Search Results (1,445)

Adequate fertilization is essential for optimizing soybean productivity and seed quality, while supplementary fertilization plays a key role in correcting nutrient deficiencies and supporting plant performance under varying environmental conditions. This study evaluated the effects of the foliar application of macro- and micronutrients enriched with free amino acids and Ascophyllum nodosum extract applied at two phenological stages—six fully developed trifoliate leaves (V6) and beginning flowering (R1)—on soybean grain yield, protein content and oil content. Experiments were conducted over two growing seasons at ARDS Turda, Romania, using a randomized complete block design with three replications to compare three fertilization treatments: basic mineral fertilization (control), mineral fertilization supplemented with foliar application at the V6 vegetative stage, and mineral fertilization supplemented with foliar application at the R1 reproductive stage. Basic fertilization was performed before sowing using granulated nitroclacium at a rate of 100 kg ha⁻¹. Foliar fertilization included Naturamin WSP applied at a rate of 0.5 kg ha⁻¹ and Pleniflor and Naturfruit at a rate of 2 L ha⁻¹. Foliar fertilization at the V6 stage significantly improved grain yield in most cultivars, with increases ranging from 1% to 18%, particularly in the 000 and 00 maturity groups (MGs). Across the maturity groups, the highest average yields were recorded in MG 0 cultivars (up to 2845 kg ha⁻¹). In contrast, foliar application at the R1 stage was more effective in increasing seed protein content, with improvements of up to 11% in early maturity cultivars. Oil content showed only minor and inconsistent responses, with maximum increases of 4% depending on genotype. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) revealed that environmental conditions and genotype explained most of the observed variation (Axis 1 = 89.91%, Axis 2 = 7.79%), indicating that cultivar response to foliar fertilization was strongly influenced by genotype × environment interactions. The effectiveness of foliar fertilization depends on application timing, cultivar maturity group and environmental conditions. Full article

Guaranteeing food security and improving resource use efficiency are core objectives of winter wheat production. Single agronomic measures, such as simply increasing seeding rate or fertilizer application alone, fail to simultaneously raise grain yield and resource utilization efficiency. In this study, the dense–tolerant wheat cultivar Yunong 804 was used as the experimental material. Three seeding rates (187.5, 225, and 262.5 kg·ha⁻¹) and two fertilization regimes (conventional split fertilization and a one-time basal application of urea–formaldehyde controlled-release fertilizer) were used to explore their independent and interactive effects on the canopy structure; photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) interception, utilization efficiency, and conversion efficiency; and dry matter accumulation and grain yield of winter wheat. The results show that under the same fertilization mode, leaf area index (LAI) and intercepted photosynthetically active radiation (IPAR) increased first and then decreased with the rise in seeding rate, reaching maximum values at a seeding rate of 225 kg·ha⁻¹. Compared with conventional fertilization, the one-time basal application of controlled-release fertilizer significantly improved LAI, canopy PAR interception rate (CAR), PAR utilization efficiency (PUE), and PAR conversion efficiency (PCE), as well as remarkably boosting dry matter accumulation (DMA), elevating the allocation proportion of dry matter to spikes, and increasing grain yield by 5–23.69% under the seeding rate of 225 kg·ha⁻¹. The correlation analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) results indicate that grain yield had a closer correlation with PUE, PCE, and DMA, while its correlation with CAR was relatively weak. Under the experimental conditions set in this research, the combined cultivation strategy of a 225 kg·ha⁻¹ seeding rate matched with the one-time basal application of urea–formaldehyde controlled-release fertilizer was confirmed as the optimal management scheme. Full article

Low-light environments severely affect rice yield and quality. As an important raw material for rice noodles, improving rice yield and quality under low-light conditions is very important. In this study, the grain-filling dynamics, yield, processing quality, and appearance quality of two rice noodle-specific cultivars, i.e., Gui Chao II (GCII) and Guangyou 2928 (GY2928), were investigated under shading in Sichuan. At the experimental site, the soil type is loam, average temperature reaches 23.1 °C, total rainfall reaches 780–830 mm, and total sunshine duration is about 760 h. A two-factor split-plot design was conducted. Two light intensities (natural light vs. 51% shading) served as the main plot, and two rice cultivars (GCII and GY2928) served as the subplot, and each was replicated three times. Results showed that, compared with normal light, shading reduced the average filling rate (Vmean) of GCII and GY2928 by 20.67% and 18.69%, the maximum filling rate (Vmax) decreased by 20.26% and 16.18%, the 100-grain weight (Gmax) at the maximum filling rate decreased by 0.42 g and 0.21 g, and the active filling period (D) was shortened by 1.47 days and 4.01 days, respectively. Compared with normal light, the decreased grain filling led to a significant decrease in spikelet fertility by 30.62% and 28.50% for GCII and GY2928 under shading. Finally, the yield of GCII and GY2928 significantly decreased by 25.33% and 27.82% compared with normal light. Compared with normal light, shading increased the head rice rate of GCII, while that of GY2928 was significantly reduced. In contrast, the chalkiness rate and chalkiness degree of GCII under shading were significantly reduced, but those of GY2928 significantly increased. In conclusion, GCII exhibited more stable yield and quality under shading, and breeding and planting such varieties could increase rice yield and quality in low-light environments. Full article

Cowpea mild mottle virus (CPMMV) is a carlavirus that is transmitted by whiteflies and can also be spread through seeds in cowpea, soybean, and common bean. Seed transmission of CPMMV has been described in various countries; however, it was only recently reported in Brazil as a seed-transmitted virus in soybean. CPMMV has spread widely in bean-growing areas in recent years. Most Brazilian farmers use harvested grains as seed for reseeding, increasing the risk of seedborne infection. In this study, we examine seed transmission of CPMMV in two bean cultivars using RT-PCR in combination with nucleic acid hybridization. The plants evaluated were obtained from seeds harvested in commercial and experimental fields and from seeds collected in transmission experiments using either mechanical or whitefly inoculation. The observed seed transmission was estimated between 10 to 45% for ‘BRS FC 401 RMD’ and 13 to 22% for ‘Pérola’. In addition, evidence of secondary transmission (23.3%) by Bemisia tabaci MEAM1 was observed. These results suggest that CPMMV could be spread in bean fields by sowing infected seeds and that germinated plants could serve as an inoculum for whitefly transmission. This is the first report of seed transmission of CPMMV in common bean in Brazil. Full article

Ratoon rice cultivation is a significant practice for enhancing land productivity and food security. Ratooning ability is a key determinant of ratoon season crop (RC) yield and is influenced by genetic, agronomic, and hormonal factors. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of foliar-applied ratooning enhancers, formulated with plant hormones and botanical extracts, on the growth and regeneration of a japonica–indica hybrid rice cultivar, ‘Qingxiangyou 19 Xiang’. Treatments included gibberellin (GA), low, medium, and high concentrations of brassinosteroid (BR), each with or without jasmine extract (JE), alongside proline and zinc chloride (ZnCl₂) as supporting components. These solutions were applied twice at 5 and 15 days after flowering (DAF) of the main crop (MC). The results showed that GA treatment increased plant height and panicle length but reduced MC tiller number. BR treatments did not affect plant height but significantly increased the 1000-grain weight. Crucially, while BR alone had no significant effect on ratooning ability, the BR-JE combined application, particularly at medium (MBR-JE) and high (HBR-JE) concentrations, significantly increased ratoon tiller number and enhanced ratooning ability. However, the HBR-JE combination increased grain chalkiness. In conclusion, the foliar application of BR combined with JE during the flowering stage effectively promotes ratooning ability without compromising MC yield, offering a promising agronomic strategy for sustainable ratoon rice production. Full article

Tetraploid wheat (Triticum turgidum), the progenitor of common wheat, provides rich genetic resources for wheat genetic improvement. TDI-1 is a long-grain cultivated emmer wheat (T. turgidum ssp. dicoccum) accession collected in our laboratory. It was crossed with TDU-1, a short-grain durum wheat (T. turgidum ssp. durum) accession. The F₁ hybrids exhibited heterobeltiosis (i.e., performance superior to the better parent) for grain length, thousand-kernel weight, and other kernel traits. In the F₂ population, grain length showed a strong positive correlation with thousand-kernel weight (r = 0.77), and the ratio of plants with the short-grain parental phenotype, heterobeltiosis phenotype, and long-grain parental phenotype was approximately 1:2:1 (χ² ≈ 0.697, p > 0.7), suggesting that a major locus plays a primary role in controlling grain length in this population. Combined with phenotyping of F_2:3 families, homozygous long-grain and short-grain bulks constructed from F₂ individuals were genotyped using bulked segregant analysis based on 120K-SNP array. The results showed that polymorphic SNPs were mainly concentrated on the short arm of chromosome 2A, leading to the inference that this region harbors a locus regulating grain length, tentatively designated TtGL-2A. Twelve SSR markers were developed on the short arm of chromosome 2A, mapping TtGL-2A to an 8.1 cM genetic interval between markers 2AS-280t26 and 2AS-280t29, corresponding to the physical interval 121.2–158.8 Mb, with a LOD score of 12.3. Using the diagnostic marker 2AS-95t3 to genotype 253 wheat accessions, the proportion of long-grain allelic variation TtGL-2A_TDI in landraces, cultivars, and introduced lines is 40.27%, 75.86%, and 82.35%, respectively. Transcriptome sequencing of grains at 15 days post-anthesis from the parental lines TDI-1 and TDU-1 identified 11 differentially expressed genes within the TtGL-2A interval. These results lay a foundation for map-based cloning of TtGL-2A and provide an efficient marker for molecular breeding of wheat yield. Full article

Accurate ripeness assessment of tomatoes in natural orchard settings is challenged by severe occlusion, dense clustering, and scale variation among fruits. This paper introduces YOLOv8n–TiD, a lightweight detection framework designed to overcome these obstacles. The architecture enhances the YOLOv8n backbone with a novel C2f-iRD module, which integrates re-parameterized dilated convolutions and inverted residual blocks to enlarge the receptive field while retaining fine-grained texture details. For feature fusion, we propose C2f-iRMB in the neck to ensure cross-scale consistency. To address semantic drift during upsampling, we replace standard interpolation with the DySample operator. The detection head is re-engineered as TADAH (Task-Adaptive Dynamic Alignment Head), enabling genuine task decoupling via deformable convolutions and conditionally shared features. Additionally, we introduce F–PIoUv2, a regression loss that emphasizes medium-quality predictions and curbs excessive bounding box expansion. Evaluations on a custom dataset show that YOLOv8n–TiD cuts parameters by 45%, FLOPs by 19%, and model size by 41%, while raising mAP@0.5 by 1.9 points—all in real time. On Android devices, it sustains 30 FPS inference and generalizes effectively to a distinct cherry tomato cultivar. These findings confirm the method’s robustness in discriminating occluded, small, and visually similar maturity stages, providing a practical vision system for robotic harvesting and field-based grading. Full article

Achieving simultaneous improvements in grain yield and water–nitrogen use efficiency remains a major challenge in high-density summer maize production. Therefore, this study investigated how drip fertigation (DI) regulates soil nitrogen spatial distribution, plant nitrogen translocation, and ultimately resource use efficiency. A two-year field experiment (2023–2024) was conducted in Tai’an, Shandong, China, using a split-plot design. Two water–fertilizer management regimes, conventional border irrigation (BI) and drip fertigation (DI), were assigned to the main plots, while eight planting densities (15,000–120,000 plants ha⁻¹) were allocated to the subplots. Two summer maize cultivars, Denghai 605 (DH605) and MY73, were evaluated. Compared with BI, DI significantly increased grain yield as well as water and nitrogen use efficiency. For DH605 and MY73, grain yield increased by 7.3% and 3.8%, respectively, accompanied by increases of 18.4% and 16.3% in WUE and 7.4% and 3.5% in NPFP. DI enhanced nitrogen accumulation within the 0–20 cm root zone while reducing nitrate-N residues in the 20–60 cm soil layer, thereby improving the spatial distribution and availability of root-zone nitrogen. Consequently, DI increased nitrogen translocation from vegetative organs to grains, as reflected by higher NTA, NTE, and NHI values, which promoted grain nitrogen accumulation and improved nitrogen use efficiency. Notably, DI did not significantly affect nitrogen uptake efficiency (NU_pE), suggesting that the improvement in nitrogen utilization efficiency (NU_tE) was driven primarily by enhanced nitrogen remobilization from vegetative organs to grains rather than by increased nitrogen uptake. Overall, drip fertigation improved grain yield, water use efficiency, and nitrogen use efficiency in high-density summer maize by optimizing root-zone nitrogen availability and promoting post-silking nitrogen translocation to grains. Full article

Improving rice yield and optimizing rice quality are of great significance for ensuring food security. In modern rice production, mechanical transplanting has become the dominant transplanting method. Precise regulation of plant spacing and row spacing contributes to the formation of different transplanting densities, which further exerts effects on photosynthetic spikelets filling, yield formation and quality development of rice. Two-year field experiments were conducted with two conventional japonica rice cultivars of contrasting yield levels under four transplanting hill spacings at a uniform row spacing of 30 cm. The results showed that rice cultivars with higher seed-setting rate with an increase ranging from 1.44 to 1.91% and larger grain weight with an increase ranging from 13.17 to 13.40% presented more prominent yield potential. In addition, high-yield rice cultivars possessed more excellent photosynthetic carbon metabolism characteristics, which effectively improved the spikelets filling process of rice kernels. Superior photosynthetic carbon metabolism characteristics were conducive to increasing head rice rate and reducing chalkiness, while maintaining the duration of spikelets filling benefited the improvement of rice taste value. Narrowing the transplanting plant spacing reduced the physiological enzyme activities in rice leaves and grains, weakened photosynthetic carbon metabolism and hindered spikelets filling, which further decreased head rice rate and protein content but increased chalkiness. Notably, rice taste value also showed an increasing trend. The taste value of superior spikelets (SSs) of the two rice cultivars increased by 1.97–5.11% and 0.98–2.60% respectively, and that of inferior spikelets (ISs) increased by 1.37–3.64% and 1.62–4.12% respectively. Reducing transplanting plant spacing also significantly increased the number of effective panicles, resulting in an increase in population spikelet number. The final yield of the two rice cultivars increased by 5.38–11.62% and 5.23–11.03% respectively. Full article

Cadmium (Cd) pollution adversely affects crop productivity and grain quality. Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. subsp. durum (Desf.) Husn.), a widely consumed cereal crop, can accumulate substantial levels of Cd in edible tissues, threatening human health. Therefore, advances in understanding Cd toxicity in plants and the molecular mechanisms underlying Cd accumulation and detoxification are needed to develop resistant cultivars and ensure safe food production. Although Cd homeostasis has been previously studied in bread wheat, its accumulation varies among species and cultivars owing to differences in their physiological and genetic makeup. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying Cd homeostasis in durum wheat have not been comprehensively reviewed. Here, we synthesize current knowledge on the molecular basis of Cd uptake, transport, and detoxification in durum wheat. Specialized transporter families, including MRPs/ABCCs, HMAs, and members of the YSL, ZIFL, and IREG families, play critical roles in mediating Cd compartmentalization and limiting its cytosolic toxicity. Genes such as HMT1, TdHMA3-B1a, and members of the NAS gene family significantly reduced Cd accumulation in grains. Future studies should focus on the integration of physiological, molecular genetics, and multi-omics approaches to uncover the regulatory networks controlling Cd homeostasis in durum wheat. Full article

Accurate cultivar identification of commercial dried goji berries is essential for raw material sorting, batch consistency assessment, and quality control during processing and distribution. Conventional approaches based on manual judgment or physicochemical analysis are often subjective, labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly, making them unsuitable for rapid commercial sorting and quality inspection. To develop a rapid, low-cost, and nondestructive method for dried goji berry cultivar identification, this study proposes a visual recognition framework that integrates RGB imaging with lightweight deep learning. A dataset comprising 25,899 RGB images from five cultivars of commercial dried goji berry samples, namely Ningqi No. 7, Linqi No. 5, Ningqi No. 1, Keqi 6082, and Jingqi No. 1, was constructed. Given the pronounced surface shrinkage, complex texture, and subtle inter-cultivar appearance differences of dried goji berries, an image quality enhancement method was designed to strengthen the representation of color gradation, textural details, and edge information. For model development, CoAtNet was selected as the baseline network and redesigned for lightweight deployment. By integrating an improved feature extraction module and an information-preserving downsampling module, the proposed LSH-CoAtNet model enhances fine-grained feature representation while reducing computational cost. On the quality-enhanced image dataset, the proposed method achieved an accuracy of 98.80%, a precision of 98.81%, a recall of 98.80%, and an F1-score of 98.80%. The model contained only 6.41 M parameters and required 1.60 GFLOPs, outperforming the baseline model in both classification performance and computational efficiency. Ablation experiments and five-fold cross-validation further confirmed the effectiveness of the image quality enhancement strategy, the contribution of each improved module, and the stability of the model. Overall, the proposed method, which combines RGB image quality enhancement with LSH-CoAtNet, provides a low-cost, nondestructive, and efficient technical solution for rapid cultivar identification, raw material sorting, batch consistency assessment, and quality control of commercial dried goji berries during processing and distribution. It may also serve as a reference for intelligent classification and quality inspection of other specialty dried horticultural products. Full article

LeafScans-Orchard is a curated, multi-year RGB image dataset of orchard plant leaves designed to support research in computer vision, machine learning, and plant phenotyping. The dataset comprises 9708 high-quality leaf scans acquired during collection campaigns conducted between 2015 and 2025, covering seven orchard crop species: apple, pear, sweet cherry, sour cherry, plum, peach, and apricot. In total, the dataset includes 67 cultivar labels. All samples were acquired using flatbed scanning under controlled conditions on a uniform background, ensuring high visual consistency and minimal background variability. The original scans were captured at 1200 dpi and subsequently converted into a public release format at 300 dpi, stored as lossless TIFF images to preserve morphological and textural details. Each image corresponds to a single leaf and is organized in a hierarchical directory structure by species, cultivar, and acquisition year, accompanied by image-level metadata and aggregated species–cultivar–year counts. LeafScans-Orchard is suitable for plant species classification, cultivar recognition, leaf morphology analysis, texture analysis, and general visual feature extraction. In addition to the main release, a representative subset of 300 original 1200 dpi scans is provided to support high-resolution analyses. The dataset is particularly suited for fine-grained classification, morphology-driven analysis, and methodological studies under controlled imaging conditions. Full article

Triticale (×Triticosecale) is an important cereal crop in Poland, valued for its high yield potential and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses; however, fungal diseases remain a major constraint to production. This study aimed to assess the resistance and yield performance of selected winter triticale cultivars under varying levels of chemical crop protection across diverse environmental conditions. Field experiments were conducted during the 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 growing seasons at 16 locations in Poland within the framework of Post-Registration Variety Testing (PRVT). Three cultivars (Medalion, Fanfaro, and SU Atletus) were evaluated under two agrotechnical levels differing in fertilization and protection intensity. Disease severity for powdery mildew, brown rust, and septoria leaf blotch was assessed using a 9-point scale, and yield data were analyzed using four-way ANOVA and multivariate methods. The results demonstrated significant effects of management intensity, cultivar, growing season, environment as well as interactions: management intensity × environment, cultivar × environment, growing season × environment, management intensity × growing season × environment and cultivar× growing season × environment were significant for all four traits of the study. Management intensity × cultivar as well as management intensity × cultivar × environment interactions were significant for powdery mildew, brown rust and septoria leaf blotch. Management intensity × growing season interaction was significant for powdery mildew and septoria leaf blotch. Management intensity × cultivar × growing season × environment interaction was significant for powdery mildew and brown rust. The cultivar × growing season interaction was significant only for brown rust and management intensity × cultivar × growing season interaction for septoria leaf blotch. Increased protection intensity generally reduced disease severity and improved yield. Medalion exhibited the highest yield stability, whereas SU Atletus achieved the highest yields under favorable conditions but with greater variability. Fanfaro showed intermediate performance. The findings highlight the importance of cultivar selection and management intensity in optimizing triticale production and support the role of PRVT in guiding agricultural practice under variable climatic conditions. Full article

Recent hydrothermal extremes threaten soybean productivity in rainfed systems of Southeastern Europe, but single-location field datasets require cautious interpretation. This study evaluated cultivar-level soybean yield variability in large-scale rainfed field trials near Osijek, eastern Croatia, during 2020–2025 and compared the climatic context of the adverse 2024 and 2025 seasons. Grain yield, adjusted to 13% moisture, was analyzed across years and maturity groups (MGs) using ANOVA, Fisher’s LSD mean separation, ANCOVA/linear trend analysis, and exploratory climate–yield correlations. Daily station data for 2024–2025 were used to calculate extreme-temperature indices. ANOVA showed a highly significant year effect on yield (p < 0.001), whereas MG and Year × MG were not significant. Fisher’s LSD separated 2023 and 2021 as the highest-yielding years, 2024 as intermediate, and 2022 and 2025 as the lowest-yield group. ANCOVA indicated a significant negative common temporal trend (−0.155 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹; p < 0.001). Yield was positively associated with June–August precipitation (Pearson r = 0.885; n = 6). The 2024 season showed a stronger heat-related signal, whereas 2025 showed a stronger precipitation-deficit signal. The results should be interpreted within the limits of a site-specific, unbalanced field-trial dataset. Full article

Excessive chemical fertilization in maize production has reduced fertilizer-use efficiency and increased pressure on soil quality, whereas reducing fertilizer input without yield loss remains challenging. This challenge has shifted attention toward strategies that improve crop nutrient acquisition and utilization under lower fertilizer supply. Harpin protein-based enzyme complexes may provide a regulatory approach, but their field performance under reduced fertilization remains unclear. A two-year field experiment was conducted from 2023 to 2024 using two maize cultivars, Heyu236 and Fuyuan2. In 2023, the harpin protein-based enzyme complex was applied at 200-fold and 300-fold dilutions under conventional fertilization to identify effective spraying concentrations. In 2024, the same two concentrations were evaluated under conventional fertilization and 15%, 30%, and 45% fertilizer reductions. In the 2023 concentration screening trial under conventional fertilization, the enzyme complex increased kernels per ear by 5.6–9.7% and tended to increase the yield by 0.4–17.2% (not significant). In 2024, under reduced fertilization, enzyme application combined with 30% fertilizer reduction produced a stable yield response. In particular, the 300-fold dilution combined with 30% fertilizer reduction increased kernels per ear by 18.1% and 13.2% and grain yield by 16.9% and 9.5% in Fuyuan2 and Heyu 236, respectively. Soil analyses showed that the enzyme treatment mainly improved nutrient availability, as reflected by higher available P, available K, alkali-hydrolyzable N, organic matter, and available Cu, Zn, Fe, and Mn in the soil. These findings suggest that the harpin protein-based enzyme complex helped maintain maize yield under moderate fertilizer reduction by improving kernel formation and soil nutrient availability. Among the tested treatments, foliar application at 300-fold dilution combined with 30% fertilizer reduction showed the greatest potential for reducing fertilizer input while sustaining maize productivity. Full article