In spite of being the main commercial substrate in the world, peat moss is not so economic for grower to use because of its high cost. The purpose of this study was to investigate the substitution of peat moss with some organic wastes as growing media. The study was conducted on pathos in college of Agriculture, Tehran University. A factorial experiment was arranged using a completely randomized design with 6 replications. During this experiment the effects of 4 organic media including: peat moss, coca peat, palm peat and baggasse with two level of perlite (0 and 50%) on POTHOS growth were investigated. The highest values of leaf area, leaf number, offset number, shoot and root fresh and dry weights and shoot length were observed in coca peat and the lowest values of measured growth indices were obtained in baggasse. Peat moss and palm peat showed similar effects on most growing indices. Coco peat and palm peat were similar in some of their characteristics such as CEC, pH, bulk density and total porosity but different in water holding capacity which was higher in coco peat than the other. If this characteristic of palm peat be improved, it would be a good substitute for peat moss in future. The results showed that baggasse was not a proper organic media. Coco peat despite of having best result on plant growth rate is not recommended because it is an imported media and is not so economic. The results of adding perlite to media were different according to the type of media.

Indoor air pollution is one of the most important environmental subjects in the world with serious side effects on human health. We report the result of a three replications and factorial design experiment that assesses the effect of plants (Epipremnum aureum and Dracaena trifasciata) on the removal of indoor air pollution. To gain the objects, potted plants were placed individually in 125 liters airtight glass containers (chamber) which had a small valve to inject and sucking airs. Each plant was exposure to, benzene 25 and 50 μ, l/l, acetone 25 and 50 μ, l/l, ethanol 50 μ, l/l and methanol 50 μ, l/l during a day (24 hours). According to the biochemical examination electrolyte leakage (%) of POTHOS was decreased especially in acetone 25 μ, l/l versus on treated sansevieria increased. Total chlorophyll content of sansevieria in all treatments was increased, while it was decreased when POTHOS exposure to benzene 25, benzene 50 μ, l/l and methanol 50 μ, l/l. Catalase activity and superoxide dismutase showed converse results. In both plant species catalase activity was decreased especially in acetone 50, however superoxide dismutase activity was increased in all treatments and in sansevieria exposure to benzene 50 μ, l/l more than others. There was no significant change in proline content of POTHOS, although there was significant increase in acetone 50 μ, l/l and ethanol 50 μ, l/l of sansevieria. The results indicate when plants exposure to the benzene, tissue cells damaged more than other treatments while, acetone had least amount of tissue cell damage. According to this paper results, both plant species have the potential of indoor air pollution phytoremediation but, POTHOS had higher adaptability in pollutant indoor area.

To Select an appropriate medium for the growth of plant is one of the problems of most greenhouse owners in production of pot ornamentals. So, current research was conducted to evaluate effect of some available media in mixtured by perlite on the growth of POTHOS. Study was based on a completely randomized design with 5 treatments, 8 measuring times and 6 replications in a fiberglass greenhouse of Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources during 2009-2010. The treatments include ratios of perlite+leaf compost, perlite+rice husk, perlite+cocopeat, perlite+composted forest trees and perlite+mushroom compost. Parameters such as plant height, stem diameter, leaf number, leaf fresh and dry weight and chlorophyll content were measured. Moreover, plants were compared according to their overall shape and appearance. The results of data analysis showed that the effect of medium, measuring time and their interaction were significant in all traits. The marketing value of POTHOS including plant height, leaf number and chlorophyll content, had a better response in perlite+leaf compost and perlite+mushroom compost media.

Background & Aims of the Study: This study was conducted to investigate effects of biofertilizers application and its interaction with organic manures on Scindapsus aureus performance.Materials & Methods: The experiment was performed in a randomized block design with factorial arrangement of two above mentioned factors at greenhouse of Municipality fertilizer production factory. Three different fertilizers (vermicompost, granular compost fortified with sulphur and trash compost) were applied at four levels of 5, 10, 15, and 20 percent of soil. The comparisons among means were made using the least significant difference test calculated at p-values<0.05.Results: Around leaves area index (LAI), performance of vermicompost (8.31) was better than other fertilizers. This increase can be related to more absorb nutrients, better nutrition and thus improve plant performance in the presence of vermicompost.Conclusions: Thus use of fertilizers and especially vermicompost in the Scindapsus aureus growth with 10% of soil, will achieve increase in all indicators of plant growth. Thus, the processes of biological conversion such as composting in addition to economic value also have benefits for environmental protection.

The Sky View Factor, in abbreviation form known as SVF, is a parameter which is a key in Urban Heat Island (UHI) formation. This coefficient denotes the ratio between the received radiation on a planner surface and the whole available radiation from the entire radiating environment. Having no unit, the quantity is ranged between 0 from an absolutely obstructed view toward the sky to 1 which is assigned to an unobstructed planner surface. Measuring SVF is quite prevalent approach in urban studies in many developed countries, though in Iranian context it has to be dealt yet. The lag is the direct cause of fractional consideration of environmental chapter in urban planning/design studies that has been of partial importance to the experts. However, deteriorating environmental condition of the country’s metropolitans urges the issue to tackle and leads to raising awareness. Thus taking environmental parameters; and SVF in particular; into account is relatively pervasive amid specialists. While studying SVF in Iran is inevitable, it carries two folds. Primarily, the transformation of environment as the consequent of excessive changes in material from natural to human-made has intensified the urban heat island formation. Numerous unwanted impacts including citizens’ health issues, increasing mortality ratio and higher energy consumption is assumed and experienced accordingly. Secondarily, scientific precedent and field studies lead to globally well approval that application of a proper green coverage is the most accepted method to urban heat island reduction in urban open spaces such as squares, parks and parking lots. Nevertheless, one could not find a solid and robust interpretation of ‘proper’ in the coined term of ‘proper green coverage’ in Iranian academic literature with good agreement within climatic requirement. Therefore, on top of identifying the correlation between the SVF and geometrical proportion of the green coverage or community, it is crucial to develop a better understanding of the impact of green coverage on the temperature of the urban open spaces which are planted with the same green objects. Ultimately, it would be feasible to propose selection and combination of that community suited and tailored for Iranian cities. The main objective of this research is to identify the correlation between the Sky View Factor and the green coverage and subsequently, studying its effect on the ambience as well as surface temperature in a case like an urban park. To achieve this, Tehran Metropolis; the largest city of the country; is selected as the case so that the Iranian wide variation of climatic region narrows down to the limitation of MSc thesis and an article. For the purpose of  surveying diffident combination of green community in an urban open space, a park named Laleh Park is chosen. For attaining a better calibration, a field study comprising of 15 stations in that park is carried out. The time span for collecting data is five days in spring of 2014. The study is equipped with a fish-eye lens assembled on a professional camera in order to shoot and record SVF picture. The primary data were keyed in a computer software known as ‘Sky View Factor Calculator’ to make it ready for analysis. It is worth to mention that a standard Wt-2 thermometer is utilized to measure the surface and atmosphere temperature. The result; asserted by precedent studies; show that there is a significant and meaningful correlation between the green community and the Sky View Factor. Additionally, it shows that the correlation between the SVF and temperature is meaningful and positive (p-value=0.035 & r2=0.262) within the park space. The correlation between the differential temperature of surface and that of the atmosphere with the SVF is meaningful only in FL station (p-value=0.023 ,r2= 0.929). This implies that some of the green community combination have no important and significant effect on surface temperature reduction which could be due to the density and number of planted objects in adjacency of the corresponding station. In the next step, the investigation of the correlation between the surface temperature and the canopy of the tree yields in no meaningful relationship (p-value=0.47, r2= 0.202), hence one can sum up that the crown diameter crown of the surrounding plants carries no important meaning to the ambience temperature. Finally, the meaningful correlation between the temperature and the leaf size of the green area (r2=0.911) reveals the prominence of the factor for the interior of the park. In conclusion, this is revealed that some of the plants and their combinations have more influence on the temperate of the surface and surroundings in Tehran climatic region. This has implications for urban planners and designers. The board-leaved plants such as Judas-tree, Plane-tree, Boxwood, Sea-buckthorn, Elm-tree and POTHOS must be considered with combination of needle-leaved trees like Weeping-willow, Mediterranean-Cypress and Cypresses in order to have a cooler environment.