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“Sustainable Practices for Vegetable Production in the South,” 174 pages long, including 250 references, was written as a traditional college textbook. I will be discussing my experiences converting it to a web document and simultaneously releasing web and print versions. I will also discuss some of the issues we will confront if we depend on the web for delivering and receiving information. These issues are: 1)There are no conventions for websites comparable to those that have evolved for print documents. At the same time, users expect sites to function certain ways. 2) Consistency between parts of the website is more difficult to maintain than in a print document, but is critical in order to correctly orient the user. 3) The optimal size and structure of the information “chunk” or subdivision is unclear—Should it be a whole chapter or article, a single paragraph, or a functional unit of facts that does not have a name or correspond to anything in print media? 4) How do you let a person accessing any one part of your website know about all the other parts and how they fit together—You can flip through a book to view it, but a person following a link to a page on your site is like the blind person touching the elephant's trunk—they can not visualize the whole. 5) There is no one intuitively obvious or logical place to put references and footnotes because of the subdivision of information into “chunks” or functional facts. 7) There is no obvious starting or stopping point in making revisions. 8) People accessing the site will send messages and ask questions. 9) Meaningful evaluation of usage and usefulness is difficult.
It is often difficult to obtain information on producing vegetables using `sustainable' practices such as reduced inputs of pesticide and commercial fertilizers. Lack of such information is often cited by conventional farmers and extension agents as a reason for not adopting or assisting others in adopting sustainable techniques. As part of a Southern Region Low Input Sustainable Agricultural (LISA) Program, we are compiling a database which will include techniques for vegetable production acceptable to `organic' farmers as well as those acceptable to conventional farmers. This information source will include information on 17 specific vegetables and well as chapters on general topics such as cover crops and weed control. We hope to make this information available both as a production manual and by way of an electronic information retrieval system. Steps in the development of this project include initially soliciting input from farmers and extension workers on the preferred content and format and conducting an on-going evaluation by these groups as segments are developed. The database should be available within 2 years in both electronic and hardcopy versions.
Sustainable Practices for Vegetable Production in the South, 174 pages long and with 250 references, was written as a traditional college textbook, but is also available as a World Wide Web (Web) site (http://www2.ncsu.edu/sustainable/). This article chronicles the conversion of the entire text to a Web document and the simultaneous release of Web and print versions. I will also discuss some of the issues that we will confront if we depend on the Web for delivering and receiving content-rich information. These issues are as follows. 1) Although there are no standards for Web sites as there are for print documents, there are certain similarities in the way most Web sites function. Relative to our familiarity with book and journal conventions, those of us educated in the age of print are unaware of Web standards. 2) The optimal size and structure of the information chunk is unclear. Should it be a whole chapter or article, a single paragraph, or a functional unit of facts that doesn't have a name or correspond to anything in print media? 3) Organization and consistency are critical. Table and chapter numbers are meaningless. The most important question is “How does a person accessing part of your Web site know about all the other parts and how they fit together?” You can flip through a book to view it, but a person following a link to a particular page on your site is like the blind man touching the elephant's trunk—the whole is hard to visualize. 4) There is no good place to put references and footnotes because of the subdivision of information into chunks of functional facts. 5) There is no obvious starting or stopping point in making revisions. 6) People accessing the site will send messages and ask questions.
Global temperature increases are predicted over the next several decades. Earth surface temperatures in 1995 were the highest ever recorded. At day temperatures above 30C or night temperatures above 21C, tomato fruit production decreases. However, the temperature dependence of fruit production has not been described in terms of whether day temperatures, night temperatures, or mean temperatures are the most limiting. The process or tissue most sensitive to heat and most limiting to fruit production is also not known. The objectives of this experiment are to establish the temperature dependence of fruit set in tomatoes and to determine the importance of post-pollen production effects. We imposed a total of nine temperature treatments in a series of four separate experiments. Each experiment consisted of a 30/24C treatment and two other day/night temperature combinations with differing means and/or day/night temperature differentials. As mean daily temperature increased from 25 to 29C, fruit set, fruit number, total fruit weight, and seediness index (a quantitative rate of fruit seed content) declined. Temperature treatments did not affect average fruit weight. Higher mean temperatures promoted flowering except at the highest temperature. Mean temperature was more important than day/night temperature differentials or the specific daytime or nighttime temperature treatment.
Previous greenhouse studies in Raleigh have shown that nighttime cooling increases tomato fruit weights from 11% to 53%, depending on planting dates. The physiological mechanism was unclear, except that temperatures during fruitset were most critical We report here on a phytotron experiment comparing pollen characteristics and in vitro pollen germination of plants grown at night temperatures of 18, 22,24 or 26°C in a 12-hour photoperiod with 26°C day temperature in all treatments. There was considerable variability between sampling dates in pollen characteristics and % germination. The most consistent and significant effects were a decrease in total pollen and an increase in % abnormal pollen at high night temperatures. Number of seed present in the fruit also decreased with increasing night temperatures, indicating that the changes in pollen characteristics adversely affected seedset. Night temperatures of 22C appeared optimal for many of the pollen and growth characteristics measured, but fruit developed most rapidly at the higher night temperatures.
Peet et al. (1997) demonstrated that in male-sterile tomato plants (Lycopersicon esculentum L. Mill cv. NC8288) (MSs) provided with pollen from male-fertile plants (MFs) grown at 24°C daily mean, percent fruit set, total number and weight of fruit, and relative seediness decreased linearly as mean daily temperature rose from 25 to 29°C. The primary parameter affecting these variables was mean temperature, with day temperature at a given night temperature, night temperature at a given day temperature, and day/night temperature differential having secondary or no effect. To compare the effect of temperature stress experienced only by the female tissues with that experienced by the male tissues or both male and female tissues, MSs and MFs were grown in 28/22°C, 30/24°C, and 32/26°C day/night temperature chambers. Fruit yield and seed number per fruit declined sharply when increased temperatures were experienced by both male and female tissues (MFs). There was no fruit set in any of the MSs assigned to the 32/26°C pollen treatment, mostly because of the limited amount of pollen available from MFs. Both fruit production and seed content per fruit were also greatly reduced in MSs receiving pollen from 30/24°C grown MFs for the same reason. For plants experiencing stress only on female tissues (MSs grown at high temperatures, but receiving pollen from MFs grown at the lowest temperature), there was also a linear decrease in fruit yield as growth temperatures increased, as previously seen by Peet et al. (1997), but the temperature effect was less pronounced than that on pollen production. Thus, for this system, temperature stress decreased yield much more drastically when experienced by male reproductive tissues than when experienced only by female reproductive tissues.
Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. `Laura' plants were grown in the North Carolina State Univ. phytotron at 26C day temperature and 18, 22, 24, or 26C night temperatures to determine the effects of night temperature on pollen characteristics, growth, fruit set, and early fruit growth. Total and percentage normal pollen grains were higher in plants grown at night temperatures of 18 and 22C than at 24 and 26C, but germination was highest in pollen produced at 26C. Seed content was rated higher on the plants grown at 18C night temperatures than in any of the other treatments. Numbers of flowers and fruit on the first cluster were lower in the 26C night treatment than in the other night temperature treatments. Plant height was greatest but total shoot dry mass was lowest in the 22C night temperature treatments. Fruit fresh mass increased with night temperature, reflecting more rapid development, but the experiment was not continued to fruit maturity, so the effect of night temperature on final fruit size and total plant production could not be determined. Night temperatures of 26C reduced fruit number and percentage fruit set only slightly at a day temperature of 26C, even though these temperatures were above optimal for pollen production and seed formation. To separate temperature effects on pollen from direct or developmental effects on female reproductive structures, pollen was collected from plants in the four night temperature treatments and applied to stigmas of a male-sterile cultivar kept at 24-18C minimum temperatures in adjacent greenhouses. In the greenhouse-grown male sterile plants, no consistent effects of night temperature treatment given the pollen could be seen in fruit set, fruit mass, seed content (either on a rating or seed count basis), seedling germination, or seedling dry mass.
Leaf gas-exchange and chlorophyll fluorescence measurements were used as indexes for evaluating heat tolerance among five taxa of birch: paper (Betula papyrifera Marsh.), European (B. pendula Roth.), Japanese (B. platyphylla var. japonica Hara. cv. Whitespire), Himalayan (B. jacquemontii Spach.), and river (B. nigra L. cv. Heritage). Gas-exchange measurements were conducted on individual leaves at temperatures ranging from 25 to 40C. River birch maintained the highest net photosynthetic rates (Pn) at high temperatures, while Pn of paper birch was reduced the most. Further study of river and paper birch indicated that the reduced Pn at high temperatures and the differential sensitivity between taxa resulted from several factors. Inhibition of Pn at higher temperatures was due largely to nonstomatal limitations for both taxa. Increases in respiration rates, decreases in maximal photochemical efficiency of photosystem (PS) II (F V/F M), and possible reductions in light energy directed to PS II (F 0 quenching) were apparent for both taxa. The capacity of river birch to maintain greater Pn at higher temperatures seemed to result from a lower Q10 for dark respiration and possibly greater thermotolerance of the Calvin cycle as indicated by a lack of nonphotochemical fluorescence quenching with increasing temperatures. Thermal injury, as indicated by a rapid increase in minimal, dark-acclimated (F 0) fluorescence, was not evident for either paper or river birch until temperatures reached ≈49C and was similar for both taxa.