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Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Explosion puffing drying is well known as one of the most novel processing of food products. The raw materials are also required to be pre-dried at the given moisture content. A preferred combination of vacuum freeze-drying and explosion puffing drying can be utilized to produce the crispy products of fruit and vegetable with better color and higher brittleness. Among them, vacuum freeze-drying can be used to maintain a better shape, and then form a more loose porous structure in the dried samples. This study aims to explore the effect of pre-drying treatment on the structural and textural properties of different fruit and vegetable crisps after vacuum freeze-drying combined with explosion puffing drying. Three moisture conversion points were also selected (60 %, 45 %, and 30 % moisture content in wet base). The moisture status, cell structure, shrinkage, porosity, stress-relaxation properties, and texture profile analysis (TPA) were analyzed for the pre-dried samples. The drying time, energy consumption, and texture properties were determined for the dried crisp samples. The results showed that the moisture content gradually decreased, and the free water gradually disappeared with the pre-drying, while the immobilized water was the main component of water in the samples. The decreased degree of free water content presented a significant difference among different fruit and vegetable slices, when the vacuum freeze-drying to 60 % moisture content. The free water contents of apples, peaches, pears, and potatoes decreased by 94.94%, 89.76%, 91.53%, and 99.49%, respectively. A large amount of free water was removed from the pre-dried samples during the early drying stage. The shrinkage rate of dried crisps decreased gradually, as the water conversion point continued to decrease, whereas, there was an increase in the porosity, hardness, chewiness, and elastic modulus. The higher shrinkage ratios were found in the crisps of apple, peach, and pear, compared with the rest. The higher hardness was found in the crisps of potato and yam. Green radish crisps shared the more severe fractures of the cell wall and the highest porosity. There was a significant difference in the texture properties of fruit and vegetable crisps with the different moisture conversion points (P<0.05). Once the water conversion point was 60%, the hardness and brittleness of the fruit and vegetable crisps were relatively higher, with the potato and yam crisps having the highest hardness, whereas, the peach and pear crisps had the highest brittleness. The dried crisps presented a too-soft texture and poor taste at the lower water conversion point. The reason was that the fruits and vegetables with the higher moisture easily formed the dry layer on the surface of the samples during expansion, resulting in a higher hardness of the chips. Once the moisture content was lower, the skeleton structure in the samples were basically formed after vacuum freeze-drying, while the subsequent explosion puffing drying then resulted in insufficient expansion force and minimal impact on the texture of the samples. The porosity of green radish crisps was significantly higher than that of the rest when the water conversion point was 30%. The skeleton in the samples was basically formed at the later stage of drying. The lower shrinkage ratio resulted in a larger internal porosity. The higher the water conversion point was, the shorter the combined drying time was, particularly for the fruits and vegetables, except for peach and pear, and the lower the energy consumption for all fruits and vegetables was. The statistical analysis revealed that the moisture conversion point and porosity played a crucial role in the texture properties of the fruit and vegetable crisps during vacuum freeze-drying. The finding can provide a significant implication on the drying time and energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Land suitability for rural settlements can greatly contribute to revealing the matching between human activities and the ecological environment, as well as social economy. Taking Li County in the uppers reaches of the Minjiang River as the study area; a systematic evaluation of land suitability was conducted using rural geography, landscape ecology, and niche model. A GIS spatial analysis was also performed on the landscape pattern using remote sensing images, socioeconomic statistics, and land use multi-source data, particularly considering the geographical scale of rural settlements and the degree of suitability between humans and natural environmental conditions. Firstly, the optimal scale was identified for land suitability of rural settlements in the study area. Secondly, the representative indicators were selected to construct an evaluation index system, according to the status quo of the region. Finally, a niche suitability model was used to evaluate the land suitability for the rural settlements. The results were as following: 1) The optimal scale was supposed to be 60 m in the study area, where the suitable scale ranging from 50-60 m in the first scale domain of landscape indices. The changes of landscape indexes were also obtained in the 8 rural settlements response to 20 rural settlement scales. 2) Each evaluation index was quantified to obtain the current restrictive conditions at the optimal scale of 60 m, such as forbidden construction area, water source protection area, and nature reserve. GIS spatial overlay function was also utilized to evaluate the land suitability of rural settlements. The suitable land area for rural settlement only accounted for 4.58% of the whole area. Specifically, the area of low suitable zone accounted for 0.52%, whereas, the moderate and highly suitable areas accounted for 4.06%, mainly distributing in the eastern and northeastern towns and the lower reaches of the Zagunao River Basin, along the National Highway 317. 3. The low unsuitable area was 4 116.03 km2 harsh for sustainable survival and development, mainly located in the water source and ecological protection areas prone to geological disasters. The moderately suitable areas presented outstanding characteristic industries and great potential to develop modern agriculture, in terms of natural resources and local conditions. The highly suitable areas behaved obvious advantages in terms of location, economy, natural and cultural resource conditions, indicating a relatively complete rural function and high level of economic development. It was supposed to be the main gathering area of rural population and industries. The moderate and highly suitable areas gained relatively distinct potentials for economic and social development. Therefore, the main space for rural revitalization can be concentrated on the moderate and highly suitable areas of rural settlement in the future. Additionally, it should be properly considered to explore the impact of industrial and commercial enterprises, public service facilities, and other land-use types on the land suitability of rural settlement against the requirements of rural revitalization strategy. This finding can provide a sound scientific basis to reconstruct the rural settlements for the optimization of territory space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of land spatial consolidation under the background of ecological civilization construction, ecological restoration of territorial space is an important method to improve the ecosystem service function and optimize the spatial structure. According to the method and practice demand of the current ecological restoration of provincial territorial space in the ecological fragile areas of Northwest China, this paper took the county (district) as the basic research unit, combined the supply-demand analysis of ecosystem services with the ecological restoration of land space, used the modified ecosystem service value equivalent to quantify the supply of ecosystem services, and measured the total demand of ecosystem services based on the per capita demand of specified ecosystem services. Finally, this paper explored the method of provincial ecological restoration based on the difference of coupling index between supply and demand of ecosystem services. Gansu Province is an important water conservation area of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, but it has been trapped with the problem of the mismatch between the supply and demand of ecosystem services for a long time, the human-environment contradiction is increasingly prominent, and the ecological environment problems such as soil erosion and vegetation destruction occur frequently. Based on the physical geographic environment and ecosystem characteristics of Gansu Province, the supply- demand analysis of food supply, carbon sequestration and oxygen release, water conservation and soil conservation services were conducted, and the spatial distribution traits were analyzed. Secondly, based on the supply-demand coupling status of four ecosystem services, the dominant mode of ecosystem services supply-demand coupling in each county (District) were identified. Thirdly, the paper identified the dominant restrictive factors and adjustability of the coupling mode of ecosystem services supply and demand, and then proposed the ecological protection and restoration and its leading direction according to the principle of "protecting ecological source areas and repairing damaged areas". The empirical result of case study in Gansu Province informs us that: 1) in addition to food supply services, the total supply of water conservation services, carbon sequestration and oxygen release services and soil conservation services in counties of Gansu Province is greater than the total demand, but there is a significant spatial mismatch between supply and demand. 2) There are four modes of supply-demand coupling condition in Gansu Province, which are “high supply and high demand”, “low supply and high demand”, “high supply and low demand”, and “low supply and low demand”, and the latter two are the dominant two modes. 3) According to the difference between the supply and demand of regional ecosystem services and the coupling mode of supply and demand, Gansu Province was divided into four ecological restoration regions: Oasis conservation, carbon sequestration, water conservation and soil conservation. Based on the physical geographical environment and regional ecological problems, the 4 regions were further divided into 12 sub regions, and corresponding ecological protection and restoration engineering suggestions were proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timely and accurate identification of oestrus behavior of sows can effectively increase the conception rate and litter size, which is of great significance to improve the breeding level and economic benefits of breeding enterprises.The traditional identification methods of oestrus behavior of sows have the problems of high working intensity, strong subjectivity and low automation level. Some identification methods of oestrus behavior of sows based on internet of things also have some problems, such as high false alarm times, high error rate and long recognition time. In order to solve the problems of low identification accuracy and efficiency, a oestrus behavior recognition method of sows based on Moth-Flame Optimization optimized Long Short Term Memory(MFO-LSTM) was proposed in this paper, and the verification test was carried out at WuFeng breeding farm in Xinghualing district, Taiyuan city, Shanxi Province. The posture data of sows were obtained by posture sensors installed on the neck of the sows. The posture data describing the sow's motion state contained three-axis acceleration, three-axis angular velocity, three-axis angle, three-axis magnetic field and quaternion. The collected posture data was manually marked according to the videos, and preprocessed to obtain a posture classification data set. Then, the MFO algorithm was used to optimize the numbers of first and second hidden layer neurons, maximum training period, block size and learning rate, thus, the LSTM network model was built. Postures of sows were divided into three categories, i.e. standing, lying and mounting. Through the statistics of the duration of each complete mounting behavior of the sows, the range of the recognition time of the oestrus behavior was obtained. The sows posture classification results were counted with different oestrus behavior recognition duration, and two characteristics of mounting behavior and activity were then extracted, so as to obtain the recognition feature matrix of oestrus behavior of sows. Finally, the feature matrix was input into the MFO-LSTM classification model to judge whether the sow was oestrus. The experimental results showed that the classification method of sows posture proposed could effectively distinguish the three postures of standing, lying and mounting. The classification effects of proposed method were better than that of the Support Vector Machine (SVM), Probabilistic Neural Network(PNN), Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) and Extreme Learning Machine(ELM). The average accuracy, recall rate and F1 in the attitude data set were 98.02%, 96.26% and 96.18, respectively. On the basis of accurately identifying the sows’ posture, the effect of oestrus behavior recognition based on MFO-LSTM algorithm was verified. The test results showed that the recognition effect was best when the oestrus recognition duration was 30 min at this time, the error rate, recall rate and specificity of oestrus recognition were 13.43%, 90.63% and 81.63%, respectively. The oestrus behavior of sows recognition method proposed effectively reduced the error rate while maintaining a high recall rate and specificity. Compared with other methods, the error rate was reduced by more than 80%, the oestrus behavior of sow could be recognized after 30 min of oestrus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transitional zone of Beijing Bay forms the mountain-plain boundary lines and rural-urban social distinctions. The balance of ecological protection and economic development dominates in the regional boundary. Therefore, there is a significant gradient effect on the supply of ecosystem service in the Beijing Bay. In this study, nine typical ecosystem services were evaluated in the Beijing Bay using grids as the research unit, according to the biophysical processes formed by ecosystem services. Vegetation coverage and land development intensity were used to characterize gradient effect of ecosystem services, further to delineate four partitions with the dominant ecosystem service. The results showed that: 1) There was remarkable spatial variation in the distribution of ecosystem services due to the different formation process and influencing factors. Some services, such as food supply, increased from the hilly mountain to plain areas, indicating that ecosystem was greatly affected by human activity. The supply of ecosystem services, such as biodiversity, showed an opposite trend, due to ecosystem types and biophysical processes increased from flat plain to mountain. Specifically, water conservation and recreation determined the supply of ecosystem services. 2) Except recreation, most ecosystem services showed obviously gradient effects with vegetation coverage and i land development intensity. Each ecosystem service can be identified 0-2 mutation points along the change of two factors. In vegetation coverage, the mutation points of ecosystem services were 0.45-0.56, whereas in the intensity of land development were 15%-31%. Food supply and water quality regulation revealed a dramatic decrease as the increase in vegetation coverage between two identified mutation points. Water retention, quality regulation of air and soil increased significantly with the increase of vegetation coverage below the one identified mutation point. Carbon storage and erosion control constantly increased as the increase in vegetation coverage. Biodiversity enhanced remarkably with the increase of vegetation coverage between two identified mutation points. Food supply and water quality regulation showed an increasing trend with the improvement of land development intensity. Other ecosystem services continuously showed a significant downward trend with the increase in the intensity of land development. There was no mutation in water retention, carbon storage, erosion control and soil quality regulation with land development intensity. 3) Using the mutation points of vegetation coverage and land development intensity, the transitional zone of Beijing Bay was divided into four ecological regions, where the vegetation coverage of 0.45 and 15% intensity of land development. Natural or near natural region was dominated by regulation services, whereas the artificial area was dominated by supply services. Both semi-natural and semi-artificial regions were dominated by regulation and supply services, with an emphasis on a certain transitional feature. An optimized strategy of ecosystem services was proposed, according to the characteristics of different ecological regions. The findings can provide a sound basis for ecological protection, ecological restoration, and compensation policies, further to promote the sustainable development of local ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate determination of yield components can assist in predicting the final crop yields, revealing the physiological significance of yield estimation. Research on the direct prediction of crop yield components is still lacking, because the feature data of yield components for long sequence are difficult to obtain, and some highly variable factors influence each other on the accuracy of the estimation. In this study, the spike quantity per plant (SQ), grain number per spike (GN), and 1000-grain weight (1 000 GW) of winter wheat were taken as prediction targets, to determine the optimal method for the prediction of winter wheat yield components. 126 independent factors were achieved using the puffing technology for meteorological factors after assessing the factors of planting species, density and region. A multivariable linear regression was used to analyze the crucial factors correlated to the concerned crop yield, and thereby to determine the quantitative relationship between the factors and yields. Three multiple regression models for the yield components of winter wheats were constructed after the 126 independent factors were regressed step by step. The determination coefficient R² of the three multiple regression models were 0.515, 0.178 and 0.368, respectively, all at a low level than before. In collinearity diagnosis, if the characteristic values of multiple dimensions in 3 models were approaching to be zero, or the corresponding condition indexes were greater than 10, the time-delay prediction can occur due to the multicollinearity relation between factors. To solve this collinearity among factors and verify the data structure, a factor analysis was conducted to transform various observed variables into a few typical comprehensive factors. The optimized 126 independent variables made it possible to reduce the factor dimension. After factors optimization, 10 comprehensive factors were obtained to establish the three multiple regression predicting models of yield components, and the determination coefficient R² were 0.376, 0.111 and 0.288, respectively, all less than 0.5. Based on neural network principle, a back-propagating neural network (BPNN) model was established between multiple independent factors and dependent variables, due to its ability for an approximate representation without restricting the input-output data. The determination coefficient R² of the proposed model was 0.644 under the optimal model structure (126-16-3), indicating much better than that from the multiple linear regression and factor analysis. The overall prediction accuracy of BPNN model was 85.3%. The average prediction accuracies of grain number (GN) and 1000-grain weight (1 000 GW) were 88.1% and 89.5%, respectively, showing significantly higher than that of spike quantity per plant (SQ). In the prediction regions, the average prediction accuracies of the BPNN model were more than 80% in 6 regions, with the highest prediction accuracy of 89.6% in the east coast of Jiangsu. The results demonstrate that the nonlinear feature of BPNN model can be used to improve the approximation ability when dealing with multiple factors. The BPNN modeling is strongly recommended to predict yield components of winter wheat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Improving the ecosystem service function and production function of cultivated land is the main objective of well-facilitated farmland construction, while well-facilitated farmland zoning and regulation design aimed to improve ecological service function is the fundamental premise for the effective implementation of ecological farmland construction. At present, the emphasis of well-facilitated farmland construction is to achieve the goal of good quality of cultivated land, centralized and continual cropland, infrastructure supporting, rational ecological landscape pattern and stable spatial distribution through engineering technology and other measures. On the basis of the existing goals, taking Yuzhong County, Gansu Province as a typical case, the paper tried to explore the theory and method of ecological farmland construction zoning in loess hilly region. Firstly, taking village as the basic research unit, based on InVEST model, the paper evaluated 4 different values of ecosystem services which are habitat quality, soil retention, carbon sequestration, and food supply. Then the paper analyzed the spatial differentiation of various types of ecosystem services, and found out the low-value ecosystem service types for each research unit. Secondly, the paper identified obstacle factors which affect regional ecosystem services, and divided them into controllable factors and un-controllable factors. Thirdly, through the relationship framework between well-facilitated farmland construction measures and ecosystem service functions, combined with the controllable obstacle factors, the construction directions of well-facilitated farmland in different regions are determined, as well as the measures of ecological well-facilitated farmland construction zoning and regulation. The main contribution of the paper is to discuss the relationship between well-facilitated farmland construction measures and ecosystem service functions, and to put forward a set of ideas and methods for delineating ecological well-facilitated farmland construction zoning based on ecosystem services evaluation. Results show that, Yuzhong County’s ecosystem services have obvious spatial difference. Among them, the habitat quality shows a decreasing trend from southwest to northwest area. The spatial difference of soil erosion is large, which is controlled by topography and vegetation cover and other factors. The high value area is mainly distributed in the loess hilly area and the northwest area, and the low value area is mainly located in the southern mountainous area and the central valley basin area. Similar to the habitat quality, the spatial distribution of carbon sequestration services also shows spatial characteristics of decreasing from south to north. Because of the better soil and water conditions in the central valley basin, the spatial distribution of food supply services shows that it is low in the north and south mountains, and high in the central basin. On the basis of the spatial difference of ecosystem services and the identification of controllable obstacle factors, 4 zoning types of ecological well-facilitated farmland construction in Yuzhong are obtained, which are habitat quality improvement zone, food supply and carbon sequestration service promotion zone, habitat quality and carbon sequestration service promotion zone, and habitat quality, food supply and carbon sequestration service promotion zone. Corresponding regulation and control measures are put forward for different types of ecological well-facilitated farmland construction zoning. The construction division can effectively promote the ecological function of “fields, water, roads and forests”, which is the effective mode to achieve the simultaneous improvement of ecological service functions and production, and it also can provide important basis for theoretical thinking and practical innovation of ecological civilization construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The change of land cover has a profound influence on the quality and distribution pattern of the regional habitat, thus changing the function and evolution of biodiversity. As a special ecology function zone, the ecological security of Three Gorges Reservoir Area affects the whole Yangtze River valley. The proportion of the total area of Three Gorges Reservoir Area in Chongqing City reaches 80%, and thus the study on land cover change and ecosystem and biodiversity function evolution is beneficial to the regional ecological environment protection, remediation and improvement. Taking Three Gorges Reservoir Area (Chongqing section) as an example, this paper analyzed the evolution and trend of regional land cover and biodiversity function from the year of 2005 to 2020 through the comprehensive use of the CA-Markov (cellular automaton and Markov) model and InVEST (integrated valuation of ecosystem services and tradeoffs) model. For the data used in this paper, one part was from the remote sensing monitoring data in The ecological ten years, which was issued by the Ministry of National Environmental Protection, and the other part was from the land use map in 2015. Based on the software of ArcGIS 10.1, ENVI 5.0 and IDRISI, the land use type was classified into 6 kinds in the evolution and trend of land cover and biodiversity function of the study area. On the basis of the simulation of land cover in 2020 by using CA-Markov model, the InVEST model was used to quantitatively calculate the biodiversity function in 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. The results showed that: 1) In the 2 periods of 2005-2010 and 2010-2015, various types of land cover areas and land cover dynamic degrees showed the state of "four increase and two decrease" and "three increase and three decrease". 2) The Kappa coefficient reached 0.92 when the CA-Markov model was used in simulation, which showed that the model could be well applied to the simulation of land cover in Three Gorges Reservoir Area (Chongqing section). 3) The highest values of habitat degradation index in the 4 yeas were 0.1681, 0.2071, 0.1909, and 0.1812, respectively, and the higher habitat degradation index was located in the city's surrounding areas as well as the banks of the Yangtze River, Jialing River and Wujiang River, and Daba Mountain's habitat degradation index was lower. 4) The good regional habitat quality was mainly distributed in the areas including Daba Mountain, Wuling Mountain and Simian Mountain, while the poor biodiversity function appeared alongside the Yangtze River and Jialing River. The total score and the average score of the 4 years were 34337710, 36829020, 36345590, 35530500 and 0.5139, 0.5512, 0.5439, 0.5317, respectively. 5) The analysis of habitat quality showed that the function of biodiversity was increasing in the past 15 years, which changed from the large scale fluctuation into small area change, and the biodiversity function of the whole region tended to be stable. The research may reveal the influence of dynamic land cover change on biodiversity function, show the important role of the delineation of red line of ecological protection to regional ecological security, and provide scientific basis for optimizing the regional ecological environment, as well as scientific support for the sustainable development of regional economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A pot experiment of hot pepper was conducted at Agrometeorology Research Station of Jiangsu Province from April to July, 2015 to assess the effect of irrigation water salinity on evapotranspiration, yield, fruit quality and water use efficiency. Five salinity treatments of 0.9(CK), 1.6, 2.7, 4.7 and 7 dS/m were used and each treatment was replicated 4 times. The 20 pots were completely randomized block design. Irrigation water salinity was increasing by adding 1∶1 milli equivalent concentrations of NaCl and CaCl2 to half strength Hoagland solution. Plants were irrigated with 120% of evapotranspiration. A glass bottle was set underneath each pot to collect drainage water amount. Evapotranspiration was calculated by water balance method. Results showed that the soil salinity was accumulated when irrigated with increasing salinity content of irrigation water. The electrical conductivities of saturated soil extracts(ECe) was significant(P<0.001) linearly increased with the increase of irrigation water salinity. Evapotranspiration significant linearly decreased with the irrigation water salinity and ECe, and the effect was mainly on fruit maturation and harvesting stage. Compared to CK, the seasonal evapotranspiration was significantly decreased by 13%-40% except for irrigation water salinity of 1.6 dS/m. Compared with CK, the yield of hot pepper significantly decreased by 27%-65% when irrigation water salinity higher than 1.6 dS/m. This was as a result of reduction in single fruit weight and single fruit number. The relationship between relative yield and ECe was analyzed. The percentage yield loss per unit increase in ECe beyond the threshold value was 5.61% and threshold value of ECe was 1.5 dS/m, which presented the hot pepper was considered moderately sensitive to salinity. The yield response factor was 1.72, indicating that hot pepper was sensitive to water stress caused by salinity. The fruit length, maximum fruit width, singe fruit weight and number and fruit water content decreased, while fruit firmness and total soluble solid increased as irrigation water salinity increased. The water use efficiency of hot pepper also significant linearly decreased with the irrigation water salinity. This was because salinity reduced water loss more than the reduced yield. When irrigation water salinity was 1.6 dS/m, the evapotranspiration, yield and water use efficiency of hot pepper was not significant decreased. Thus the irrigation water salinity of 1.6 dS/m could be adapted to irrigation when fresh water was limited. The study could provide valuable information for production of hot pepper and improving water use efficiency under saline irrigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]