Conservation agricultural practices for minimizing ammonia volatilization and maximizing wheat productivity

A large amount of ammonia volatilization from the agricultural system causes environmental problems and increases production costs. Conservation agriculture has emerged as an alternate and sustainable crop production system. Therefore, in the present study, ammonia losses from different agricultural practices were evaluated for the wheat crop under different tillage practices. The results of the present study showed that the cumulative emission of ammonia flux from the wheat field varied from 6.23 to 24.00 kg ha^-1 (P ≤ 0.05) in conservation tillage (CA) and 7.03 to 26.58 kg ha^-1 (P ≤ 0.05) in conventional tillage (CT) among different treatments. Application of basal 80% nitrogen resulted in the highest ammonia flux in conventional and conservation tillage practices. The ammonia volatilization followed the following trend: urea super granules with band placement > neem-coated urea with band placement > neem-coated urea with broadcast before irrigation > neem-coated urea with broadcast after irrigation > slow-release N fertilizer (urea stabilized with DCD and N(n-butyl)thiophosphoric triamide) with band placement. The conservation agricultural practices involving conservation tillage appear to be a sustainable approach for minimizing ammonia volatilization and improving wheat productivity.

A novel hybrid construction of MnMoO4 nanorods anchored graphene nanosheets; an efficient electrocatalyst for the picomolar detection of ecological pollutant ornidazole in water and urine samples

Nitroimidazole compounds are widely used antibiotics to encounter anaerobic bacterial and parasitic infections. The wide usage of antibiotic drugs became an ecological contaminant which in turn into potential monitoring. In this regards, we have designed and developed a new electrochemical sensing probe to monitor an antiprotozoal drug, ornidazole (ODZ), with the aid of a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) integrated with manganese molybdate nanorods (MnMoO₄) decorated graphene nanosheets (GNS) hybrid materials that prepared by feasible probe sonochemical method (parameters: 2-4 W, 5 mV amp, 20 kHz). The electrochemical investigations of the developed probe were performed by using rapid scan electrochemical workstations namely cyclic voltammetry (CV) and amperometric (i-t) techniques. The as-prepared MnMoO₄/GNS nanocomposite was characterized and its purity of nanocomposite formation was confirmed by various analytical techniques like X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and Raman spectroscopy. In addition to that, the textural morphology of the MnMoO₄/GNS nanocomposite was examined with the aid of field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM). The MnMoO₄/GNS nanocomposite rotating disk glassy carbon electrode (RDGCE) plays a crucial role in electrochemical detection of ODZ, which results in excellent anti-interference ability, a lower detection limit of 845 pM, massive linear ranges from 10 to 770 nM, and good sensitivity of about 104.62 μA μM^-1 cm^-2. From the acquired electrochemical studies, we have developed a disposable electrochemical sensor probe using a low-cost screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE) with MnMoO₄/GNS nanocomposite. The MnMoO₄/GNS/SPCE are capably employed in real-time sensing of ODZ in water and urine samples. These electrochemical studies revealed the integral new vision on the electrocatalytic performance of the modified SPCE and also shown excellent amplification results in ultra-trace levels.