Rachid Bouabid

Ecole Nationale d'Agriculture de Meknès, Meknès, Morocco · Soil Science

Quinoa ( Chenopodium quinoa Wild. ) is a drought and salinity-tolerant crop that originated in the Andes over 7000 years ago. It is adapted to different agroecological areas and can be grown from sea level to an altitude of 4000 m. The outstanding nutritional status of quinoa, with its high content of proteins, vitamins, and minerals, makes it a pr...

In the context of climate change, quinoa represents a potential alternative crop for increasing crops diversity, agricultural productivity, and farmer’s income in semi-arid regions. However, appropriate crop management practices under limited water supply are still poorly documented. Quinoa, like other cultivated crops, needs optimum quantities of...

Throughout the last decade, and particularly in 2022, water scarcity has become a critical concern in Morocco and other Mediterranean countries. The lack of rainfall during spring was worsened by a succession of heat waves during the summer. To address this drought, innovative solutions, including the use of new technologies such as hydrogels, will...

Crops grown under organic systems may suffer from insufficient nitrogen (N) due to the mismatch between the N bio-availability and its demand dynamics by the plant. This work investigates the response of three potato cultivars to a combination of organic fertilizers (compost and fish meal (fish powder). Field trials were conducted during two croppi...

The micronutrient application in agriculture takes place through soil application, foliar spraying or added as seed treatments. The latter method, the nutri-priming, is an appealing option due to the easiness in handling it, environment-friendly, cost effectiveness and efficient against multiple environmental stressors. To assess the feasibility of...

Quinoa is a potential alternative crop for an adaptation strategy for salinization and climate change effects in dryland. A sowing date of February practiced in the Rehamna region, Morocco, resulted in stunted plants and low yields due to insufficient precipitations and high temperatures around the flowering stage. For this reason, a field experime...

Salinity is one of the most important abiotic stresses that decrease yields of most crops around the world, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. The addition of organic amendments is one of the mitigation methods that has been tested in our experiment. In this context, we have investigated the effect of organic amendment (compost) on the green...

Nitrogen resulting from the mineralization of organic fertilizers is of great importance in organic farming and depends greatly on the type of fertilizer used. Two tests (incubation and pot test) were conducted on poor organic matter soil to assess mineralization and N release from different organic sources. The objective of the first test was the...

Quinoa is a highly nutritious and gluten-free crop. It is a good alternative crop to cereals in the context of climate change. In the process of introducing quinoa to an arid region of Morocco (Rehamna), late sowing results in stunted plants and low yields due to insufficient precipitations and high temperatures around the flowering stage. Early so...

Water is a crucial resource for food production and its scarcity associated with frequent droughts has increased the need for a more efficient use of it along with new irrigation management technologies. This study addressed onion crop responses to continuous deficit irrigation with trigging thresholds of readily available water content. The experi...

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of different restricted irrigation strategies on peach trees. Sustainable and regulated deficit irrigation treatments were applied during the 2018/2019 production season in a commercial plot of “Bénédicte” variety located at the Atlas Mountain’s region of Morocco. Five different treatments were te...

La présente étude a pour but d’estimer les pertes en sol dans le bassin versant de l’Oued Mikkès en amont du barrage Sidi Chahed situé dans la région de Meknès (Maroc), par l’utilisation de l’équation universelle révisée des pertes en sol de (Wischmeier et Smith, 1978). La spatialisation du modèle empirique s’est basée sur l’intégration des cinq fa...

Precipitation changes and water use patterns are two factors affecting the water quantity; obviously, hydrologic processes are always linked to many elements in the watershed scale, so to understand water management issues it is fundamental to analyze the different elements of hydrologic processes occurring in the watershed. In this study, the “SWA...

This study explored the effects of two hydro- and osmo-priming durations (8 and 16 h) on growth and yield components of sunflowers (Helianthus annuus L.) under water stress. The pot experiment, performed under a rain shelter, consisted of 9 treatments replicated five times: unprimed seeds as control (C), hydro-primed seeds (T0), osmo-primed seeds i...

Scedosporium species are opportunistic pathogens causing various infections, including disseminated infections in severely immunocompromised patients. Preventive measures aiming to reduce the risk of exposure to these fungi require a better knowledge on their ecology and on the sources of contamination of the patients. In this context, 99 soil samp...

Morocco is one of the countries who’s facing an insufficient water supply for irrigation, therefore it is seeking for new technologies allowing irrigation management evolution. Deficit irrigation is for this reason one of the recommended approaches to deal with this alarming situation. This study deals with the assessment of Sustainable Deficit Irr...

Climatic factors are of a big importance for the determination of phenological stages of several fruit tree species, including apple, during the pre- and post-blooming periods causing their modifications and consequently affecting the fruit quality and productivity. This study aimed to identify the important dormancy phases (chilling and forcing pe...

INTRODUCTION: By definition, drylands include arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones. In the continent of Africa, drylands represent about 43% of the total surface area and cover more than 70% of agricultural land. About 50% of the African population lives in these areas and is significantly fragile in terms of food insecurity. Climate change, wh...

Microelements play important roles in improving crop productivity and quality. Two traditional methods of providing micronutrients are soil and foliar application, yet the cost involved and phytotoxicity risks poses a major challenge in most global agricultural areas. Nutri-priming represents thus a very promising and viable alternative to ensure t...

Agriculture uses more than 80% of water resources in Morocco. The sector is inefficient in terms of water use due to the dominance of surface irrigation. To address this issue, there have been efforts in Moroccan strategies to convert surface irrigation to localized one. This paper analyses the dynamics of conversion from surface irrigation to drip...

Agriculture uses more than 80% of water resources in Morocco. The sector is inefficient in terms of water use because of the dominance of surface irrigation. To address this issue, there have been efforts in Morocco to convert to localized Irrigation. This paper analyses the dynamics of conversion from surface irrigation to drip irrigation in Fes-M...

Climate change projections for the Mediterranean region are predicting a significant rainfall decrease and an increase of temperatures. The consequences of these changes on food security and natural resources in this region might be very dramatic. Anticipating climate change impacts by improving agricultural systems efficiency is a critical need....

The study aims to track the dynamics of the olive leaf nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) for five olive varieties under drip irrigation in farmer's fields in central Morocco. Leaf sampling was done every month from May 2014 to April 2015. Leaf macronutrients contents showed variation over time. Olive leaves have maintained the same N c...

The wastewater treatment and sludge production sectors in Morocco are recent. Considered as waste, no man- agement strategy for sewage sludge (SS) has been implemented. Thus, its disposal definitely represents a major environmental problem since sludge is either incinerated, used as landfill or simply deposited near waste- water treatment plants. T...

Being a laborious approach, manual calibration of hydrologic model in a semi-arid context requires in-depth knowledge of the watershed and as much as possible field input data to obtain reliable simulations. In this study, manual calibration and relative sensitivity analysis approaches of the SWAT model (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) were applied...

Being generally described as coherent entities in hydrological sense, watersheds are considered as study units to assess hydrological cycles and to come up with water management strategies. Hydrological modeling is a tool that can offer the chance to achieve these goals. The model Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been widely used in variou...

Satellite remote-sensing techniques face challenges in extracting vegetation-cover information in desert environments. The limitations in detection are attributed to three major factors: (1) soil background effect, (2) distribution and structure of perennial desert vegetation, and (3) tradeoff between spatial and spectral resolutions of the satelli...

The use of remote sensing techniques to extract vegetation cover information for the assessment and monitoring of land degradation in arid environments has gained increased interest in recent years. However, such a task can be challenging, especially for medium-spatial resolution satellite sensors, due to soil background effects and the distributio...

Cadoux' clementine is a citrus fruit well appreciated by consumers. However, this cultivar produces fruits of small to medium size that are fairly accepted commercially. In a field study, we evaluated the effects of rates and frequencies of foliar potassium (K) fertilization, applied either as potassium nitrate (KNO 3) or potassium sulfate (K 2 SO...

In this study, the clayey fractions from vertisols of five major agricultural regions of Morocco, the Chaouia, the Gharb, the Zaërs, the Doukkala and the Saïs were studied. A reference smetite, the Wyoming montmorillonite (SWY-1) was used for comparison. X-ray diffraction on samples subjected to Mg and K saturations, as well as solvations using eth...

Many remote sensing-based methods face challenges in extracting vegetation cover information from arid and semi-arid environments. This is due to soil background effects, the distribution and structure of perennial desert vegetation. Most methods in remote sensing are insensitive to low-photosynthetic xerophytic vegetation and most classification t...

Modélisation de l'érosion hydrique via les SIG et l'équation universelle des pertes en sol au niveau du bassin versant de l'Oum Er-Rbia - Morocco. The objective of the present work was to estimate soil losses in the oued Oum Er-Rbia watershed (SW Middle Atlas, Morocco). The adopted method is based on the use of Wischmeier model and geographic infor...

In Morocco, as in most developing countries, landfill is still the only solution for the final disposal of municipal solid waste. The choice of suitable site for waste disposal is one of the main problems in waste management. This requires that many environmental and economic considerations be respected. This paper describes a decisional step for l...

Les ordures ménagères posent un énorme problème au Maroc, ils sont responsables des dégâts très importants qui menacent à la fois la vie humaine, les biens et l’environnement. Dans ce contexte, nous avons établi un prototype de SIG comme outil d’aide à la décision dans le domaine de la gestion des problèmes environnementaux, outil qui devrait no...

The Clay fractions of five Moroccan vertisols (Chaouia, Gharb, Doukalla, Zair, and Sais) as well as a reference smectite (montmorillonite SWY-1) were Ca-saturated and dispersed in K+Ca2+ binary exchange solutions with constant ionic forces of 10-2 at 25°C. Exchange isotherms established showed that K is preferentially adsorbed compared to Ca2+ in a...

Clementine var. Cadoux is a citrus fruit that is well appreciated by consumers. However, this cultivar tends to produce fruits of small to medium size that are less accepted commercially. In this field study, we evaluated the effects of various rates and frequencies of foliar potassium (K) fertilization, as either potassium nitrate (KNO3) or potass...

Morocco, like many other Mediterranean countries is facing water resources scarcity due to its arid to semi-arid conditions, affected by the recent climatic changes, mainly recurrent drought events observed during the last five decades. Stream flows, the main feeding source of the major reservoirs used for irrigation, drinking water, and hydro-powe...

Following the definition of the UNCCD, desertification affects a major part of Morocco. A large extent assessment is usually difficult due to the lack of appropriate methods. The MEDALUS approach is one of the available approaches developed initially for the Mediterranean Europe for desertification sensitivity assessment based on four main indicato...

The mineralogies of ‘Tirs’ (Typic Pelloxererts), and ‘Debs’ (Typic Haploxerolls and Typic Xerochrepts) soils of the Gharb plain in north-western Morocco are investigated, with special attention given to the determination of the nature of the smectitic phase using the lithium test (Li test) and the alkylammonium method. The sand and silt mineralogy...

Le pommier représente une des principales espèces fruitières dans la région du Saïs et du Moyen-Atlas. Sa productivité dépend notamment de la fertilisation, qui permet d'assurer aux arbres fruitiers l'apport en éléments minéraux nécessaires pour leur croissance, leur développement et leur production. Des prospections préliminaires au niveau de cert...

Triassic basalts in the Mid-Atlas Mountains of Morocco are represented by lava flow sequences. In a vertical transect, consisting of at least four lavas, the basal unit is covered by a paleosol relic. The basalt is tholeiitic with an ophitic texture, and has a mineralogical assemblage characterised by the presence of pumpellyite and chlorite, indic...

Scanning electron microscopy was used to assess the weathering status of plagioclase and alkali feldspar grains isolated from sandy outwash soils located under three vegetation communities: mixed red and white pine, maple-basswood, and white cedar. Feldspars were selected for this study because they were the most common weatherable minerals in thes...

The coexistence of smectite and palygorskite was investigated in a soil developed on an Upper Cretaceous marl under a semiarid climate. X-ray diffraction analysis demonstrated the predominance of smectite and palygorskite. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy confirmed the presence of a fibrous clay. Palygorskite aggregates were found conc...

A staining technique suitable for epifluorescence microscopy of polished block surfaces was developed using proprietary dyes (Sanford Co.). The dyes greatly enhanced the contrast between particles and pores, thereby allowing, with only minimal processing, the production of images suitable for automated pore and particle size measurements.An algorit...

Forty-four soil clays and four reference phyllosilicate clays were used to establish qualitative and quantitative relationship between clay mineral characteristics and K fixation. The soil clays were obtained from three semiarid regions of northwestern Morocco. The soil clays contained beidellite, montmorillonite, vermiculite, and illite in widely...

Freshly ground albite samples were subjected to 10 days of weathering in low ionic strength aqueous solutions having a pH of 3.50. The samples were weathered in a single pass, short column reactor. Solutions were not recirculated to prevent the accumulation of dissolution products in solution. Weathering products, along with small fragments of the...

Freshly ground albite samples were subjected to 10 days of weathering in low ionic strength aqueous solutions having a pH of 3.50. The samples were weathered in a single pass, short column reactor. Weathering products, along with small fragments of the feldspar surface, were removed from the albite surface by sonication and analyzed by high resolut...

Balanced fertilisation of the major crops should be based on soil testing. The interpretation of soil tests needs regional crop and soil specific critical levels obtained from field experiments. In addition, data on soil nutrients supplying capacity and crop nutrient requirements are needed to estimate the amount of fertilisers to be used by farmer...

– In this paper, drought events were characterized using drought indices in two zones: Meknès, Morocco, and Córdoba, Spain. The Standard deviation method was used to determine drought thresholds on an annual basis, while the deciles method was used to identify the seasonal drought thresholds at the season level (monthly and 10-days periods). The st...