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Background: Undoubtedly, the importance of food and food security as one of the present and future challenges is not invisible to anyone. Nowadays, the development of methods for monitoring the nutrient content in crop products is an essential issue for implementing reasonable and logical soil properties management. The modeling technique can evaluate the soil properties of fields and study the subject of crop yield through soil management. This study aims to predict fruit yield and macro-nutrient content in plant organs of Cucumis melo in response to soil elements using support vector regression (SVR)., Methodology: In the spring of 2020, this study was done as a factorial test in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The first factor was the use of fertilizers in six levels: no fertilizer (control), cow manure (30 t ha -1 ), sheep manure (30 t ha -1 ), nanobiomic foliar application (2 l ha -1 ), silicone foliar application (3 l ha -1 ), and chemical fertilizer from urea, triple superphosphate, and potassium sulfate sources (200, 100, and 150 kg ha -1 ). In addition, four levels of vermicompost considering as the second factor: no vermicompost (control), 5, 10, and 15 t ha -1 . Input data sets such as fruit yield and nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels in the seeds, fruits, leaves, and roots are used to calibrate the probabilistic model of SP using SVR., Results: According to the results, when the data sets of the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the fruit uses as input, the accuracy of these models was higher than 80.0% (R 2 = 0.807 for predicting fruit nitrogen; R 2 = 0.999 for fruit phosphorus; R 2 = 0.968 for fruit potassium). Also, the results of the prediction models in response to soil elements showed that the soil nitrogen content ranged from 0.05 to 1.1%, soil phosphorus from 10 to 59 mg kg -1 , and soil potassium from 180 to 320 mg kg -1 , which offers a suitable macro-nutrient content in the soil. Likewise, the best fruit nitrogen content ranged from 1.27 to 4.33%, fruit phosphorus from 15.74 to 26.19%, fruit potassium from 15.19 to 19.67%, and fruit yield from 2.16 to 5.95 kg per plant obtained under NPK chemical fertilizers and using 15 t ha -1 of vermicompost., Conclusions: Because the fruit values had the highest contribution in prediction than observed values, thus identified as the best plant organs in response to soil elements. Based on our findings, the importance of fruit phosphorus identifies as a determinant that strongly influenced melon prediction models. More significant values of soil elements do not affect increasing fruit yield and macro-nutrient content in plant organs, and excessive application may not be economical. Therefore, our studies provide an efficient approach with potentially high accuracy to estimate fruit yield and macro-nutrient in the fruits of Cucumis melo in response to soil elements and cause a saving in the amount of fertilizer during the growing season., Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests., (©2023 Keshtehgar et al.)

The current world observations in COVID-19 are hardly tractable as a whole, making situations of information to be incompleteness. In pandemic era, mathematical modeling helps epidemiological scientists to take informing decisions about pandemic planning and predict the disease behavior in the future. In this work, we proposed a non-extensive entropy-based model on the thermodynamic approach for predicting the dynamics of COVID-19 disease. To do so, the epidemic details were considered into a single and time-dependent coefficients model. Their four constraints, including the existence of a maximum point were determined analytically. The model was worked out to give a log-normal distribution for the spread rate using the Tsallis entropy. The width of the distribution function was characterized by maximizing the rate of entropy production. The model predicted the number of daily cases and daily deaths with a fairly good agreement with the World Health Organization (WHO) reported data for world-wide, Iran and China over 2019-2020-time span. The proposed model in this work can be further calibrated to fit on different complex distribution COVID-19 data over different range of times., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Organic and biological fertilizers are considered as a very important source of plant nutrients. A field experiment was conducted during 2017-2018 in paddy soil to investigate the effect of vermicomposting of cattle manure mixture with Azolla and rice straw on soil microbial activity, nutrient uptake, and grain yield under inoculation of N 2 -fixing bacteria. Experimental factors consisted of organic amendments at six levels (vermicomposts prepared from manure (VM); manure + rice straw (VRM); manure + Azolla mixture (VAM); manure + rice straw + Azolla mixture (VRAM); raw manure without vermicomposting (M), and a control) and N 2 -fixing bacteria at three levels ( Azotobacter chroococcum , Azospirillum brasilence , and non-inoculation). The results showed that, vermicompost treatments compared to control and raw manure significantly increased the number and biomass-C of soil microorganisms, urease activity, number of tillers hill -1 , phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) uptake, and grain and protein yield. Inoculation of plants with N 2 -fixing bacteria, especially Azotobacter increased the efficiency of organic amendments, so that the maximum urease activity, soil microbial activity, P and N uptake, and grain yield (4,667 (2017) and 5,081 (2018) kg/h) were observed in vermicompost treatments containing Azolla (VAM and VRAM) under inoculation with Azotobacter . The results of the study suggested that, using an organic source along with inoculation with appropriate N 2 -fixing bacteria for vermicompost has a great effect on enzyme activity, soil biology, nutrient uptake and grain yield has a synergistic interaction on agronomic traits under flooded conditions. Therefore, this nutrient method can be used as one of the nutrient management strategies in the sustainable rice production., Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests., (©2021 Ghadimi et al.)

Planning for optimal use of resources and reduction of environmental impacts, in addition to resource protection, is associated with increasing farmers' revenues and boosting the regional economy. Given the limited resources and environmental impacts of agricultural activities on human health, it is necessary to determine an appropriate cropping pattern. The present research aimed to maximize net profit and minimize environmental impacts, including the releases of carcinogens, noncarcinogens, ozone layer depletion, ionizing radiation, and respiratory inorganics and organics on human health. In this study, an optimal cropping pattern of irrigated and rainfed crops was proposed for the east of Lorestan Province using multi-objective nonlinear programming (MOP). Results showed that the cropping areas of chickpea, rapeseed, and potatoes decreased by 50% in the irrigated crop of MOP model and that of lentil in the MOP model of rainfed crops compared with the current pattern. Another important result was increases in the cropping areas of lentil and bean in the MOP pattern of irrigated crops and wheat in the rainfed MOP model. The environmental impacts of agricultural sector on human health can be reduced by determining an optimal cropping pattern. The implementation of this model in the region reduced the emissions of carcinogens (4%), noncarcinogens (9%), respiratory inorganics (17%), ionizing radiation (14%), ozone layer depletion (17%), and respiratory organics (15%) compared with the existing situation along with an increased net profit of $968,483. According to the findings, consideration of environmental objectives affecting human health is essential in the optimization of the cropping pattern. In addition to optimal use of water and land resources, using the proposed model helps to increase profits and reduce environmental consequences on human health.

Introduction: Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) can influence the biological system by the formation of free radicals in cells. The EMFs are able to deteriorate defense system against free radicals that leads to oxidative stress (OS). Lipid peroxidation process (LPO) is an index of oxidative stress, and the Malandialdehyde (MDA) is the final product of LPO. Vitamin E is the most important antioxidant which inhibits the LPO process. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of 3MT EMF exposure on oxidative stress parameters in substantia nigra and the role of vitamin E in reducing oxidative stress and preventing of LPO process., Methods: 40 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: 1) Control group: received standard food without exposure to EMF and without consumption of vitamin E, 2) Experimental group 1: was exposed to EMF (3MT) 4 h/day for 50 days, 3) The experimental group 2: received 200 mg/kg vitamin E with gavage every day and also was exposed to EMF (3MT) 4 h/day for 50 days, 4) Sham group: received water with gavage for 50 days., Results: A significant increase in MDA levels and Glutation peroxidase (GSH-Px) activity of the substantia nigra following 50 days exposure to EMF was detected, but the superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity was decreased. Exposure did not change total antioxidant capacity (TAC) levels in plasma. Vitamin E treatment significantly prevented the increase of the MDA levels and GSHPx activity and also prevented the decrease of SOD activity in tissue but did not alter TAC levels. The GSH-Px activity increased because the duration and intensity of exposure were not enough to decrease it., Conclusion: We demonstrated two important findings; that 50 days exposure to 3 MT electromagnetic field caused oxidative stress by increasing the levels of MDA, and decreasing SOD activity in the substantia nigra; and that treatment with the vitamin E significantly prevented the oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation.

Essential oil of Salvia mirzayanii cultivated in Iran was obtained by microwave assisted extraction (MAE) procedures. The essential oil was analysed by capillary gas chromatography using flame ionisation and mass spectrometric detections. The effects of different parameters, such as microwave power, temperature, time and type of solvent on the MAE of Salvia mirzayanii oil were investigated. Results of the two-level fractional factorial design (2(4-1)) based on an analysis of variance demonstrated that only the power, temperature and type of solvent were statistically significant. Optimal conditions for the extraction of essential oils were obtained by using Box-Behnken design. For optimum recovery of essential oil the variables power, temperature and solvent values were 115 W, 50°C and 14 s, respectively. Under the optimised experimental conditions, the extraction yield of microwave assisted extraction was 11.2% (w/w).