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In Egypt, the improvement of degraded soils is considered as an important issue in the agricultural security program. Large amounts of sugar industrial wastes such as sugar lime mud is producing annually causing some issues to the environment if not exploited. So, a pot trial was carried out to evaluate the influence of some soil amendments on enhancing some chemical and physical characteristics of some degraded soils of Egypt. Three soil types (saline, sandy and sodic soils) were used and treated with three soil amendments i.e. compost, agricultural gypsum and sugar beet mud which were applied to the three studied soils (two weeks before sowing) at three rates (0.5, 1 and 1.5%, equivalent to 2.5, 5 and 7.5 g pot-1 , respectively) and moisted after addition to the saturation limit. Soils were cultivated with barley. At the end of the trail, undisturbed soil samples were taken from each treatment .The findings show that barley seeds did not succeed in germination under sodic soil conditions, while seeds succeed in germination under saline and sandy soils. Generally, soil addition of all studied amendments at all rates pronouncedly improved all studied chemical and physical characteristics of saline, sandy and sodic soils compared to control treatment (without soil addition), but the improvement increased with the increase of adding rate of all soil amendments under study, where the best values were recorded due to the soil addition rate of 1.5% followed by 1% and 0.5%, respectively for all soil characteristics. Also, the results confirm that sugar beet mud as a new soil amendment in Egypt is beneficial for improving degraded soils due to its high content from organic matter and calcium.

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Magnesium (Mg) is the most essential element constituent in chlorophyll molecules that regulates photosynthesis processes. The physiological response of ‘Superior Seedless’ grapes was evaluated under different foliar magnesium fertilization such as sulfate magnesium (MgSO4·7 H2O), magnesium disodium EDTA (Mg-EDTA), and magnesium nanoparticles (Mg-NPs) during the berry development stages (flowering, fruit set, veraison, and harvest). In general, the ‘Superior Seedless’ vine had a higher performance in photosynthesis with Mg-NPs application than other forms. The Fy/Fm ratio declined rapidly after the fruit set stage; then, it decreased gradually up until the harvesting stage. However, both MgSO4 and Mg-EDTA forms showed slight differences in Fv/Fm ratio during the berry development stages. The outcomes of this research suggest that the Fv/Fm ratio during the growth season of the ‘Superior Seedless’ vine may be a good tool to assess magnesium fertilization effects before visible deficiency symptoms appear. Mg-NPs are more effective at improving ‘Superior Seedless’ berry development than the other magnesium forms. These findings suggest that applying foliar Mg-NPs to vines grown on salinity-sandy soil alleviates the potential Mg deficiency in ‘Superior Seedless’ vines and improves bunches quality.

The purpose of this research was to replace the term of "Agricultural Wastes" by the term "Agricultural By-products", since waste is a word indicates to a material useless that usually cannot be recycled or reused again. However, agricultural by-products are not only important in the agricultural field, but also important for the production of wharf, black coal, fuel and others. The usage of agricultural by-products become of important concern in the field of fertilization through composting such as agricultural by-products beside of reclamation of the desert soils which suffer from their low organic matter content. Furthermore, organic by-product can be used for mulshing which can reduce of loss of water by evapotranspiration. Moreover, tendency, towards organic agriculture and sustainable became agriculture amecessty to maintain soils fertility, safety, health and consequently the agricultural environment.

Potato is considered strategic vegetable crop in the entire world. So, two field experiments were conducted in the experimental farm, Faculty of Agriculture, Mansoura University to study the effect of organic fertilization and foliar application with potassium (K) as well as rates of K soil fertilization and their interaction on vegetative growth (plant height, No of leaves/plant, fresh and dry weight), leaves chemical composition (Chlorophyll a, b, a+b, N, P and K), tuber yield (plant yield, No. of tuber/plant and total tuber yield) and its quality (TSS, reducing, non reducing, total sugar, vitamin C, starch and protein). The experiment was conducted in strip split plot design including 12 treatments i.e. 2 organic applications (compost and vermicompost), 2 foliar applications (tap water as a control and K at 2%) and three rates of K soil applications (120, 165 and 214 kg K 2 O/hectare). The obtained results clarified that using compost and foliar application with K at 2% as well 165 kg K 2 O/ha significantly increased leaves chemical contents and tuber quality, while using vermicompost and foliar application with K at 2% plus 165 kg K 2 O/ha gave the highest values of potato growth parameters and yield. Thus, it can be recommended that using compost or vermicompost at 9.5 and 7 ton/ ha and foliar application with K at 2% as well 165 kg K 2 O/ha that gave the highest net return and improve quality of potato tubers.

The present work studied the effect of foliar spray of different concentrations of titanium (Ti, applied as titanium dioxide) and vanadium (V, applied as vanadium pentoxide) on growth, chemical composition, antioxidant contents, antioxidant enzymes, antioxidant capacity, yield and quality criteria of red cabbage plants. For this purpose, 2.0, 4.0 and 6.0 mg L−1 of Ti and V were used to treat red cabbage plants. The control plants were treated with tap water. Our results showed that plants treated with 4.0 mg L−1 of Ti recorded the highest values of plant growth and bioactive compounds, while antioxidant capacity was decreased compared to the other treatments. In addition, plants treated with Ti and V at 2.0 and 4.0 mg L−1, respectively, showed higher values of all of the growth, yield, non-enzymatic antioxidants and antioxidants enzymes’ parameters compared to the untreated plants. Based on the obtained results, it could be concluded that the low concentrations of both Ti and V (2.0 and 4.0 mg L−1) were able to enhance red cabbage growth and yield, as well as the antioxidant contents, enzymes and capacity.