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Assessment of Evapo-Transpiration (ET) in the cases such as Irrigation programming, water basin evaporation determination, water balance calculation, water runoff estimation and climatological studies are important. It is possible to determine ET by field measurements. However these methods only can determine ET for the regions with the limited areas. This limitation has made the use of remote sensing techniques reliable for assessment of ET in a vast area. In this work, the amount of ET has been evaluated in an army wheat field located in the Golestan Province (North of the Iran) for May 5th and June 7th, 2003 using MODIS images. Surface albedo affects in the outcome of SEBAL that we estimate it using two methods, one using 1 and 2 bands of MODIS image (old method) and the other using 1 to 5 and 7 bands of MODIS image (new method). The comparison of the results of SEBAL to the results of other works showed the accuracy of the estimation of surface albedo using the new method is better than the old method. Also, the accuracy of SEBAL outcomes are relatively satisfactory and can be improved by further detailed studies.

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 The objective of the present study was to evaluate antifungal activities of 18 native Bacillus strains against Phytophthora drechsleri Tucker in saline and normal conditions. Besides, the effect of exogenously provided bacterial osmoprotectants (ectoines) on biocontrol activity of three selected Bacillus strains with the highest biocontrol activity and three antagonistic bacteria from two different genera (Pseudomonas fluorescens, Streptomyces rimosus and Streptomyces monomycini) was studied in normal and saline conditions. To reveal the effects of ectoines on the mode of action of antagonism, amylase, protease, lipase, cellulase, chitinase and Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) activity, biofilm formation and intracellular ectoines of the selected strain (Bacillus amyloliquefaciens UTB96) were investigated in normal and saline conditions. Phylogenetic tree based on the 16S rRNA gene sequences divided Bacillus strains into two groups: one clade included strains that were tolerant up to 5% and the second 13% NaCl. Salt (0.3M NaCl) reduced the antagonistic activity of selected Bacillus strains (10.39-38.34%) and P. fluorescens (25.77%) compared to the control. Exogenously provided ectoines adjusted the biocontrol drop caused by NaCl in Bacillus and Pseudomonas strains and increased biocontrol activity of S. monomycini. Salinity (0.3M NaCl) reduced amylase activity of UTB96 up to 17% and ectoines prevented the reduction. Salt also decreased biofilm formation to about 3-fold and ectoines significantly ameliorated the reduction. The HPLC assay indicated that UTB96 accumulated ectoine and hydroxyectoine 0.16 and 0.10 µg/mg cell dry weight, respectively. Exogenously added ectoine and hydroxyectoine led to a significant increase in UTB96 intracellular ectoines concentrations.