Darwin Weather Web Available

The Living Water Smart program now has available a collection of weather stations for Darwin and Katherine, displaying up to date weather data suitable for adjusting the irrigation controller on your premises to minimise water use for irrigation of gardens.

Go to the www.livingwatersmart.com.au web site and search for the Darwin weather web.  A bit convoluted to find, but if in Darwin your suburb will be covered by the system, if not now, coming very soon. Some areas may offer a choice of a site nearer than your suburb name, as the system is based on school locations.

They recommend 30mm of rain or irrigation per week as adequate.  Others might suggest more or less, but a definite improvement over the often stupid option of letting the system run as it wants.

Save water, save money and improve your garden by using a suitable amount of water - often by adding no irrigation for the wet season period of November to April, but caution that for 2019/20 with a late wet season likely, you might need to keep up irrigation for a while longer, except for periods after storms.

Find the site and use it........save water and $$!

Hot in the NT !

October and November are normally the hottest months in the north, but this year it seems to be that little bit hotter.  It is certainly drier, and the BOM is predicting only about a 20% chance of recording the median rainfall through the end of December [ even for Darwin], lower for Katherine [see BOM data for Tindal].

With Katherine having now had the longest "over 40C days run" ever recorded, and still counting, there is a move to curtail outdoor rural work particularly.  

Katherine has recorded 14 days in a row with daily maximum temperature over 40C!

Frankly, it is HOT!

Processed Coal Ash Waste Used to Cure Concrete

Rising from coal ash waste to cure concrete

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A by-product of coal-fired power plants is the tens of millions of tons of coal ash that ends up in landfills each year. Now researchers from Drexel University, the National Institute of Standards  and Technology [UK] and the University of Antwerp have developed a way to turn this waste ash into a lightweight aggregate that can speed up the curing process for concrete and make it more durable and crack-free. Their discovery was recently reported in the journal Cement and Concrete Composites.

Concrete is made from a mixture of fine powder and coarse rock particles, called aggregates, bonded by a mineral glue called a ‘cementing matrix’ made of cement and water. The aggregates form the strong internal structure of the concrete as the cementing matrix hardens to bind the ingredients together in a process called curing. For concrete to reach its maximum durability, the cement must mix thoroughly with water during the curing process so it all dries — and cures — at the same time.

“This is a very important part of the process because if the concrete dries too quickly during its curing, due to added water shortage, it can form cracks and other flaws. These drying shrinkage cracks cause the surface to be susceptible to aggressive fluid ingress, creating concrete durability problems such as corrosion, salt damage or freeze-thaw damage,” said Yaghoob Farnam, PhD, an assistant professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering and principal investigator of the research.

To ensure even curing there are a number of things concrete contractors might have to do, including constantly spraying the concrete, covering it with a membrane to keep it moist, submerging it in water or creating pools of water on its surface. All of these strategies consume time and resources and are complex enough that flaws could creep into the process. To help prevent this, in the last decade researchers have developed an internal curing concept that uses porous lightweight aggregate to aid the curing process. The aggregate can maintain a consistent level of moisture inside the concrete to help it cure evenly from the inside out.

“The solution we came up with involved recycling this waste product, coal ash, into a porous, lightweight aggregate with excellent performance characteristics that could be produced at a lower cost than current natural and synthetic options,” Farnam said. “This material and process would not only benefit the concrete industry by improving the quality of their products, but it could also help keep coal ash out of landfills.”

The material the researchers came up with is called ‘spherical porous reactive aggregate’ — SPoRA for short. It is made by combining the ash with chemicals that facilitate aggregate sintering and bonding, forming them into tiny spheres and then baking them at 1160°C for a few minutes.

The end product is an aggregate pellet that can hold almost half its weight in water, which is better than traditional lightweight aggregates. And, as importantly, it can release that water at a regular rate from inside to the cementing matrix as it cures.

In the paper they report that two types of SPoRA perform better than some traditional lightweight aggregate materials — shale, clay and slate, and foamed glass — on measurements of shape, porousness, relative weight, and ability to absorb and release water. These are all key metrics related to its ability to integrate with the cement mixture and release its moisture at the right time and in the right part of the structure as it forms.

“As the concrete begins to cure on the outside, the aggregate pellets are also releasing their moisture to help it cure from the inside out as well,” said Mohammad Balapour, a doctoral researcher in Farnam’s lab and lead author of the paper. “This approach can help to maximise the durability of the concrete. And the SPoRA-making process is simple enough to produce aggregates of any size and water capacity, so we believe it could be used for a number of applications in the construction industry.”

Recycling a waste product like coal ash not only reduces the cost of making lightweight aggregate, it also ensures that concrete producers will have access to it.

Image credit: Drexel University.

If this really is a new concept that works it promises a lot, both in better materials and environmental benefits.  A lot of coal ash is produced each year!

Can We Double Sorghum Yield?

Doubling sorghum yields may now seem a pipe dream, but recent genetic research may make that goal a reality.  And reasonably soon as well.

This is especially relevant in tropical regions where achieving high sorghum yields is constrained by less suitable varieties as well as weather conditions.

See below for a recent USDA publicity announcement.

Certainly seems promising.

If combined with genetic work that prolongs production and grain fill during senesence it seems sorghum could get a big yield boost.

sorghum crop

USDA-ARS and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Research Probe Ways to Increase Yields of Sorghum—and Other Crops

By Dennis O'Brien November 6, 2019

Scientists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) are working on field trials and genetic studies that could one day double the yields of sorghum, which is one of the world's most important sources of food, animal feed and biofuel.

 The efforts follow recent discoveries by ARS scientist Zhanguo Xin, who is based in Lubbock, Texas, and Doreen Ware, who is also with ARS and is an adjunct professor at CSHL, showing how a basic genetic change in sorghum can double its yield of grain.

Their findings, spelled out in a series of papers, are based on years of research by scientists with ARS and CSHL that initially focused on a search for the genetic underpinnings of high yielding strains of sorghum that were first developed by Xin at the ARS Cropping Systems Research Laboratory in Lubbock. They also lay out a potential strategy for increasing the yields not only of sorghum but of other grain crops, such as corn, wheat and rice.

Sorghum is drought tolerant, is an important crop for farmers worldwide and increasing production is considered a key to addressing the threat of food shortages in the years ahead with changing climates, growing populations overseas and the loss of arable land in many parts of the world.

Sorghum grain is produced in clusters of flowers and the plant has two types of flowers, one type that produces grain and another that does not. The researchers have shown in a series of published reports that mutating a key gene in sorghum inhibits production of a hormone, known as jasmonic acid, and that plants with reduced levels generate more of the fertile type of flowers -- and more grain.

Their results show that the gene, known as MSD1, is a major regulator of a cascading series of events along a genetic pathway that controls the production of jasmonic acid, particularly during flower development. They identified the role of MSD1 in a paper published last year in Nature Communications. Their subsequent papers in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences show that genes they have identified as MSD2 and MSD3 also play important roles further along in the genetic pathway and that mutating of any one of the three genes causes a similar increase in grain yield. Their most recent paper can be found here.

Xin and his colleagues are conducting field trials to see if the genes they have found could be used by breeders to improve yields in commercial varieties of sorghum.

The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. Each dollar invested in agricultural research results in $20 of economic impact.

Zoysia Seed to be Available in Australia Again - Soon

USA suppliers have been unable to supply zoysia seed to Australia for some time, due to supply and availability issues in the USA as well as cleaning difficulties to meet Australian biosecurity requirements.

Recent information is trending positively and fresh quality seed may be available shortly.

At this time dates and pricing not confirmed, but there are hopes it will be later in November 2019.

There is some seed on offer but it is at least a year old and due to pretreatment that is applied to zoysia seed, germination has declined to a level we think is unsuitable for tropical warm /hot conditions , that is..... vigour is lower, which may be an issue in tough conditions.  We prefer to offer more suitable seed to users / clients.

More information as details firm up.

zoysia used in centre median - low maintenance

GM Can Do Wonders with Food Crops

Some recent information provides even more success stories in yield increases in major crops using modern options in genetic modification.

Example 1

New genetically modified corn produces up to 10% more than similar types
Science - 04 November 2019
Researchers have for the first time conclusively shown they can increase corn yields up to 10% by changing a gene that increases plant growth—regardless of whether growing conditions are poor or optimal. …researchers at Corteva Agriscience, a chemical and seed company based in Wilmington, Delaware, decided to look at genes that function like master switches for growth and yield. They picked MADS-box genes, a group common in many plants, before settling on one (zmm28) to alter in corn plants. The researchers tested the enhanced gene’s performance in 48 commercial types of corn, known as hybrids, that are commonly used to feed livestock and found yield increases ranging from 3-10% with the findings published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Example 2.

Researchers Use Gene Modification to Defeat Rice-Killing Disease
Karma Impact - 31 October 2019
Researchers successfully edited the genome of strains of rice grown in Southeast Asia and West Africa to block a pathogen [bacterial blight] that ravages yields of the staple crop, the latest example of gene modification that may reduce hunger throughout the world.Scientists at Manila’s International Rice Research Institute used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to prevent rice from expressing genes that serve as Xoo’s point of entry to hijack the plant’s nutrients, according to Nature. The team found that rice plants with these engineered genes were resistant to at least 95 Xoo strains.

Both crops are major food sources world wide, and using GM techniques can add big increases in yield quite quickly.

Another "biggie" is Vitamin A enhanced rice - and Bangladesh seems likely to approve its use very soon.

Example 3

Bangladesh close to releasing Golden Rice
Dhaka Tribune – 28 October 2019
Bangladesh will soon make a decision on the release of Golden Rice. According to the WHO one in every five pre-school children and 23.7% of pregnant women suffer from vitamin A deficiency in Bangladesh.