This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of fertilizer application on heterotrophic soil respiration (Rh) in soil respiration (Rs) components in red pine stands. Two types of fertilizer (N₃P₄K₁ = 113:150:37 kg·ha⁻¹·year⁻¹; P₄K₁ = 150:37 kg·ha⁻¹·year⁻¹) were applied manually on the forest floor for two years. Rs and Rh rates were monitored from April 2011 to March 2013. Mean Rs and Rh rates were not significantly affected by fertilizer applications. However, Rh in the second year following fertilizer application fell to 27% for N₃P₄K₁ and 17% in P₄K₁ treatments, while there was an increase of 5% in the control treatments compared with the first fertilization year. The exponential relationships between Rs or Rh rates and the corresponding soil temperature were significant (Rh: R² = 0.86–0.90; p < 0.05; Rs: R² = 0.86–0.91; p < 0.05) in the fertilizer and control treatments. Q₁₀ values (Rs increase per 10 °C increase in temperature) in Rs rates were lowest for the N₃P₄K₁ treatment (3.47), followed by 3.62 for the P₄K₁ treatment and 3.60 in the control treatments, while Rh rates were similar among the treatments (3.59–3.64). The results demonstrate the importance of separating Rh rates from Rs rates following a compound fertilizer application.

This study was carried out to determine the carbon (C) allocation of tree components following water stress in radiata pine (Pinus radiata) seedlings. The seedlings were exposed to various water contents (low, moderate and high soil water content) for 30 days and labelled with ¹⁴CO₂ gas for six hours on the 31st day. Biomass in all seedling components (foliage, stems and roots) was significantly higher in the moderate soil water content treatment than in the low soil water content treatment, while seedling biomass did not significantly differ between the moderate soil water and high soil water content treatments. The shoot/root ratio of seedlings decreased when soil water content decreased. The C concentrations of radiata pine seedlings were not affected by the soil water content, whereas the soil water stress-induced difference in the C allocation of seedlings was attributed to differences in seedling biomass. The translocation of pulse-labelled ¹⁴C from the foliage to the roots was enhanced by low soil water content. The distribution of ¹⁴C was highest in foliage, followed by roots, stems and soil. The results indicate that soil water content was one of the primary factors influencing biomass allocation in the early growth of radiata pine seedlings.

Efficient phenotyping is essential for accelerating genetic improvement in turfgrass breeding, where manual measurements are labor-intensive. This study evaluated hyperspectral imaging (HSI) as a high-throughput tool for assessing Zoysia spp. breeding populations consisting of 464 genotypes. HSI data (400–1000 nm) were processed through a user-in-the-loop hybrid segmentation pipeline integrating UMAP dimensionality reduction, DBSCAN clustering, Random Forest classification, and pseudo-RGB refinement. To independently assess vegetation classification performance, 10,000 manually annotated reference points from 50 pseudo-RGB images were compared with the automated module, yielding an overall accuracy of 0.9697, a precision of 0.8830, a recall of 0.9240, a specificity of 0.9779, an F1-score of 0.9030, and Cohen’s kappa of 0.8851. A Combined Ranking Score (CRS) integrating five vegetation indices and vegetation pixel count was significantly associated with aerial shoot count (r = −0.445, p < 0.001) and runner count (r = −0.207, p < 0.001). The highest-ranked genotype showed a 9370.3-pixel increase in vegetation area between 6 and 16 weeks after transplanting, compared with 1417.7 pixels for the lowest-ranked genotype. Classification performance declined under high-coverage conditions, indicating increased mixed-pixel ambiguity in dense canopies. These results suggest that HSI-based CRS can support rapid, objective, and non-destructive relative ranking of density-related vegetative growth in turfgrass breeding. Because the study was conducted at a single location and season and correlations with manual traits were moderate, the framework is best interpreted as a screening and ranking tool rather than a direct predictive model.

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of plantation age on the distribution of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in forest floor components in radiata pine (Pinus radiata D. Don) plantations. Forest floor samples from plantations of three age classes (13-year-old; 27-year-old; 41-year-old) with various site qualities (II–VII) were collected from the Kuitpo radiata pine plantations in the Mount Lofty forest region of South Australia. The C concentrations of the forest floor components were significantly higher in the 41-year-old plantation than in the 13-year-old plantation, whereas the N concentrations were significantly lower in the 41-year-old plantation than in the 13-year-old plantation, except for the needle component. The C and N content of needles was significantly larger in the 13-year-old plantation than in the 41-year-old plantation, whereas fine woody materials, such as branches and bark, contributed less to the total C and N contents in the 13-year-old plantation. The total C content of the forest floor did not significantly differ with age, whereas the N content was significantly affected by age in the radiata plantations. The results reflect the existence of considerable variation in the quality and quantity of the C and N in forest floor components associated with different ages of radiata pine growing in sites of various qualities