-The choice of cultivation system in arable agriculture exerts a strong influence not only on soil health and crop productivity but also on the wider environment. Conservation tillage using non-inversion methods conserves soil carbon, reduces erosion risk and enhances soil quality. In addition, conservation tillage has been shown to sequester more carbon within the soil than inversion tillage, reducing carbon dioxide losses to the atmosphere. Stable, well structured topsoils that develop following long-term conservation tillage lead to more energy efficient systems due to the reduced power requirements for cultivation. Long-term experiments, e.g. more than 20 years, that confirm the impact of conservation tillage over an extended period are not common. Here we evaluate the impact of different tillage methods and winter wheat straw management, either incorporated or removed, on organic matter turnover and soil quality indicators. No-till, chisel and mouldboard ploughing was carried out for 23 years on a silty clay loam soil in South West England that was not considered suitable for non-inversion tillage due to weak soil structure. In order to assess the effect of contrasting cultivation and straw disposal method on soil carbon dynamics, a range of assays were conducted, including water extractable organic carbon, hot water extractable carbohydrate, microbial biomass carbon, activity of β-glucosidase and acid phosphatase enzymes, C sequestration and the natural abundance of 13 C. Our results show that the soil organic carbon concentration in the topsoil was greater under no-till than mouldboard ploughing, while a reverse trend was observed in the lower depths. A 14-17% increase in soil organic carbon was observed in the topsoil for chisel plough and no-till treatments compared to mouldboard ploughing. Water extractable organic carbon was found to constitute only 1-7% of the microbial biomass carbon. Hot water extractable carbohydrate was one of the most sensitive indicators of soil quality and had a significant a negative correlation with bulk density and positive correlation with soil organic carbon microbial biomass carbon β-glucosidase and acid phosphatase. The choice of cultivation method exerted a major control on microbial and carbon dynamics. No-till and chisel ploughing maintained carbon in the soil surface horizons, which will benefit the stability of this weakly structured soil, but mouldboard ploughing distributed carbon more uniformly throughout the soil profile, particularly when straw was incorporated, hence leading to the retention of more carbon in the soil profile. soil quality / carbon sequestration / tillage / straw management / winter wheat
Delivering radiation therapy in an oncology setting is a high-risk process where system failures are more likely to occur because of increasing utilization, complexity, and sophistication of the equipment and related processes. Healthcare failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a method used to proactively detect risks to the patient in a particular healthcare process and correct potential errors before adverse events occur. FMEA is a systematic, multidisciplinary team-based approach to error prevention and enhancing patient safety. We describe our experience of using FMEA as a prospective risk-management technique in radiation oncology at a national network of oncology hospitals in the United States, capitalizing not only on the use of a team-based tool but also creating momentum across a network of collaborative facilities seeking to learn from and share best practices with each other. The major steps of our analysis across 4 sites and collectively were: choosing the process and subprocesses to be studied, assembling a multidisciplinary team at each site responsible for conducting the hazard analysis, and developing and implementing actions related to our findings. We identified 5 areas of performance improvement for which risk-reducing actions were successfully implemented across our enterprise.
The incorporation of new sophisticated phenotyping technologies within a crop improvement program allows for a plant breeding strategy that can include selections for major root traits previously inaccessible due to the challenges in their phenotype assessment. High-throughput precision phenotyping technology is employed to evaluate root ontogeny and progressive changes to root architecture of both novel amphiploid and introgression lines of Festulolium over four consecutive months of the growing season and these compared under the same time frame to that of closely related perennial ryegrass (L. perenne) varieties. Root imaging using conventional photography and assembled multiple merged images was used to compare frequencies in root number, their distribution within 0-20 and 20-40 cm depths within soil columns, and progressive changes over time. The Festulolium hybrids had more extensive root systems in comparison with L. perenne, and this was especially evident at depth. It was shown that the acquisition of extensive root systems in Festulolium hybrids was not dependent on the presence of an entire Festuca genome. On the contrary, the most pronounced effect on root development within the four Festulolium populations studied was observed in the introgression line Bx509, where a single small genome sequence from F. arundinacea had been previously transferred onto its homoeologous site on the long arm of chromosome 3 of an otherwise complete L. perenne genome. This demonstrates that a targeted introgression-breeding approach may be sufficient to confer a significant improvement in the root morphology in Lolium without a significant compromise to its genome integrity. The forage production of Bx509 was either higher (months 1-3) or equivalent to (month 4) that of its L. perenne parent control demonstrating that the enhanced root development achieved by the introgression line was without compromise to its agronomic performance.
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