Field evaluation of 64 rootstocks for growth and yield of 'Kensington Pride' mango

Despite an abundance of polyembryonic genotypes and the need for rootstocks that improve scion yield and productivity, simultaneous field testing of a wide range of mango (Mangifera indica L.) genotypes as rootstocks has not previously been reported. In this experiment, we examined the growth and yield of 'Kensington Pride' on 64 mango genotypes of diverse origin during the first four seasons of fruit production to identify those worth longer-term assessment. We also recorded morphological characteristics of seedlings of 46 of these genotypes in an attempt to relate these measures to subsequent field performance. Tree canopy development on the most vigorous rootstocks was almost double that on the least vigorous. Growth rates differed by more than 160%. Cumulative marketable yield ranged from 36 kg/tree for the lowest yielding rootstock to 181 kg/tree for the most productive. Yield efficiency also differed markedly among the 64 rootstocks with the best treatment being 3.5 times more efficient than the poorest treatment. No relationship was found between yield efficiency and tree size, suggesting it is possible to select highly efficient rootstocks of differing vigor. Two genotypes ('Brodie' and 'MYP') stood out as providing high yield efficiency with small tree size. A further two genotypes ('B' and 'Watertank') were identified as offering high yield efficiency and large tree size and should provide high early yields at traditional tree spacing. Efforts to relate the morphology of different genotype seedlings to subsequent performance as a rootstock showed that nursery performance of mango seedlings is no indication of their likely behavior as a rootstock. The economic cost of poor yields and low yield efficiencies during the early years of commercial orchard production provide a rationale for culling many of the rootstock treatments in this experiment and concentrating future assessment on the top ~20% of the 64 treatments. Of these, 'MYP', 'B', 'Watertank', 'Manzano', and 'Pancho' currently show the most promise.

Growing banana prawns in prawn farm settlement ponds to utilise and help remove waste nutrients.

To assess their utility for profitable wastewater bioremediation, banana prawns, Penaeus (Fenneropenaeus) merguiensis (de Man), were stocked at low densities (1 – 5 m-2) and grown without supplemental feeding in five commercial-prawn-farm settlement ponds (0.3 to 6.0 ha). The prawns free-ranged in the variously designed ponds for 160 to 212 days after stocking as PL15. Survival estimates ranged from 12% to 60% with production of 50 – 528 kg ha-1. Over 1150 kg of marketable product was produced in the study. Exceptional growth was monitored at one farm where prawns reached an average size of 17g in 80 days. Nutrients in water flowing into (8 - 40 ML d-1) and out of the settlement pond at that farm were assessed twice weekly along with routine water quality measurements. Only small differences in water qualities were detected between waters running into and out of this settlement pond. Total nitrogen levels gradually increased from 1 - 1.5 mg L-1 early in the season to over 3 mg L-1 towards the end of the season. Total phosphorus levels similarly rose from 0.1 - 0.2 mg L-1 to 0.3 - 0.4 mg L-1 in the middle of the season, but fell to 0.2 – 0.3 mg L-1 towards the end when approximately 12,000 prawns were harvested with a total weight of 175 kg. No significant differences (P > 0.05) were detected in the overall acceptability of prawns harvested from each of the 5 settlement ponds in small-scale consumer sensory analyses. The prawns from settlement ponds were rated similarly to banana prawns grown with commercial diets at two other establishments. Microbiological analyses of prawns from all farms showed bacterial levels to be well within food-grade standards and lower than prawns produced in a normal growout pond. These results demonstrate that high quality food grade banana prawns can be produced in these wastewater treatment systems.

Wood properties and processing outcomes for plantation grown African mahogany (Khaya senegalensis) trees from Clare, Queensland (18 and 20 year-old trees) and Katherine, Northern Territory (14 year-old trees).

Khaya senegalensis, African mahogany, a high-value hardwood, was introduced in the Northern Territory (NT) in the 1950s; included in various trials there and at Weipa, Q in the 1960s-1970s; planted on ex mine sites at Weipa (160 ha) until 1985; revived in farm plantings in Queensland and in trials in the NT in the 1990s; adopted for large-scale, annual planting in the Douglas-Daly region, NT from 2006 and is to have the planted area in the NT extended to at least 20,000 ha. The recent serious interest from plantation growers, including Forest Enterprises Australia Ltd (FEA), has seen the establishment of some large scale commercial plantations. FEA initiated the current study to process relatively young plantation stands from both Northern Territory and Queensland plantations to investigate the sawn wood and veneer recovery and quality from trees ranging from 14 years (NT – 36 trees) to 18-20 years (North Queensland – 31 trees). Field measures of tree size and straightness were complemented with log end splitting assessment and cross-sectional disc sample collection for laboratory wood properties measurements including colour and shrinkage. End-splitting scores assessed on sawn logs were relatively low compared to fast grown plantation eucalypts and did not impact processing negatively. Heartwood proportion in individual trees ranged from 50% up to 92 % of butt cross-sectional disc area for the visually-assessed dark coloured central heartwood and lighter coloured transition wood combined. Dark central heartwood proportion was positively related to tree size (R2 = 0.57). Chemical tests failed to assist in determining heartwood – sapwood boundary. Mean basic density of whole disc samples was 658 kg/m3 and ranged among trees from 603 to 712 kg/m3. When freshly sawn, the heartwood of African mahogany was orange-red to red. Transition wood appeared to be pinkish and the sapwood was a pale yellow colour. Once air dried the heartwood colour generally darkens to pinkish-brown or orange-brown and the effect of prolonged time and sun exposure is to darken and change the heartwood to a red-brown colour. A portable colour measurement spectrophotometer was used to objectively assess colour variation in CIE L*, a* and b* values over time with drying and exposure to sunlight. Capacity to predict standard colour values accurately after varying periods of direct sunlight exposure using results obtained on initial air-dried surfaces decreased with increasing time to sun exposure. The predictions are more accurate for L* values which represent brightness than for variation in the a* values (red spectrum). Selection of superior breeding trees for colour is likely to be based on dried samples exposed to sunlight to reliably highlight wood colour differences. A generally low ratio between tangential and radial shrinkages was found, which was reflected in a low incidence of board distortion (particularly cupping) during drying. A preliminary experiment was carried out to investigate the quality of NIR models to predict shrinkage and density. NIR spectra correlated reasonably well with radial shrinkage and air dried density. When calibration models were applied to their validation sets, radial shrinkage was predicted to an accuracy of 76% with Standard Error of Prediction of 0.21%. There was also a strong predictive power for wood density. These are encouraging results suggesting that NIR spectroscopy has good potential to be used as a non-destructive method to predict shrinkage and wood density using 12mm diameter increment core samples. Average green off saw recovery was 49.5% (range 40 to 69%) for Burdekin Agricultural College (BAC) logs and 41.9% (range 20 to 61%) for Katherine (NT) logs. These figures are about 10% higher than compared to 30-year-old Khaya study by Armstrong et al. (2007) however they are inflated as the green boards were not docked to remove wane prior to being tallied. Of the recovered sawn, dried and dressed volume from the BAC logs, based on the cambial face of boards, 27% could potentially be used for select grade, 40% for medium feature grade and 26% for high feature grades. The heart faces had a slightly higher recovery of select (30%) and medium feature (43%) grade boards with a reduction in the volume of high feature (22%) and reject (6%) grade boards. Distribution of board grades for the NT site aged 14 years followed very similar trends to those of the BAC site boards with an average (between facial and cambial face) 27% could potentially be used for select grade, 42% for medium feature grade, 26% for high feature grade and 5% reject. Relatively to some other subtropical eucalypts, there was a low incidence of borer attack. The major grade limiting defects for both medium and high feature grade boards recovered from the BAC site were knots and wane. The presence of large knots may reflect both management practices and the nature of the genetic material at the site. This stand was not managed for timber production with a very late pruning implemented at about age 12 years. The large amount of wane affected boards is indicative of logs with a large taper and the presence of significant sweep. Wane, knots and skip were the major grade limiting defects for the NT site reflecting considerable amounts of sweep with large taper as might be expected in younger trees. The green veneer recovered from billets of seven Khaya trees rotary peeled on a spindleless lathe produced a recovery of 83% of green billet volume. Dried veneer recovery ranged from 40 to 74 % per billet with an average of 64%. All of the recovered grades were suitable for use in structural ply in accordance to AS/NZ 2269: 2008. The majority of veneer sheets recovered from all billets was C grade (27%) with 20% making D grade and 13% B grade. Total dry sliced veneer recovery from the logs of the two largest logs from each location was estimated to be 41.1%. Very positive results have been recorded in this small scale study. The amount of colour development observed and the very reasonable recoveries of both sawn and veneer products, with a good representation of higher grades in the product distribution, is encouraging. The prospects for significant improvement in these results from well managed and productive stands grown for high quality timber should be high. Additionally, the study has shown the utility of non-destructive evaluation techniques for use in tree improvement programs to improve the quality of future plantations. A few trees combined several of the traits desired of individuals for a first breeding population. Fortunately, the two most promising trees (32, 19) had already been selected for breeding on external traits, and grafts of them are established in the seed orchard.

Stochastic model for simulating maize yield

Maize is one of the most important crops in the world. The products generated from this crop are largely used in the starch industry, the animal and human nutrition sector, and biomass energy production and refineries. For these reasons, there is much interest in figuring the potential grain yield of maize genotypes in relation to the environment in which they will be grown, as the productivity directly affects agribusiness or farm profitability. Questions like these can be investigated with ecophysiological crop models, which can be organized according to different philosophies and structures. The main objective of this work is to conceptualize a stochastic model for predicting maize grain yield and productivity under different conditions of water supply while considering the uncertainties of daily climate data. Therefore, one focus is to explain the model construction in detail, and the other is to present some results in light of the philosophy adopted. A deterministic model was built as the basis for the stochastic model. The former performed well in terms of the curve shape of the above-ground dry matter over time as well as the grain yield under full and moderate water deficit conditions. Through the use of a triangular distribution for the harvest index and a bivariate normal distribution of the averaged daily solar radiation and air temperature, the stochastic model satisfactorily simulated grain productivity, i.e., it was found that 10,604 kg ha(-1) is the most likely grain productivity, very similar to the productivity simulated by the deterministic model and for the real conditions based on a field experiment. © 2012 American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

Effect of added nitrogen on plant litter decomposition depends on initial soil carbon and nitrogen stoichiometry

Increasing organic carbon inputs to agricultural soils through the use of pastures or crop residues has been suggested as a means of restoring soil organic carbon lost via anthropogenic activities, such as land use change. However, the decomposition and retention of different plant residues in soil, and how these processes are affected by soil properties and nitrogen fertiliser application, is not fully understood. We evaluated the rate and extent of decomposition of 13C-pulse labelled plant material in response to nitrogen addition in four pasture soils of varying physico-chemical characteristics. Microbial respiration of buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris L.), wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) residues was monitored over 365-days. A double exponential model fitted to the data suggested that microbial respiration occurred as an early rapid and a late slow stage. A weighted three-compartment mixing model estimated the decomposition of both soluble and insoluble plant 13C (mg C kg−1 soil). Total plant material decomposition followed the alkyl C: O-alkyl C ratio of plant material, as determined by solid-state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Urea-N addition increased the decomposition of insoluble plant 13C in some soils (≤0.1% total nitrogen) but not others (0.3% total nitrogen). Principal components regression analysis indicated that 26% of the variability of plant material decomposition was explained by soil physico-chemical characteristics (P = 0.001), which was primarily described by the C:N ratio. We conclude that plant species with increasing alkyl C: O-alkyl C ratio are better retained as soil organic matter, and that the C:N stoichiometry of soils determines whether N addition leads to increases in soil organic carbon stocks.