Sowing

About: Sowing is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 33888 publications have been published within this topic receiving 273438 citations. The topic is also known as: seeding.

Management of wheat and barley root diseases in modern farming systems

Abstract: Root diseases, namely take-all and Rhizoctonia, Pythium and Fusarium root rots, are so widespread and occur so uniformly within fields of wheat and barley in the US Pacific Northwest (PNW) that we have come to accept these crops with these diseases as normal ‘healthy’ crops The main reasons for the expanding range and increasing prevalence of root diseases on wheat and barley in this and many other cereal-growing areas of the world are two-fold: increased frequency of cereals in the rotation and the use of less, or no, tillage Both trends are here to stay because of their economic advantages and environmental benefits Managing these diseases in these modern farming systems is no small challenge since, unlike most leaf diseases of these crops, all cultivars of wheat and barley are more or less equally susceptible to all four root diseases Through a combination of cultural practices, the severity of these diseases can at least be limited to ‘chronic’, while ‘acute’ outbreaks or what growers call ‘wrecks’, are relatively rare These practices are timely and effective management of volunteer and grass weed hosts before planting; placement of fertiliser, especially phosphorus, beneath the seed within easy access of diseased roots; soil disturbance below the seed; trash removal from within the seed row; pairing the row for a more open canopy to favour warming and drying of soil beneath the crop residue; and the use of fresh seed and treatment of the seed with a combination of fungicides for improved seedling vigour No equivalent effort has been made in any other crop to manage a disease complex without the benefit of host plant resistance In spite of this, these practices, together with take-all decline, only elevate yields to about 80% of the potential as revealed by fumigated (methyl bromide) check plots Future research must concentrate on the development of host plant resistance, including host plant resistance with transgenes

Effect of seed priming and micro-dosing of fertilizer on sorghum and pearl millet in western sudan

Abstract: The effect of seed priming and micro-dosing (the application of small amounts of mineral fertilizers) was studied in sorghum and pearl millet in on-station and on-farm experiments for three seasons under rainfed conditions in the North Kordofan State, western Sudan. Seed priming consists of soaking the seeds for eight hours in water prior to sowing. Seed priming increased sorghum grain yield in the on-station experiments across three seasons from 482 kg ha −1 to 807 kg ha −1 . Micro-dosing of 0.3 g, 0.6 g and 0.9 g NPK fertilizer (17-17-17) per pocket increased sorghum grain yield by 50.4, 68.8 and 109.7% respectively compared to the control. Seed priming did not significantly increase pearl millet yield while the micro-doses of 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 g fertilizer increased millet yield by 31.3, 30.7 and 47% respectively. On-farm seed priming increased sorghum yields by 32.6% while seed priming plus 0.3 g fertilizer increased yields by 69.5%. For millet, the corresponding yields increased by 29.8% and 71% respectively. Fertilizer use efficiency for both crops increased remarkably with seed priming, although this effect was more apparent in sorghum than in millet. In sorghum, seed priming and the application of 0.9 g fertilizer per pocket increased the gross margin from 49.5 to 206.5 US$/ha. For millet, the gross margin increased from 44.9 in the control to 90.0 US$/ha with the combination of seed priming and 0.3 g fertilizer per pocket. These technologies are simple to apply; they offer low financial cost and low risk and are affordable for resource-poor farmers.