The Sea of Azov is the shallowest sea in the world. In fact it's deepest part is only 14m. The Don River empties into the Azov sea. The Volga-Don canal connects the Volga and the Caspian sea with the sea of Azov. The maximum ship size across the canal is 141m with a draft of 3.5m. The Caspian sea region has a ton of oil production.
Russia has a fleet of smaller tankers to move oil, grain etc out of the region. These are 140m long and around 7000 metric tons with a draft of 3.5m.
These are about 1/2 the size as the smallest general purpose tanker in use internationally. These small tankers travel from the Don River across the Azov Sea. They then transfer their loads into larger tankers in the black sea or holding tanks in the area.
Because of their relatively small size Russia has built a ton of them. Look at Rostov-on-Don on a satellite view. They are packed into the Don River.
I believe he is a western toad. They are quite common in this area and have a very broad range of habitats they survive in.
Mr. Toad has been living in my back yard for around 7 years. I see him close to daily all summer. He keeps the spiders and and other bugs down under my house. He's a really good friend.
When it gets too hot he goes for a swim in the koi pond.
My wife is a teacher to teenagers (high school). She gets called mom on a regular basis. Especially when she wakes one of them up from a little classroom nap. It happens often enough the kids don't even give each other a hard time.
Now when they call her grandma... She doesn't find that endearing.
Okay, the more I read the methods of their study the more "What the ever living fuck are these idiots doing?"
It's a greenhouse study of a plugs in pots extracted from an established field. Okay, that works except ... It's an irregular mix of species including a legume. Sort of tossed the entire study into question. They discussed this issue a bit at the end and blew it off.
The source of fertilizer is mostly manure slurry. Okay odd choice given that manure slurry is known to vary dramatically in the balance of nutrient content and microbial composition. This massively effects its availability and uptake ratio into plants. Specifically important is a ratio of ammonium, nitrite and nitrate.
But there's the a kicker they added in a heavy isotope of N (15N) in ammonia sulfate form as a marker into the manure. That's how they attempted to tell the difference between existing soil N and N from the shit. Are you fucking kidding me....
What the study actually showed was plants under environmental stress uptake a heavier isotope of N at a slower rate. Their results have nothing to fucking do with where the plants extracted the nitrogen from (the soil or the manure). That's not what they tested... Dumbasses.
Many industries have entered into a massive depression driven by trade disruptions.
The stock market is detached from reality on a AI cocaine high worse than the roaring 1920's. We are currently looking at a 10+ year depression and WW3 at the end.
"Heirloom" varieties that are sold are poorly maintained and extensively contaminated (often exceeding 50%). So not stable at all.
In order to properly maintain them you'd need closer to 1,000,000 plants with extensive but careful rogueing over over 30 generations with extensive genetic profiling to clean them up. They are all an absolute mess at this point.
Once you got them cleaned up the same 1,000 plants could maintain the population.
I spent a bit of time as a commercial plant breeder. Most of the stuff you find online is inaccurate. Genetics and plant breeding is extremely complicated and species specific. It's not something the average master gardener even has the fundamentals to understand.
For example the answer to your question about saving hybrid corn seed.
One plant of a F1 commercial contains the same heterogenity as a healthy 1,000 plant OP variety population. Commercial hybrids are created by crossing inbreds from separate genetic pools. This helps maintain the required genetic distance between the inbreds to maximize heterosis.
1,000 F2 plants from one F1 is enough to initiate a stable population. Saving less than 1,000 plants on the subsequent generations will create a bottleneck and the population will quickly suffer from inbred depression.
Corporations lying on their books to decieve investors? Shocking!!!!
That only happens on days that end in Y.
They do murder brown people inside the country and nearby it's borders as well.
Clever use of an inexpensive small civilian aircraft. The list price for a brand new one is 20-25K euros. Add in probably 10-15K for the remotes. Gives Ukraine a reusable heavy precision bomber with a few hundred km range for less than 40K. Less than the cost of most one-way medium-long range attack drones.
http://www.skyranger.eu/prices.html
They are also very light and small. The wings can be folded back so they can be stored/transported easily. A regular passenger car can tow them on a small trailer. They can take off and land in less than 300m so they can be used about anywhere.
They are highly susceptible to gound fire, manpads, any type of AA, and some attack drones. However given their cost, a plane making 1-2 successful attacks before being shot down more than justifies their cost.
My wife's fluffy white dog I drive around with for work. He likes to eat higher moisture corn and cow shit.
For silage corn the entire plant is harvested, chopped up, and packed tightly in a pile and covered with plastic or very large plastic bag. This creates an anaerobic conditions and yeasts/bacteria convert the sugars to alcohol, then acids. This acid preserves the feed for cattle for up to 2 years.
Silage corn is the most common base feed for all dairies and feedlots.
This isn't even the tallest variety out there. There are others that are 3' (1m) taller.
The machine with the spout is a chopper. They are a million dollar gigantic woodchipper. These things are fucking terrifying and you should absolutely stay out the field when they are running. Every so often a deer jumps into them.....shudder.... nightmare fuel.
Early in the season before a corn plant is waist high it takes a guess on how many kernals it can fill. Sometimes it guesses wrong and so it aborts the top kernals to fill the rest.
The entire top of the damn plant turns bright red.
As sugars build up in the top of the plant with no place to be transported to, the upper leaves start to turn bright red and die back.
You may get a bar bell ear or there may be no ear on the plant. In of field of millions of plants a bright red top narrows the search down.
Start getting your pinky in shape with this weird environmental triggered trait. It's easy to find in any corn field (to be continued...).
This right here is 350bu/acre of corn. 113 day variety on an almost pure sand field. Every damn ear looked the same. Look at that beauty, every kernal is huge and dense.
This here is trichoderma ear rot in an organic field. This 100 day variety was chewed on by an earworm. The damaged kernals allowed trichderma to enter and infect the ear. This ear rot produces many toxins and is a big no for consumption.
The twist - Trichoderma is usually a beneficial organism in the soil. It feeds on other pathogenic fungus/bacteria and is applied extensively for biological control.
Although normally a secondary pathogen, it has mutated to become a primary pathogen in both Italy and Germany in recent years.
This here is a genetically susceptible 113 day variety to fusarium kernal rot. This is a nasty little fungus that produces all sorts of mycotoxins that can give any mammal that consumes it a belly ache or even death. It's easily identifiable by the white streaks in causes in the kernals.
This 98 day little minx has a flirty pink cob. It doesn't look like much but it packs quite the wallop. The ears posted yielded 302bu. Medium high ear placement and a fast drydown makes this an excellent choice for grain.
This is pretty little 102 day number with a bright white cob that threshes very easily. It does extremely well for dry grain, high moisture grain or earlage.
The field in this picture averaged 305bu.
Probably the easiest plant to care for once you figure it out.
I water it every month or two. Fertilize it every 2 or 3 years. Redirect the arial roots into the pot when I water.
It gets 3 hours of direct sunlight in the morning.
Every 5 or 6 years I haul it outside in the summer. Then leach the pot with the garden hose to remove the salt buildup. I also hack the plant back to a more manageable size.
No it's not really necessary. For many trades a van or a small box truck is more practical. It's what most of the world outside of North America uses.
Pickup trucks popularity as a status or recreational vehicle has heavily influenced the modern design. It's made the newer models harder to use for work without significant modification.
I have driven pickup trucks for work for 20 years now. It's gotten so that I dread having to purchase a new one. It seems like every new model has more "features" to break.