JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

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This research was conducted to measure the total factor productivity (TFP) of the rural small industries in Isfahan province comprising six types of industries: food, textile, metal, non-metal mineral, chemical, and cellulose. Among the 166 rural small industries sponsored by Jihad-Agriculture Organization of Isfahan in 2001(1380), 60 plants were selected. Cross-section information collected from the 60 plants by a questionnaire in that year confirmed the body of data for this study. The distribution of the types of the 60 selected plants followed the distribution of the types in the plant population. The analytical part of this research consisted of two sections. In the first section, the TFP of the rural small industries was established by applying Cobb-Douglas production function in which the value of the plant production was the dependent variable and the investment costs, total hours of labor, costs of raw materials, and the costs of energy and water were the independent variables. Factors affecting TFP were analyzed in the second section. The estimated coefficients of the first section and the actual data of the variables, were used to calculate the TFP for each plant. Then, another regression model was worked out in which the calculated TFPs were the dependent variable. The independent variables included the mean of the number of the employees' children, the percentage of the production employees with at least primary school level of education, annual number of the off days, dummy variable for the members of the cooperative association, and a few other variables. The results of the first section showed that the TFP of food industries was higher than that of other types of industries and there was no significant difference between the TFP of textile, metal, non metal mineral, chemical and cellulose industries. The results of the analysis for determining the factors affecting the TFP, showed that the existence of a research section in the plant, the insurance of the employees and the mean of the number of employees' children had a positive effect on the TFP. But, the level of the education of the production workers, the area of the plant buildings, and the number of the days off in plant had negative effects.

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This research was carried out to investigate the heterogeneity of milk yield variance components in different production levels of holstein cattles. The first lactation milk yield records of 95945 Holstein cattles, which had calved in 651 herds through years 1991 to 2000, were used in this research. Data was collected by the Animal Breeding Center of Iran and adjusted for two-time milking per day. Records were classified into three classes: low (less than 5275 kg), average (5275-6874 kg), and high (more than 6874 kg) based on the level of production. Variance components and genetic parameters were estimated using single and three-trait animal models for each class and three classes with Derivative Free Restricted Maximum Likelihood methods (DF-REML). Bartlett test showed significant differences for variance components between classes. Milk yield heritability was estimated as 0.205, 0.276, and 0.196 for low, average, and high class, respectively, in both single and three-trait analysis. The gentic correlation coefficient between classes ranged from 0.80 to 0.85, Phenotypic correlation coefficients between classes were low and ranged from 0.17 to 0.19. The highest rank correlation coefficient between estimated breeding value by single and three-trait model was obtained in average class. The average changes in the rank of common animals in the top 1% of cows were greather than the top 5% of bulls. Adjustment for heterogeneity of variance components suggested selecting more top cows from herds with high level of production.

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One important parameter in determining the allowable stress to prevent soil compaction is pre‌compaction stress (σpc). If the stress induced into the soil due to agricultural machinery traffic is lower than the σpc, the possibility of the irreversible (plastic) deformation is low. In this study, plate sinkage test (PST) and confined compression test (CCT) were used to determine the σpc of the disturbed soil samples obtained from the topsoil of a long-term organic amendment experiment. In the organic amendment experiment, organic manures (sewage sludgeو compost, farmyard manure) at three rates (25, 50 and 100 t ha-1) and one inorganic fertilizer combination (250 kg urea ha-1 and 250 kg ammonium phosphate ha-1) were added to a silty clay loam soil for seven years under wheat-corn rotation. The effect of organic and inorganic fertilizers and gravimetrical water contents (17.1 and 20.9% db) on the σpc values was determined using two statistical designs: 1) factorial design and 2) orthogonal contrasts in a completely randomized design with three replications. The σpc values were estimated by the following methods: 1) Casagrande, 2) maximum curvature and 3) intercept of virgin compression line (VCL) with the x-axis at zero strain. The results showed that in both tests, the σpc values for treatments amended with organic manures had over-estimations and the values of the over-estimation were increased as the manure application rate increased. The values of the over-estimations for CCT were higher than for PST. Therefore, it can be concluded that the results of the PST are more reliable. The σpc values estimated by any of the three procedures depend on the manure treatment as well as the initial water content of the soil. For determining the stress at the threshold of the compaction for the un-manure soils (control and inorganic fertilizer) or the treatments amended with low application rate (25 t ha-1) of the organic manures, the PST and the Casagrande procedure can be recommended. In contrast, for the soils amended with high application rates (50 and 100 t ha-1), the PST and the maximum curvature procedure can be used.