both in the greenhouse and field. Full article

Imperialism as a system of exploitation profoundly shaped the natural and human landscapes of colonized regions. This paper examines how the Second World War accelerated imperial transformations in East Africa, focusing on the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme (1947–1951) as a case of business-imperial collaboration. Set against Britain’s post-war reconstruction needs, the scheme shows how corporate interests, especially Unilever’s, shaped colonial development through industrial agriculture. Drawing on archival research and recent historiography, the article argues that the scheme was not merely a failed agricultural experiment. Rather, it was a structural expression of business-imperial partnership with lasting environmental and institutional legacies. Its ecological damage and social disruption reflect broader patterns of environmental violence inherent in imperial capitalism. This study contributes to imperial environmental history in two ways. First, it traces the long-term ecological impacts of post-war industrial development in colonial spaces. Second, it shows that imperial agro-economic practices were not temporally isolated events: the effects of even short-lived, failed ventures such as the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme continued into the postcolonial period. Full article

Temperature is a major environmental determinant of flowering time and reproductive success in plants. Ongoing global warming is changing flowering phenology across natural and agricultural ecosystems, yet the mechanisms by which ambient temperature regulates the transition to reproduction remain less fully resolved than those underlying photoperiodic flowering and vernalization. This review synthesizes eco-physiological and molecular evidence for temperature-dependent flowering across plant groups and terrestrial ecosystems. It considers the development of the florigen concept, the identification of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) and related phosphatidylethanolamine-binding protein family members, and the integration of temperature signals with flowering activators and repressors. Particular attention is given to the thermosensory pathway, including alternative splicing, chromatin regulation, membrane-associated signaling, phase separation and temperature-dependent accumulation or stability of regulatory proteins. The review also examines phenological responses to rising temperatures in bulbous geophytes, Arctic and boreal species, subtropical and tropical crops, and desert plants. Available evidence indicates that the temperature requirements for floral initiation, their organogenesis and anthesis vary widely among species and developmental stages, and that these optima reflect life-history strategy, origin and adaptation to seasonal temperature regimes. Full article

Soybean diseases caused by fungal, bacterial, and viral pathogens represent a major constraint to global agricultural productivity. Although molecular phylogenetic analyses have advanced the understanding of pathogen evolution, the extent to which disease phenotypes reflect evolutionary relationships remains poorly understood. In this study, we developed an integrative framework combining deep learning-based phenotypic analysis with phylogenetic inference to investigate the relationship between soybean disease symptoms and pathogen evolution. An EfficientNet-B0 convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained to classify 10 soybean disease classes comprising 703 leaf images and achieved a mean cross-validation accuracy of 98.72 ± 1.17%, a weighted F1-score of 98.74 ± 1.16%, and a macro F1-score of 98.47 ± 1.74%. Evaluation on a held-out test set generated through image-level partitioning yielded an accuracy of 96.19%, a weighted F1-score of 96.28%, and a macro F1-score of 95.86%. Latent feature embeddings revealed a structured phenotypic space with clear separation among most disease classes and enabled quantitative analyses of phenotypic similarity. To provide biological context, taxonomy-derived distance matrices and sequence-based phylogenetic analyses of the fungal subset using 28S rRNA sequences were compared with CNN-derived phenotypic representations. A Mantel test identified a moderate and statistically significant association between phenotypic and phylogenetic distances (Spearman r = 0.3393, p = 0.0050), indicating that pathogen evolutionary history contributes to disease phenotype while explaining only part of the observed phenotypic variation. Overall, the results demonstrate that deep learning effectively captures biologically meaningful phenotypic information while highlighting that disease symptoms arise from the combined influence of pathogen evolution, host responses, and environmental conditions. This study provides an integrative framework for combining image-based phenotyping with phylogenetic analysis to support biologically informed interpretation of plant disease phenotypes. Full article