Free Soil Research Articles

Antagonistic potential of some phosphate solubilizing fungi against some phyto-pathogenic fungi

BackgroundLittle phosphorus availability in soil is one of the major forces for crop production. Phosphate solubilizing fungi enhance available phosphorus from soils and contribute to achieve the plants phosphorus requirement. Phosphate solubilizing fungi are important component of soil microbiota and play an essential role in the biogeochemical cycling of phosphorus in natural ecosystems.ResultsThe study tested the potential of the isolated phosphate solubilizing fungi to inhibit the growth of Alternaria alternata, Fusarium solani, Geotrichum candidum, Rhizoctonia solani and Sclerotium rolfsii. A total of 137 fungal isolates were isolated and identified from 30 soil samples. Nine isolates solubilized inorganic phosphate (tricalcium phosphate). Eight of these isolates were isolated from the rhizosphere of Alhagi graecorum Boiss., Allium cepa L., Ehrharta calycina Sm., Ludwigia stolonifera (Guill. & Perr.) Raven, Mentha longifolia L., Phragmites communis Trin.,Triticum aestivum L. and Zea mays L., respectively and one isolate was isolated from island's free soil. Purified single spore cultures of these nine isolates were identified to species level by multi loci DNA barcoding using internal transcribed spacer1and 2 (ITS1 and ITS 2) of the rRNA gene cluster, Calmodulin (CaM) and β-tubulin)BenA) gene markers.ConclusionsThe isolated phosphate solubilizing fungi belonged to two genera, Aspergillus and Penicillium. The phosphate solubilization index ranged from 1 to 1.5. Aspergillius japonicus 2 had the highest solubilization index (1.5) and also had the highest inhibition percentage (70%) against Alternaria alternata. This isolate is promising for development of biocontrol agent of Fusarium solani, Geotricum candidium and Alternaria alternata. The highest phosphate solubilization by Aspergillius japonicus 2 was obtained by using sucrose as carbon source and also ammonium chloride and tryptophan as nitrogen source. The highest solubilization percentage was 78.2% at optimum glucose concentration (5%) while the pH value that gave the highest solubilization percentage (90%) was 3. After eight days of incubation of Aspergillius japonicus 2, the solubilization percentage reached its maximum value (80.2%).

Improving Water Supply Capacity of Drainage Systems at Humid Areas in the Changing Climate

Abstract The paper focuses on research on improving the water supply of drainage systems of humid areas in the context of climate change. The aim of the research is to elaborate on the ways for increasing the available water supply of drainage systems and restoring active water regulation on reclaimed lands in a changing climate. The paper presents the results of the research on improving the available water supply of drainage systems in the humid zone of Ukraine in a changing climate. It was specified in the face of increasing water scarcity providing the optimal water regime regulation on drained lands is possible due to the increase in the available water supply of drainage systems. It can be achieved thanks to the accumulating capacity of reclaimed areas, namely usage of free soil capacity of the aeration zone and open canals, accumulation of water reserve volumes in storage tanks due to the accumulation of surface and drainage runoff. Taking into account the design features of different types of drainage systems, existing water management technologies, characteristics of water sources and their close proximity to the drainage systems, the technological schemes of water intake from rivers and reservoirs, and its supply to the drained areas for irrigation needs were developed. In a face of increasing water scarcity, it is also expedient to apply resource-saving technologies to control the available water supply for crops.

ABOUT THE PARAMETERS OF THE DIELECTRIC MODEL OF SOILS USED IN THE SMOS ALGORITHM

The features of the four-component refractive dielectric model of moist soils are considered. Typical values of the parameters of the Debye model of bound water obtained by processing experimental data using this model are given. The reasons why the parameters of the Debye model of free soil water in this model differ from the true values of these parameters are explained. It is shown that the excess of the static permeability and specific conductivity values relative to the true values is caused by the Maxwell – Wagner relaxation process with a relaxation time of sev-eral nanoseconds.

The Case of the Slave-Child, Med: Free Soil in Antislavery Boston

The Case of the Slave-Child, Med: Free Soil in Antislavery Boston

Archives of the Dispossessed

Archives of the Dispossessed

Snak, Claas and Bastiaan’s Struggle for Freedom

In the Dutch Republic slavery was not permitted on its soil in Western Europe. Enslaved people obtained their freedom by setting foot on Dutch soil. In 1776, the scope of this free soil principle was limited by a statute of the States General. From this moment onwards only slaves who remained in the Republic for longer than six months would automatically become free. In the literature, it was hitherto assumed that with the establishment of this statute the first debates about the scope of the free soil principle were initiated. This article demonstrates that this assumption is false. Previously, two court cases from 1735 and 1736, between two enslaved men from Curaçao and their masters, had already given rise to discussion. During these court cases, lawyers and judges elaborately debated the boundaries of the free soil principle. Did every enslaved person automatically obtain their freedom, or was, for instance, the permission of the master required to travel to the Dutch Republic? The two court cases give insight into what contemporaries thought about the free soil principle, thus shedding new light on the States General’s statute of 1776.

Black, White, and Gold: Litigating Slavery in the American West

In May 1852, Charles Perkins decided he wanted his slaves back. Perkins was from Mississippi, but in 1849 he caught gold fever and moved to California in search of easy fortune. When he came, like hundreds of others from the southern states, he also brought an enslaved man with him, and later had two others sent from his family’s plantation. In 1851, following California’s admission to the Union as a free state, Perkins returned to his home in Mississippi, leaving the three men behind. A year later they were in court, litigating the question of whether California’s recently enacted Fugitive Slave Act—which promised the resources of the state to help slaveholders recover their slaves—was constitutional, and with it the larger issue of whether slavery could exist on free soil. The answer, provided five years before Dred Scott, foreshadowed the coming of the Civil War, and firmly planted the West in the middle of the national debate over race, slavery, and the law. This paper is a narrative history of In re Perkins, the case involving Charles Perkins and the three men he maintained were his slaves. In takes place during the Gold Rush and the decade that followed, and it has two primary goals. First, by centering a story about slavery in the American West, it provides a critical lens through which we can explore how the ideological conflicts animating the North-South axis also extended horizontally to the Pacific Ocean. With rare exception, scholars of American slavery and those of the West do not engage in the type of rich discussions that allow for the West to be brought into the national discourse over slavery and the growing sectional crisis. Yet, as In re Perkins demonstrates, these issues very much shaped both the experiences of those who settled the area and the positions of those back east. Second, as a narrative history, this paper also affords an opportunity to dig down deep into the main participants in the case and reconsider who we think the makers and interpreters of the law are. Unlike like most legal histories, which place primary emphasis on court decisions and legislative enactments, the focus here is on how the law was experienced on a local and more nuanced level. By shifting the emphasis from the high courts to the county courtrooms, this paper is part of a larger story of how people of color and their allies turned to the courts in an effort to protect their rights in ways that have not always been understood or appreciated.

Getting locked up to get free in colonial Cuba

ABSTRACT This essay examines the histories of two enslaved Africans living in Cuba and sent to prison in the mid-nineteenth century, to consider the ways in which prison represented a path to freedom within and beyond slave societies. Formerly enslaved people in Cuba and Puerto Rico, released from bondage upon entering the carceral system, were often resold into slavery upon completion of their prison sentences – but not always. The essay focuses first on the case of Gregorio Lucumí, imprisoned in Cuba, whose civil status post-sentence was debated by authorities seeking to discourage crime as a means to secure prison sentences that might yield freedom from slavery. It then turns to the lengthier case of Isidoro Gangá, sent to prison in Melilla, North Africa, and who, post-sentence, appealed for freedom via free soil principles.

The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America by Robert H. Churchill

Reviewed by: The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America by Robert H. Churchill W. Thomas Mainwaring The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America. By Robert H. Churchill. (New York and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv, 256. Paper, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-108-73346-5; cloth, $99.99, ISBN 978-1-108-48912-6.) Robert H. Churchill’s The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America analyzes the connection between the Underground Railroad and the violence that fugitives encountered in various regions of the North. “The story of fugitives from enslavement and of the assistance that they received from the antislavery activists who would come to style themselves the Underground Railroad,” Churchill asserts, “is a story of violence” (p. 3). To understand the Underground Railroad, Churchill argues, one must understand the “culture of violence” that prevailed in four regions ranging from the border South to New England and much of the northern United States (p. 4). The cultural norms that sanctioned the use of violence in the border South were quite clear: whippings, beatings, and even harsher punishments were justified in the name of maintaining the slave system and white supremacy. The second region Churchill identifies is the tier of northern counties just above the Mason-Dixon Line and the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River. These borderland communities seldom contested the operations of slave catchers and the violence that they employed to capture freedom seekers. The reception of slave catchers was distinctly different in the third region, what Churchill calls the “Contested Region”—the northern two-thirds of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey (p. 7). Here, community sentiments [End Page 121] insisted that slave catchers follow legal procedures and avoid violent methods of capturing fugitives. Slave catchers who violated these norms encountered resistance from these communities that opposed the flagrant use of violence. Finally, the fourth region, which Churchill designates as the “Free Soil Region,” encompassing New England, much of New York, Michigan, the environs of Chicago, and Wisconsin, rejected the culture of southern violence and offered open assistance to freedom seekers (p. 10). Churchill offers a sophisticated analysis of how these cultures of violence changed as the Underground Railroad evolved between the 1830s and 1860s, particularly in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The collision of regional cultures happened most dramatically in instances of fugitive renditions and rescues. Churchill has developed an extensive database that attempts to record every rendition and rescue during these decades. In this effort he has gone beyond the work of Stanley W. Campbell, whose book The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860 (Chapel Hill, 1970) has been the standard work in the field for fifty years. Churchill argues convincingly that Campbell’s interpretation that the North was either supportive or indifferent to the Fugitive Slave Act is misleading. Churchill’s evidence shows that there was much more resistance to the act than Campbell found. Only in the border region of the free states do Campbell’s findings hold true. But elsewhere after 1850, northern communities increasingly rallied to the cause of the fugitive and violently opposed renditions. Churchill contends that the Fugitive Slave Act was ultimately a failure in that it could not be enforced throughout much of the North (the number of rescues almost tripled after 1857). The reason for this failure was the change in attitudes in the Contested Region, which had once tolerated fugitive renditions as long as they were carried out according to legal procedures. By 1860, however, communities in this region had become alarmed by the proslavery violence that accompanied slave catchers. They had been exposed to “the brutality and arrogance of the violence of mastery” (p. 230). They came to change their cultural values to align with their Free Soil neighbors to the North in assisting freedom seekers and resisting slave catchers. Churchill’s fine study will be of interest to students of the Underground Railroad and more generally of the sectional crisis. He offers a wealth of examples and case studies to buttress his analysis of changing cultural attitudes about violence...

Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America

"One of the most original contributions to the history of the American antislavery movement, and antislavery thought more broadly,” Beacons of Liberty shows that different free-soil havens, such as Sierra Leone, Upper Canada, Haiti, and Mexico each offered distinct possibilities for freedom in Black Americans’ collective consciousness while providing “practical models of Black freedom” as well as destinations for emigrants.

The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America by Robert H. Churchill

Reviewed by: The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America by Robert H. Churchill Crystal Webster (bio) The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America. By Robert H. Churchill. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 256. Cloth, $99.99; paper, $24.99.) Scholars have increasingly centered violence as a category of analysis in order to provide nuance to historical events and periods. This trend in the historiography is reflected in the groundbreaking scholarship of Joanne Freeman, Stanley Harrold, and Kellie Carter Jackson, each of whom have focused on physical violence in historical periods and political movements that earlier had been represented as refined, passive, and respectable. Robert Churchill contributes to this historiography with The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America. In Churchill’s telling of the story of fugitive slavery, violence was ubiquitous on the route to freedom. Those involved in violence ranged from enslavers and slave catchers to antislavery activists. This violence and conflict along the Underground Railroad, argues Churchill, led to the radicalization of antislavery activism, violent expressions of mastery, and the development of regional identity, which in turn aggravated the sectional divisions and conflict leading up to the Civil War. Robert Churchill’s history challenges the ways in which popular representations of the Underground Railroad perpetuate it as a mythic, elusive element of American history. Scholarship on the Underground Railroad began with William Still’s Underground Railroad Records (1872) and other primary-source collections of first-person accounts of those who aided fugitive slaves. More recently, scholars have breathed new life into the significance of fugitive slavery, including Richard Blackett, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, and Fergus Bordewich. In particular, Eric Foner’s Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (2015) makes clear that the scope and scale of the fugitive slave experience was crucial to the events that led to the Civil War. By centering the role of violence, Robert Churchill upends romanticized and static histories of the Underground Railroad, thus complicating its history and providing fresh insight into this increasingly popular topic. A clear strength of the book is its conceptualization and explanation of the sociospatial geography of the Underground Railroad. The book is organized around both chronological and regional distinctions, which consist of [End Page 272] the Borderland, the Contested Region, and the Free Soil Region. Churchill excels in his in-depth geographic descriptions of the physical and social landscape for each region and analyzes the ways in which these contexts shaped the function of violence in the movement. Through descriptive and visual explanation, Churchill reveals how political and spatial geography are key to understanding how violence was wielded. In the Borderland, slave catchers were aggressively violent in ways that extended the reach of slave mastery. Here, slave catchers and enslavers dominated the fugitive experience and prevailed even against whites who may have been sympathetic to the antislavery cause. While some locals of the Contested Region provided shelter and aid to African American fugitives, white residents were less likely to defend escaped enslaved people against violent slave catchers, particularly when legal mores were appropriately followed. Locals nonetheless rejected the violence exhibited by slaveholders and slave catchers as violating ideas of dignity and restraint. In the Free Soil region, local whites reacted aggressively to slave catching and kidnapping and defended fugitives to the death. These distinctions give a greater sense of depth to the Underground Railroad at a community and regional level, appropriately portraying the movement as a “living organism responding to local stimuli” (17). Churchill’s Underground Railroad is therefore not only one of fugitive slaves, slave catchers, and white abolitionists, but also one of space and culture. The movement, in turn, shaped the regions through which fugitives fled. Many of Churchill’s sources that reveal these differing regional cultures will not be unfamiliar to scholars of the period, and those sources rely on reflections on the movement by predominantly white activists, which can lean heroic. However, Churchill complicates the sources with in-depth analysis and explanation of the local and regional history. A strong intervention of the book is that violence in the Underground Railroad led to the type of sectional conflict...

Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood by James M. Lundberg

Reviewed by: Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood by James M. Lundberg Michael E. Woods (bio) Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood. By James M. Lundberg. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. Pp. 231. Cloth, $34.95.) Clad in his signature white coat, Horace Greeley strode into celebrityhood as editor of the New-York Tribune. Yet the meaning of his career remains elusive. As James M. Lundberg points out in this perceptive book, Greeley “has been eluding his biographers” ever since James Parton, better known for his sprawling Life of Andrew Jackson (1860), penned a heroic account in 1854 (2). More recently, scholars have cast Greeley variously as a quintessential Whig reformer, a socialist, a liberal nationalist, and a personification of New York City in the age of capital.1 Greeley defies categorization because of his zeal for everything from Sylvester Graham’s dietary regimen to Albert Brisbane’s adaptation of Fourierism, as well as his propensity for hairpin political turns. How do we classify a man who denounced the slave power and later posted bail for Jefferson Davis? Lundberg takes a different approach in Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood. By attending both to Greeley’s towering influence and his jarring setbacks, Lundberg identifies a thread of consistency running through Greeley’s eccentric career. Determined to [End Page 111] rally a fractious country behind his ambitious vision of progress, Greeley repeatedly collided with reality. Only after his disastrous 1872 presidential bid did Greeley, who had only weeks to live, seem to realize that he “embodied the inherent problems of American nationhood, rather than its transcendent harmony” (11). Less focused on Greeley’s philosophical gymnastics than on his overriding ambition to play the role of heroic genius, Horace Greeley successfully explores the theme of failure. Lundberg sketches Greeley’s hardscrabble New England upbringing before delving into his public career in the nation’s publishing capital of New York. Greeley’s labors on a series of literary journals and Whig newspapers informed his long tenure as editor of the New-York Tribune, established in 1841. Inspired by the wide circulation of penny newspapers but disgusted by their prurient and sensational content, Greeley believed fervently in the power of print—and in his own destiny to wield that power for good. Mingling an Enlightenment faith in progress with a Romantic fascination for heroic geniuses (such as himself) and a strong dose of nationalism, Greeley resolved to make the Tribune “a force for social harmony, consensus, reform, and even mass instruction” (27). Greeley’s pursuit of this dream shaped his three-decade career with the Tribune and helps explain his puzzling twists and turns. He first embraced the Whig Party, relishing its commitment to social reform and economic uplift. Although convinced that slavery and its defenders were stumbling blocks in the path of national progress, Greeley initially eschewed sectional confrontation and reluctantly supported the Whigs over the Free Soil Party in the 1848 election. Six years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act prompted him to take a stronger stand against the slave power. While he hoped that the emerging Republican Party would attract white southern nonslaveholders, Greeley became a sectional spokesman whose blueprint for national progress reflected decidedly northern ideals. Thus the aspiring peacemaker stoked the fires of sectionalism. Throughout the Civil War, Greeley remained both a Republican and a Lincoln administration gadfly. He shifted from conciliator to all-out warrior and from impatient emancipationist to self-appointed peace negotiator; but Lundberg argues that throughout the conflict, Greeley continually sought to extract a higher purpose—national redemption—from the carnage. Alas, the war refused to follow his script. During Reconstruction, Greeley still longed to serve as national unifier, and while he offered some support for African American civil rights, it was reconciliation among whites that mattered to him most. Hence did he aid Jefferson Davis, critique Radical Republicans, and attempt to wrest the presidency from Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. Like his antebellum and wartime crusades, [End Page 112] Greeley’s postwar quest to restore national harmony was “bold, optimistic, and wildly unsuccessful” (146). Lundberg’s crisply written account makes a...

The Violence of the Underground Railroad

The Violence of the Underground Railroad Kellie Carter Jackson (bio) Robert H. Churchill, The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. vii + 256 pp. Figures, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $24.99. For many years, the story of the Underground Railroad has been wrapped in a romantic nostalgia of sorts. School children are told about the efforts of Harriet Tubman or other popular narratives of narrow escape such as those included in Frederick Douglass's Narrative (1845) or Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). These stories are recounted with moments of heroism and risk, but they never hinge on the absolute violence employed to retrieve fugitives. Robert Churchill's The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America is a welcome addition to abolitionist historiography. His thesis is simple, but potent: The Underground Railroad is a story of violence. Slave catchers trekked into northern and free Black communities to retrieve "stolen property." Their violent confrontations with Black and white residents enraged all those around them. In abolitionist history, violence could serve as the protagonist or, as Churchill argues, "violence is a current that runs through every fugitive account and every Underground activist reminiscence" (p. 3). Churchill contends that slave catchers who pursued fugitives into the North brought with them "a Southern culture of violence that sanctioned white brutality as a means of enforcing racial hierarchy and Black subordination and upholding masculine honor," but their presence compelled an array of responses in the four distinct regions he examines (p. 5). Divided into three parts, The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America begins with the origins of the Underground Railroad and ends with the start of the Civil War, examining cultures of violence in the slave-holding South, the Borderland, the Contested Region, and the Free Soil Region. In six chapters, Churchill traces the attempts to aid fugitive slaves beginning just before the Underground Railroad was established. He next examines fugitive rescues and responses in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, and New England. He explores Northerners open defiance and resistance to slave catchers and determination to defend Black enclaves [End Page 246] and communities. Churchill's concluding chapters address the evolution of the Underground Railroad as a result of the revamped Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. He offers examples of how resistance to slave catchers became so persistent that returning Black people to the plantation South became nearly impossible in certain regions that included abolitionist strongholds. I was impressed by Churchill's lengthy appendix, which covers nearly seventy years of fugitive slave rescues from 1794–1861, where the majority of the outcomes resulted in freedom. I have no doubt certain scholars and students will find both the book and its appendix useful and instructive. However, overall, I found Churchill's work fell short of his promising and sophisticated goals. He wants readers to understand the Underground Railroad in the context of "a geography of violence, a shifting landscape in which clashing norms of violence shaped the activities of slave catchers and the fugitives and abolitionists who defied them" (p. 3). I needed the author to flesh out his interesting and provocative ideas more. At times, his connections felt fragmented and unclear. For example, Churchill mentions notable fugitive cases such as Margaret Garner, The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, the Jerry Rescue or the taking of Anthony Burns in Boston. These are well known and consequential fugitive slave cases, but they are not granted sufficient context for the gravity or impact they have in the movement. He moves from incident to incident and altercations to confrontations, but he does not dwell long enough on any episode to give readers the depth of what resistance, violence, and rescue truly meant and what they accomplished for the movement and the eventual demise of slavery. In his text, Black people are acting and moving, but seldom given voice or the volume their contributions deserve. I anticipated his work would expand upon the brilliance of the late historian Stephanie Camp. Her work on a "geography of containment" in Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and...

Effect of Soil Organic Matter and Humates on Adsorption and Desorption Chemistry of Iodide in an Aridisol

The translocation of iodine (I) from soil to food chain is largely determined by its adsorption/desorption reaction in soils. In this study, the effects of commercial humates (HA) applied on an Aridisol and indigenous soil organic matter (SOM) on the adsorption and desorption of iodide were investigated. For this reason, 1% and 3% HA (w/w) were incorporated into the whole soil (WS) and organic matter free (OMF) soil samples. Then soil samples were equilibrated with 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 mg L-1 iodide solution prepared in 0.01 molar CaCl2 for 40 h. The sorption data were better described by Langmuir isotherm (R2= 0.938) than Freundlich isotherm (R2= 0.763). The Langmuir sorption maximum of WS was 19.8 mg kg-1. Freundlich isotherm parameters were n= 0.89 and Kf= 2.165. Sorption maximum of OMF soil significantly increased up to 35.5 mg kg-1. HA applications reduced iodide sorption maximum of both WS and organic OMF soil samples. Desorption rate of the WS ranged between 0-15.3% whereas it decreased 0-0.65% upon removal OM. HA treatments, in general, reduced the desorption rates. However, increasing HA application resulted in higher desorption ratio in both WS and OMF soils. Consequently, either SOM or HA has preeminent role in the adsorption-desorption chemistry in soils.

Analysis and Modeling of the Complex Dielectric Constant of Bound Water with Application in Soil Microwave Remote Sensing

Complex dielectric constant (CDC) of bound water determines the accuracy of the complex dielectric constant of wet soil. According to electrical double-layer structure and dielectric properties, the bound water on clay particle surface is divided into strongly bound water and weakly bound water. Based on this classification, models for the complex dielectric constants of bound water and soil are established taking into consideration factors such as temperature, moisture, texture, and microwave frequency. The results show that the fundamental reason why the complex dielectric constant of bound water is between that of ice and free water is the adsorption force which forms the electrical double-layer structure on the surface of clay particles. Low-concentration cationic solution could exist in free soil water and was found as the reason for the higher salinity and conductivity of free soil water, as compared to the measured soil solution. Results of soil CDC model are in good agreement with measured data across a wide range of microwave frequencies and soil temperature, moisture, and texture. The absolute root mean square error analysis also shows that the soil CDC model in this paper compared to the other models is more accurate.

Phytoremediation of Heavy Metals Using Some Selected Leguminous Crops

The phytoremediation of heavy metals (cadmium, chromium, copper and lead) using Phaseolus vulgaris and Arachis hypogaea were investigated using standard techniques. Heavy metal polluted soil samples were collected from Crush Rock Industries Ishiagu, Ebonyi State and heavy metal free soil samples (used as control) were obtained from Ebonyi State Ministry of Agriculture, Ishiagu Station. The seeds of the two plants were collected from the Enugu State Ministry of Agriculture. The experimental setup consists of 4 contaminated potted soils each of P. vulgaris and A. hypogaea. Another 4 potted soils not contaminated with heavy metals served as control. Soil analysis was carried out prior to planting. The polluted soil sample had slightly acidic pH (pH was 6.34±0.29), higher Cation Exchange Capacity (21.80±0.33), higher Cd (25.18±0.34), Cr (10.20±0.21), Cu (28.54±0.49) and Pb (9.92±0.36) levels but lesser soil organic carbon (0.87±0.10). After the duration of 62 days the plants were harvested, their leaves and roots were digested and subjected to further experimental tests [determination of Metal concentration, transfer factor and bioaccumulation factor (BAF)]. A. hypogaea showed highest Cd translocation factor 1.63±0.08, TF<1 was observed in all the plants examined for Cr. A. hypogaea showed the highest BAF for Cd, (1.16±0.08). BAF<1 was observed for Cr and Cu in the two plants examined. The BAF of A. hypogaea was higher than that of P. vulgaris. Plants from the control showed zero to very minute concentration of heavy metals in their tissues. Although the study plants are food crops, they can also play a role in the phytoremediation of some heavy metals.

Study on the Changes of Calcium Carbonate and Organic Carbon in the Soil after the Feldspathic Sandstone and Sand Compounding

By analyzing the changes of calcium carbonate and free iron oxide in inorganic cement materials in different proportions of the feldspathic sandstone and sand compounding soil under different tillage years (2a and 9a), the calcium carbonate and free soil in the soil were determined in two years. The average content and relationship of iron oxide. The results show that the average content of calcium carbonate is the highest in the mixed soil of feldspathic sandstone and sand in the ratio of 1:2, the ratio is more favorable for the accumulation of calcium carbonate in 0-30cm soil surface inorganic colloid. The difference of organic carbon content in 0-10cm and 10-20cm soil layers was significant, but it was not significant in 20-30cm soil layers. After the mixture of feldspathic sandstone and sand for 9a, the highest content of organic carbon in each soil layer is the mixture of feldspathic sandstone and sand according to 1:1. From the mixture soil which has been cultivated for 9a, the soil layers of 10-20 cm and 20-30 cm, the content of organic carbon tends to be stable in each proportion. The average organic carbon content was 2.00 g/kg in 2a and 3.37 g/kg in 9a, which increased by 68.50% compared with 2a.

Comparison of Soil Properties and Organic Components in Infusions According to Different Aerial Appearances of Tea Plantations in Central Taiwan

The soil properties, climate, type of management, and fermentation process critically affect the productivity and quality of tea. In this study, tender tea leaves were collected from central Taiwan, and organic components in their infusions as well as physical and chemical soil properties differentiated using aerial photographs where good (G) and bad (B) growth exhibitions were determined. Eleven physical and chemical soil properties as well as five compounds in tea infusions were analyzed to determine the main factor that affects the growth of these tea trees. The Fleiss’ kappa statistic results revealed that the wet aggregate stability, pH, and exchangeable potassium content exhibit the most significant effect, with scores of 0.86, 0.64, and 0.62, respectively. Soil quality calculated using the mean weight diameter based on 11 soil properties revealed that ~67% of the total score of G is greater than that of B. Generally, contents of total polyphenols (51.67%) and catechins (51.76%) in the infusions of B were greater than those of G. In addition, significant positive correlations between the free amino acids content and soil properties, including pH and copper content, were observed. However, a negative correlation between the free amino acids and flavone contents and most of the soil properties was observed. The survey data set obtained from this study can provide useful information for the improved management of tea plantations.

Soil Fertility Status and Nutrient Index in Different Tasar Silkworm Host Plants Growing Ecosystems of Purulia District, West Bengal, India

This study was conducted to evaluate soil fertility status in the fourteen major tasar sericulture adopting villages in Purulia District, West Bengal. For this, a total of 160 surface soil samples (0-30 cm) were collected from dominant tasar sericulture villages along with the details regarding farmer’s name, soil type, host plants details, etc. The collected samples were air dried, sieved and analysed for various soil fertility parameters such as pH, EC, organic carbon, macro and micronutrients. The data on various parameters were categorized into low, medium and high classes based on soil fertility ratings and nutrient index was calculated. Results revealed that soil reaction in the study area varied from strongly acidic to moderately acidic with saline free soil. The available nitrogen was low level in all the tasar host plant growing regions. In all the study regions, medium range of available phosphorus, potassium and sulphur was observed. All the micronutrients were high in the study villages. Regard NIV, all the macronutrients except nitrogen showed medium nutrient index in most places. Fertility rate of available micro nutrients were high index in all the tasar growing villages.

Other Geographies of Struggle: Afro-Brazilians and the American Civil War

Abstract This article approaches Brazil as a forgotten Atlantic battleground of the American Civil War. I explore armed confrontations of Union and Confederate vessels along the Brazilian coast as well as slave flight to North American ships to understand how the war inspired slaves to imagine their captivity undone in Brazil. In the 1860s, Afro-Brazilians rebelled at the sight of warships like the CSS Sumter in Maranhão or ran away to New England whalers in Santa Catarina, believing either that North American ships carried troops ready to uphold the abolition of slavery or that they would allow the enslaved to claim the principle of free soil. Afro-Brazilian geopolitical literacy, therefore, points to the importance of Brazil as a cradle of antislavery as well as a sounding board for a war that reverberated in all corners of the African diaspora.