The current study goal is to determine the influence of some organic fertilizers over the growth and the productive qualities of the glasshouse cucmbers grown as a substrate culture. The experimental ...work was conducted in non-heated glasshouse Venlo type in Maritza VCRI Plovdiv with Defense cucumber variety (EZ). Adding Humustim to the nutrition regime of the glasshouse cucumbers increases the first quality production (99550 kg/ha).The quantity of the yield from second quality was not influenced by the use of the studied fertilizing bioproducts. The treatment with Humustim did not significantly increase the total yield in comparison with the conventional fertilization but there was considerable higher influence over the productivity among the rest of the fertilizing bioproducts. As a result of adding the organic fertilizers to the nutrition regime the percentage distribution of the production from first quality was not increased.
Maurice Mason is well documented as an accomplished amateur horticulturist and plant collector. His contributions to horticulture were recognised by his guest attendance at the Kew Guild Annual ...Dinner in 1960 and the award of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal of Honour in the same year. He was generous in sharing his plant collections, and this generosity extended to Ireland. His less well-known contribution to Irish horticulture through the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin is outlined here.
Typhonodorum lindleyanum Schott has been cultivated in the tropical greenhouses of Rotterdam Zoo since 2018. In this article the cultivation of this species is outlined with reference to its natural ...environment, including propagation from seeds, planting out in a tropical water pond, the general maintenance, flowering and proposals for further study on pollination and flower anatomy.
Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar chronicles prize-winning college student Esther Greenwood’s descent into melancholy and attempted suicide. An emerging writer, Esther sees clearly the paths ...available to her under 1950s US patriarchy: homemaker or eccentric intellectual. Each on its own is untenable, and choosing one precludes the other. The bell jar metaphor conjures a sense of confinement and suffocation, but this essay offers a multispecies reading that shows why such an interpretation is too narrow. The essay looks carefully at the bell jar, its function within her story, and the context within which Plath encountered it, namely, as a student of botany at Smith College conducting lab exercises on photosynthesis using the South African silverleaf geranium (Pelargonium sidoides). Through archival research on Plath and botanical instruction at the college, the essay shows that the bell jars Plath used were not tools of oppression. Rather, they were tools for growing plants from faraway places that require higher atmospheric humidity: technologies for making dislocated life possible. Plath’s cross-species encounters with exotic plants at the conservatory were critical to her conception of life as a woman under patriarchy—like the silverleaf geranium, living in a world not built for her.
A cadmium/zinc hyperaccumulator extracted metals from four contaminated soils over three years in a glasshouse experiment. Changes in plant metal uptake and soil total (aqua regia-extractable) and ...available metals were investigated. Plant Cd concentrations in a high-Cd acid soil and plant Zn concentrations in two acid soils decreased during repeated phytoextraction and were predicted by soil available metal concentrations. However, on repeated phytoextraction, plant Cd concentrations remained constant in lightly Cd-polluted acid soils, as did plant Cd and Zn in alkaline soils, although soil available metal concentrations decreased markedly. After phytoextraction acid soils showed much higher total metal removal efficiencies, indicating possible suitability of phytoextraction for acid soils. However, DGT-testing, which takes soil metal re-supply into consideration, showed substantial removal of available metal and distinct decreases in metal supply capacity in alkaline soils after phytoextraction, suggesting that a strategy based on lowering the bioavailable contaminant might be feasible.
Simple technologies that remove nitrate from effluents and other point discharges need to be developed to reduce pollution of receiving waters. Denitrification beds are lined containers filled with ...organic carbon (typically wood chip or coarse sawdust) and are a technology that is proving promising. Water containing NO
3
− (treated effluent or agricultural drainage) is passed through the bed and the wood chips act as an energy source for denitrifying bacteria that convert NO
3
− to N gases. There are few data on the efficiency of NO
3 removal in large-scale beds. We report here NO
3
− removal results from three large denitrification beds with volumes of 83, 294, and 1320
m
3 treating dairy shed effluent, treated domestic effluent and glasshouse effluent, respectively. Nitrate was nearly completely removed from the dairy shed effluent (annual load of 31
kg N) and domestic effluent (annual load 365
kg N). In these beds, NO
3
− removal, presumably by denitrification, was limited by NO
3
− concentration. However, the bed treating glasshouse effluent was overwhelmed by very high NO
3
− concentration (about 250
g N
m
−3) and high flow rates (about 150
m
3
d
−1) but still reduced NO
3
− concentration to about 150
g N
m
−3. For this bed, long-term NO
3
− removal was between 5 and 10
g N
m
−3 of bed material when NO
3
− was non-limiting and was similar to rates reported for other smaller denitrification beds. As expected, organic N, ammonium and phosphorus were not removed from any of the effluents following passage through the beds. Our results suggest that denitrification beds are a relatively inexpensive system to construct and operate, and are suitable for final treatment of a range of NO
3
−-laden effluents.
The impact of elevated atmospheric CO sub(2) (eCO sub(2)) on plants often includes a decrease in their nutrient status, including Ca and Mg, but the reasons for this decline have not been clearly ...identified. One of the proposed hypotheses is a decrease in transpiration-driven mass flow of nutrients due to decreased stomatal conductance. We used glasshouse and Free Air CO sub(2) Enrichment (FACE) experiments with wheat to show that, in addition to decrease in transpiration rate, eCO sub(2) decreased the concentrations of Ca and Mg in the xylem sap. This result suggests that uptake of nutrients is not only decreased by reduced transpiration-driven mass flow, but also by as yet unidentified mechanisms that lead to reduced concentrations in the xylem sap.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) was founded in 1670 and celebrated its 350th anniversary in 2020. In Edinburgh, Scotland, the institution has occupied four different sites in that time and ...has been at the current site in Inverleith since 1823. Three other gardens in Scotland are also part of RBGE: Dawyck in Peebleshire, Benmore in Argyllshire and Logan in Dumfries & Galloway. 13,750 species from 2721 genera representing 344 families are cultivated in these four gardens and this article describes some of these collections. It also describes the issues facing the Garden today in common with many large and botanic gardens, those of plant health, implementing environmentally sustainable working practices, and managing collections in the face of a changing climate and growing visitor numbers. The Garden is also planning an exciting future with ambitious plans for new buildings and the refurbishment of historical structures to not only improve plant cultivation facilities, but also to increase visitor engagement and education about the value of plants for a healthy future.
► A techno-economic model of biomass CHP for the horticultural sector is presented. ► A transferable methodology to assess economic viability is described. ► Detailed energy and CO2 supply and demand ...scenarios are presented. ► Potential CO2 reductions within the international horticultural sector are quantified.
A techno-economic modelling tool has been developed to examine the feasibility of biomass combined heat and power (CHP) technologies to provide the energy and CO2 demands of commercial horticultural glasshouses. Using the UK as a case study, energy and CO2 demands of candidate glasshouse installations on an hourly basis are established using both measured and benchmark datasets. Modelled electrical and thermal generation profiles for a number of commercially available small-scale biomass CHP systems of rated outputs of 0.1–5MWe are also derived, and the results of their application within the modelling tool to carry out multi-parametric techno-economic analyses for various operational scenarios are presented. The impacts of both capital grant and generation tariff-based support mechanisms upon economic feasibility are investigated, along with that of variations in feedstock fuel prices. Net CO2 reductions accruing from the implementation of biomass CHP are also assessed. Finally, technical options, marginal costs and sale tariffs for CO2 recovery and supply are evaluated for specific scenarios. The results indicate that feasibility is very sensitive to the relationship between specific biomass CHP power:heat ratios and their match with glasshouse temporal electrical and thermal energy demand profiles, along with economic factors such as specific levels of capital and tariff-based support. With the utilisation of currently available financial support mechanisms, biomass CHP offers significant promise for realising economically viable significant CO2 emission reductions in this sector.
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