[Objective] To water content monitoring study the application of wireless sensor network in field so and to discuss the methods for solving the problems of low sampling rate, high cost and poor real-time in actual mon...[Objective] To water content monitoring study the application of wireless sensor network in field so and to discuss the methods for solving the problems of low sampling rate, high cost and poor real-time in actual monitoring. [Method] The architecture of wireless sensor network, network nodes, hardware design as well as principle for the program structure of software operating system and corresponding parameters were analyzed to illustrate the characteristics of monitoring system for field soil water content based on wireless sensor network, and the advantages in application of this system. [Result] Sensor nodes could correctly collect and transmit soil water content, realize stable data transmission of soil water content, indicating that wireless sensor network is suitable for real-time monitoring of field soil water content. [Conclusion] This study indicates that wireless sensor network possesses a widely application foreground in the development of agriculture.展开更多
The study was conducted to study the rational setting position of sand moisture sensor in real-time control irrigation system for greenhouse tomato. Six treatments were designed according to horizontal distance and ve...The study was conducted to study the rational setting position of sand moisture sensor in real-time control irrigation system for greenhouse tomato. Six treatments were designed according to horizontal distance and vertical depth from sensor to dripper, different upper and lower water content limits were set for differ-ent growth stages, and indexes including tomato growth, root, photosynthetic param-eter, quality, WUE and yield were systematical y analyzed. The result showed that it is suitable to bury soil moisture sensor in sand field with a vertical depth and a horizontal distance both of 10 cm from the dripper.展开更多
Temporal and spatial variation of soil moisture content is significant for crop growth,climate change and the other fields.In order to overcome shortage of non-linear output voltage of TDR3 soil moisture content senso...Temporal and spatial variation of soil moisture content is significant for crop growth,climate change and the other fields.In order to overcome shortage of non-linear output voltage of TDR3 soil moisture content sensor and increase soil moisture content data collection and computational efficiency,this paper presents a RBF neural network calibration method of soil moisture content based on TDR3 soil moisture sensor and wireless sensor networks.Experiment results show that the calibration method is effective...展开更多
The fluid flow and oil-water separation were simulated using a Reynolds stress transport equation model of turbulence in water flow and a stochastic model of oil droplet motion. Simulation results give the axial and t...The fluid flow and oil-water separation were simulated using a Reynolds stress transport equation model of turbulence in water flow and a stochastic model of oil droplet motion. Simulation results give the axial and tangential velocity components, the pressure and turbulence intensity distribution and droplet trajectories for a hydrocyclone of F type and a hydrocyclone proposed by the present authors. The flow field predictions are in qualitative agreement with the LDV measurements. The results show that the proposed hydrocyclone has better performance than the hydrocyclone of F type due to creating stronger centrifugal force and lower axial velocity.展开更多
Droplet turbulence effect on gas-water separator with corrugated plates is explored using the Eulerian-Lagrangian two-way coupled multiphase approach of FLUENT. It is concluded that the inertial force is dominant in s...Droplet turbulence effect on gas-water separator with corrugated plates is explored using the Eulerian-Lagrangian two-way coupled multiphase approach of FLUENT. It is concluded that the inertial force is dominant in separating large droplets, while droplet turbulence dispersion plays a decisive role in separating fine droplets. Good agreement exists between calculations and air-water experiments. The numerical method developed provides a rea-sonable description of the droplet trajectories and separating efficiency, and it can be applied to predicting the performance of gas-water separator with corrugated plates.展开更多
In recent years, the increasing frequency of debris flow demands enhanced effectiveness and efficiency of warning systems. Effective warning systems are essential not only from an economic point of view but are also c...In recent years, the increasing frequency of debris flow demands enhanced effectiveness and efficiency of warning systems. Effective warning systems are essential not only from an economic point of view but are also considered as a frontline approach to alleviate hazards. Currently, the key issues are the imbalance between the limited lifespan of equipment, the relatively long period between the recurrences of such hazards, and the wide range of critical rainfall that trigger these disasters. This paper attempts to provide a stepwise multi-parameter debris flow warning system after taking into account the shortcomings observed in other warning systems. The whole system is divided into five stages. Differentwarning levels can be issued based on the critical rainfall thresholds. Monitoring starts when early warning is issued and it continues with debris flow near warning, triggering warning, movement warning and hazard warning stages. For early warning, historical archives of earthquake and drought are used to choose a debris flow-susceptible site for further monitoring. Secondly, weather forecasts provide an alert of possible near warning. Hazardous precipitation, model calculation and debris flow initiation tests, pore pressure sensors and water content sensors are combined to check the critical rainfall and to publically announce a triggering warning. In the final two stages, equipment such as rainfall gauges, flow stage sensors, vibration sensors, low sound sensors and infrasound meters are used to assess movement processes and issue hazardwarnings. In addition to these warnings, communitybased knowledge and information is also obtained and discussed in detail. The proposed stepwise, multiparameter debris flow monitoring and warning system has been applied in Aizi valley China which continuously monitors the debris flow activities.展开更多
Soil properties and water content vary from place to place. The calibration method based on capacitive soil moisture and humidity sensor is carried out. The sensor readings are compared with the mass water content mea...Soil properties and water content vary from place to place. The calibration method based on capacitive soil moisture and humidity sensor is carried out. The sensor readings are compared with the mass water content measured by the oven dried method,and the calibration formula of sensor reading and mass moisture content is established.Results show that the sensor reading has a good linear relationship with the mass water content measured by the oven dried method,and has high precision. It can calibrate the mass moisture content of the data obtained from the moisture migration test in the soil column.展开更多
Solid-liquid hydrocyclones are mainly used to separate large particles, such as the particles of drilling fluid in petroleum industry, and large mineral particles. Till now the hydrocyclonic separation for fine partic...Solid-liquid hydrocyclones are mainly used to separate large particles, such as the particles of drilling fluid in petroleum industry, and large mineral particles. Till now the hydrocyclonic separation for fine particles is still a big problem. Basic separation principle of hydrocyclones and experimental research facility are simply introduced. The difficulty of separating fine particle is analyzed. Based on a solid-liquid hydrocyclone used for separating fine particles, relationships of dimensionless pressure characteristic parameters, i.e. Euler number and pressure drop ratio, with several main dimensionless parameters, such as split ratio, swirl number and gas-liquid ratio, were experimentally studied in detail. The research was carried out by using the hydrocyclonic separation experimental rig at the University of Bradford. It is shown that the less the size of particle, the less the value of radius of the balance orbit occupied by the particle, and then the more difficult for the particle to be separated. Experiments indicate that Euler number of the tested hydrocyclone increases with the rise of Reynolds number, split ratio, swirl number and gas-liquid ratio respectively, and the pressure drop ratio falls with the increase of Reynolds number, split ratio and swirl number respectively. It is concluded that the most effective way to decrease the unit energy dissipation of hydrocyclone is to reduce swirl number or gas-liquid ratio of the mixed media.展开更多
The problem of diving control for an underactuated unmanned undersea vehicle(UUV) considering the presence of parameters perturbations and wave disturbances was addressesed.The vertical motion of an UUV was divided in...The problem of diving control for an underactuated unmanned undersea vehicle(UUV) considering the presence of parameters perturbations and wave disturbances was addressesed.The vertical motion of an UUV was divided into two noninteracting subsystems for surge velocity control and diving.To stabilize the vertical motion system,the surge velocity and the depth control controllers were proposed using backstepping technology and an integral-fast terminal sliding mode control(IFTSMC).It is proven that the proposed control scheme can guarantee that all the error signals in the whole closed-loop system globally converge to the sliding surface in finite time and asymptotically converge to the origin along the sliding surface.With a unified control parameters for different motion states,a series of numerical simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the above designed control scheme,which also shows strong robustness against parameters perturbations and wave disturbances.展开更多
The validation and assessment of Envisat advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) ocean wave spectra products are important to their application in ocean wave numerical predictions. Six-year ASAR wave spectra data are...The validation and assessment of Envisat advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) ocean wave spectra products are important to their application in ocean wave numerical predictions. Six-year ASAR wave spectra data are compared with one-dimensional (1D) wave spectra of 55 co-located moored buoy observations in the northern Pacific Ocean. The ASAR wave spectra data are firstly quality control filtered and spatio-temporal matched with buoy data. The comparisons are then performed in terms of 1D wave spectra, significant wave height (SWH) and mean wave period (MWP) in different spatio-temporal offsets respectively. SWH comparison results show the evident dependence of SWH biases on wind speed and the ASAR SWH saturation effect. The ASAR wave spectra tend to underestimate SWH at high wind speeds and overestimate SWH at low wind speeds. MWP comparison results show that MWP has a systematic bias and therefore it should be bias-modified before used. The comparisons of 1D wave spectra show that both wave spectra agree better at low frequencies than at high frequencies, which indicates the ASAR data cannot resolve the high frequency waves.展开更多
Pulp fiber length characterization is addressed in this article. It is .suggested that the proposed separation index H(L) is a viable index to the fiber fractionation performance for evaluating hydrocyclones. Fracti...Pulp fiber length characterization is addressed in this article. It is .suggested that the proposed separation index H(L) is a viable index to the fiber fractionation performance for evaluating hydrocyclones. Fractionation of softwood (coniferous wood) bleached chemithermomechanical pulp (BCTMP) fiber was carried out with a cylindrical hydrocyclone. Pulp fiber length characteristics in different streams were examined using the fiber quality analyzer (FQA), and the cumulative fiber length fraction, the fiber length fraction density function and the separation index H(L) for different streams were obtained. It is found that H(L) is very useful for characterizing the fiber fractionation performance by indicating the separation capacity of hydrocyclone for individual subgroup of fibers in different streams under different operation conditions. Results of H(L) show that there exists a critical fiber length. A higher proportion of fibers longer than the critical fiber length is in the overflow stream, and a higher proportion of fibers shorter than the critical fiber length in the undertow stream. The data obtained from FQA suggest that the split ratio is the most significant parameter for fiber fractionation performance, which is the best when the split ratio is in the range between 0.14 and 0.2. The effect of feed rate on fiber fractionation performance is weak.展开更多
Oil-water separation is critical to solvent extraction process of rare earth, which can directly affect the yield and quality of the product. The experiments measure the two-phase separation time in a beaker, mixing u...Oil-water separation is critical to solvent extraction process of rare earth, which can directly affect the yield and quality of the product. The experiments measure the two-phase separation time in a beaker, mixing uniformity of two phases in the mixer and the oil phase entrainment at oil exit by the Karl Fischer method and numerical simulation for the mixersettler to study the combined effect of gravity and stirring. Experimental results show that relative to the static situation, the separation efficiency resulted from low-speed stirring is increased by 25%. The water content in the oil is a minimum at an offset distance L of 10 cm and the clearance off the tank bottom z of 10 cm is as low as 0.49%. Distribution images of oilwater separation at 2 s indicates that stirring is very conducive to the separation of the oil-water phase.展开更多
Inlet configuration is important parameter of hydrocyclones,which has great impact on the classification performance.The effects of inlet configuration on the precise classification were studied by computational fluid...Inlet configuration is important parameter of hydrocyclones,which has great impact on the classification performance.The effects of inlet configuration on the precise classification were studied by computational fluid dynamics under variouscombinations of inlet diameter and inlet velocity.The results showed that a high sharpness of classification was achieved withspecific inlet diameter and inlet velocity.The separation efficiency of the coarse particles by underflow significantly decreased wheninlet had an oversize diameter owing to a stronger short-circuit flow.It is resulted from the chaotic flow and the stronger pressuregradient around the vortex finder.Meanwhile,a low separation efficiency of the fine particles by overflow was achieved when inletvelocity was high,which indicated a low sharpness caused by the overlarge centrifugal force.展开更多
In the monocot rice species Oryza sativa L., one of the most striking morphological processes during reproductive development is the concurrence of panicle development with the sequential elongation of upper internod...In the monocot rice species Oryza sativa L., one of the most striking morphological processes during reproductive development is the concurrence of panicle development with the sequential elongation of upper internodes (UPIs). To elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms, we cloned the rice gene NECK LEAF 1 (NL1), which when mutated results in delays in flowering time, smaller panicles with overgrown bracts and abnormal UPI elongation patterns. The NL1 gene encodes a GATA-type transcription factor with a single zinc finger domain, and its transcripts are de- tected predominantly in the bract primordia, which normally degenerate in the wild-type plants. Overexpression of NL1 in transgenic plants often gives rise to severe growth retardation, less vegetative phytomers and smaller leaves, suggesting that NL1 plays an important role in organ differentiation. A novel mutant allele of PLASTOCHRON1 (PLAD, a gene known to play a key role in regulating leaf initiation, was identified in this study. Genetic analysis demonstrated an interaction between nil and plal, with NL1 acting upstream of PLA1. The expression level and spatial pattern of PLA1 were found to be altered in the nil mutant. Furthermore, the expression of two regulators of flowering, Hd3a and OsMADS1, was also affected in the nil mutant. On the basis of these findings, we propose that NL1 is an intrinsic factor that modulates and coordinates organogenesis through regulating the expression of PLA1 and other regulatory genes during reproductive development in rice.展开更多
基金Supported by the National High-tech R&D Program of China(2006AA100223)~~
文摘[Objective] To water content monitoring study the application of wireless sensor network in field so and to discuss the methods for solving the problems of low sampling rate, high cost and poor real-time in actual monitoring. [Method] The architecture of wireless sensor network, network nodes, hardware design as well as principle for the program structure of software operating system and corresponding parameters were analyzed to illustrate the characteristics of monitoring system for field soil water content based on wireless sensor network, and the advantages in application of this system. [Result] Sensor nodes could correctly collect and transmit soil water content, realize stable data transmission of soil water content, indicating that wireless sensor network is suitable for real-time monitoring of field soil water content. [Conclusion] This study indicates that wireless sensor network possesses a widely application foreground in the development of agriculture.
基金Supported by National Science-technology Support Plan Project(2014BAD05B02)Ningxia Science-technology Support Plan Project(201522N03)~~
文摘The study was conducted to study the rational setting position of sand moisture sensor in real-time control irrigation system for greenhouse tomato. Six treatments were designed according to horizontal distance and vertical depth from sensor to dripper, different upper and lower water content limits were set for differ-ent growth stages, and indexes including tomato growth, root, photosynthetic param-eter, quality, WUE and yield were systematical y analyzed. The result showed that it is suitable to bury soil moisture sensor in sand field with a vertical depth and a horizontal distance both of 10 cm from the dripper.
基金Supported by Science and Technology Plan Project of Guangdong Province(2009B010900026,2009CD058,2009CD078,2009CD079,2009CD080)Special Funds for Support Program of Development of Modern Information Service Industry of Guangdong Province(06120840B0370124)+1 种基金Production and Research Cooperation Program of Shunde District(20090201024)Fund Project of South China Agricultural University(2007K017)~~
文摘Temporal and spatial variation of soil moisture content is significant for crop growth,climate change and the other fields.In order to overcome shortage of non-linear output voltage of TDR3 soil moisture content sensor and increase soil moisture content data collection and computational efficiency,this paper presents a RBF neural network calibration method of soil moisture content based on TDR3 soil moisture sensor and wireless sensor networks.Experiment results show that the calibration method is effective...
基金Supported by the Special Funds for Major State Basic Research (No. 1999-0222-08).
文摘The fluid flow and oil-water separation were simulated using a Reynolds stress transport equation model of turbulence in water flow and a stochastic model of oil droplet motion. Simulation results give the axial and tangential velocity components, the pressure and turbulence intensity distribution and droplet trajectories for a hydrocyclone of F type and a hydrocyclone proposed by the present authors. The flow field predictions are in qualitative agreement with the LDV measurements. The results show that the proposed hydrocyclone has better performance than the hydrocyclone of F type due to creating stronger centrifugal force and lower axial velocity.
基金Supported by National Key Laboratory of Bubble Physics and Natural Circulation (2005)
文摘Droplet turbulence effect on gas-water separator with corrugated plates is explored using the Eulerian-Lagrangian two-way coupled multiphase approach of FLUENT. It is concluded that the inertial force is dominant in separating large droplets, while droplet turbulence dispersion plays a decisive role in separating fine droplets. Good agreement exists between calculations and air-water experiments. The numerical method developed provides a rea-sonable description of the droplet trajectories and separating efficiency, and it can be applied to predicting the performance of gas-water separator with corrugated plates.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.41661134012 and 41501012)Foundation for selected young scientists,Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment,CAS(Grant Nos.SDSQN-1306,Y3L1340340,sds-135-1202-02)
文摘In recent years, the increasing frequency of debris flow demands enhanced effectiveness and efficiency of warning systems. Effective warning systems are essential not only from an economic point of view but are also considered as a frontline approach to alleviate hazards. Currently, the key issues are the imbalance between the limited lifespan of equipment, the relatively long period between the recurrences of such hazards, and the wide range of critical rainfall that trigger these disasters. This paper attempts to provide a stepwise multi-parameter debris flow warning system after taking into account the shortcomings observed in other warning systems. The whole system is divided into five stages. Differentwarning levels can be issued based on the critical rainfall thresholds. Monitoring starts when early warning is issued and it continues with debris flow near warning, triggering warning, movement warning and hazard warning stages. For early warning, historical archives of earthquake and drought are used to choose a debris flow-susceptible site for further monitoring. Secondly, weather forecasts provide an alert of possible near warning. Hazardous precipitation, model calculation and debris flow initiation tests, pore pressure sensors and water content sensors are combined to check the critical rainfall and to publically announce a triggering warning. In the final two stages, equipment such as rainfall gauges, flow stage sensors, vibration sensors, low sound sensors and infrasound meters are used to assess movement processes and issue hazardwarnings. In addition to these warnings, communitybased knowledge and information is also obtained and discussed in detail. The proposed stepwise, multiparameter debris flow monitoring and warning system has been applied in Aizi valley China which continuously monitors the debris flow activities.
文摘Soil properties and water content vary from place to place. The calibration method based on capacitive soil moisture and humidity sensor is carried out. The sensor readings are compared with the mass water content measured by the oven dried method,and the calibration formula of sensor reading and mass moisture content is established.Results show that the sensor reading has a good linear relationship with the mass water content measured by the oven dried method,and has high precision. It can calibrate the mass moisture content of the data obtained from the moisture migration test in the soil column.
文摘Solid-liquid hydrocyclones are mainly used to separate large particles, such as the particles of drilling fluid in petroleum industry, and large mineral particles. Till now the hydrocyclonic separation for fine particles is still a big problem. Basic separation principle of hydrocyclones and experimental research facility are simply introduced. The difficulty of separating fine particle is analyzed. Based on a solid-liquid hydrocyclone used for separating fine particles, relationships of dimensionless pressure characteristic parameters, i.e. Euler number and pressure drop ratio, with several main dimensionless parameters, such as split ratio, swirl number and gas-liquid ratio, were experimentally studied in detail. The research was carried out by using the hydrocyclonic separation experimental rig at the University of Bradford. It is shown that the less the size of particle, the less the value of radius of the balance orbit occupied by the particle, and then the more difficult for the particle to be separated. Experiments indicate that Euler number of the tested hydrocyclone increases with the rise of Reynolds number, split ratio, swirl number and gas-liquid ratio respectively, and the pressure drop ratio falls with the increase of Reynolds number, split ratio and swirl number respectively. It is concluded that the most effective way to decrease the unit energy dissipation of hydrocyclone is to reduce swirl number or gas-liquid ratio of the mixed media.
基金Projects (51179038,51309067) supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
文摘The problem of diving control for an underactuated unmanned undersea vehicle(UUV) considering the presence of parameters perturbations and wave disturbances was addressesed.The vertical motion of an UUV was divided into two noninteracting subsystems for surge velocity control and diving.To stabilize the vertical motion system,the surge velocity and the depth control controllers were proposed using backstepping technology and an integral-fast terminal sliding mode control(IFTSMC).It is proven that the proposed control scheme can guarantee that all the error signals in the whole closed-loop system globally converge to the sliding surface in finite time and asymptotically converge to the origin along the sliding surface.With a unified control parameters for different motion states,a series of numerical simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the above designed control scheme,which also shows strong robustness against parameters perturbations and wave disturbances.
基金Supported by the Special Fund for Marine Commonweal Scientific Research of China (No.200705027)
文摘The validation and assessment of Envisat advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) ocean wave spectra products are important to their application in ocean wave numerical predictions. Six-year ASAR wave spectra data are compared with one-dimensional (1D) wave spectra of 55 co-located moored buoy observations in the northern Pacific Ocean. The ASAR wave spectra data are firstly quality control filtered and spatio-temporal matched with buoy data. The comparisons are then performed in terms of 1D wave spectra, significant wave height (SWH) and mean wave period (MWP) in different spatio-temporal offsets respectively. SWH comparison results show the evident dependence of SWH biases on wind speed and the ASAR SWH saturation effect. The ASAR wave spectra tend to underestimate SWH at high wind speeds and overestimate SWH at low wind speeds. MWP comparison results show that MWP has a systematic bias and therefore it should be bias-modified before used. The comparisons of 1D wave spectra show that both wave spectra agree better at low frequencies than at high frequencies, which indicates the ASAR data cannot resolve the high frequency waves.
文摘Pulp fiber length characterization is addressed in this article. It is .suggested that the proposed separation index H(L) is a viable index to the fiber fractionation performance for evaluating hydrocyclones. Fractionation of softwood (coniferous wood) bleached chemithermomechanical pulp (BCTMP) fiber was carried out with a cylindrical hydrocyclone. Pulp fiber length characteristics in different streams were examined using the fiber quality analyzer (FQA), and the cumulative fiber length fraction, the fiber length fraction density function and the separation index H(L) for different streams were obtained. It is found that H(L) is very useful for characterizing the fiber fractionation performance by indicating the separation capacity of hydrocyclone for individual subgroup of fibers in different streams under different operation conditions. Results of H(L) show that there exists a critical fiber length. A higher proportion of fibers longer than the critical fiber length is in the overflow stream, and a higher proportion of fibers shorter than the critical fiber length in the undertow stream. The data obtained from FQA suggest that the split ratio is the most significant parameter for fiber fractionation performance, which is the best when the split ratio is in the range between 0.14 and 0.2. The effect of feed rate on fiber fractionation performance is weak.
基金financially supported by the National 863 Plan (2010AA03A405, and 2012AA062303)the National 973 Plan (2012CBA01205)+2 种基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U1202274, 51204040)the National Science and Technology Support Program (2012BAE01B02)Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (N130702001 and N130607001)
文摘Oil-water separation is critical to solvent extraction process of rare earth, which can directly affect the yield and quality of the product. The experiments measure the two-phase separation time in a beaker, mixing uniformity of two phases in the mixer and the oil phase entrainment at oil exit by the Karl Fischer method and numerical simulation for the mixersettler to study the combined effect of gravity and stirring. Experimental results show that relative to the static situation, the separation efficiency resulted from low-speed stirring is increased by 25%. The water content in the oil is a minimum at an offset distance L of 10 cm and the clearance off the tank bottom z of 10 cm is as low as 0.49%. Distribution images of oilwater separation at 2 s indicates that stirring is very conducive to the separation of the oil-water phase.
基金Project(2011AA06A107)supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of ChinaProject(2014M551348)supported by China Postdoctoral Science FoundationProject(51504098)supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
文摘Inlet configuration is important parameter of hydrocyclones,which has great impact on the classification performance.The effects of inlet configuration on the precise classification were studied by computational fluid dynamics under variouscombinations of inlet diameter and inlet velocity.The results showed that a high sharpness of classification was achieved withspecific inlet diameter and inlet velocity.The separation efficiency of the coarse particles by underflow significantly decreased wheninlet had an oversize diameter owing to a stronger short-circuit flow.It is resulted from the chaotic flow and the stronger pressuregradient around the vortex finder.Meanwhile,a low separation efficiency of the fine particles by overflow was achieved when inletvelocity was high,which indicated a low sharpness caused by the overlarge centrifugal force.
文摘In the monocot rice species Oryza sativa L., one of the most striking morphological processes during reproductive development is the concurrence of panicle development with the sequential elongation of upper internodes (UPIs). To elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms, we cloned the rice gene NECK LEAF 1 (NL1), which when mutated results in delays in flowering time, smaller panicles with overgrown bracts and abnormal UPI elongation patterns. The NL1 gene encodes a GATA-type transcription factor with a single zinc finger domain, and its transcripts are de- tected predominantly in the bract primordia, which normally degenerate in the wild-type plants. Overexpression of NL1 in transgenic plants often gives rise to severe growth retardation, less vegetative phytomers and smaller leaves, suggesting that NL1 plays an important role in organ differentiation. A novel mutant allele of PLASTOCHRON1 (PLAD, a gene known to play a key role in regulating leaf initiation, was identified in this study. Genetic analysis demonstrated an interaction between nil and plal, with NL1 acting upstream of PLA1. The expression level and spatial pattern of PLA1 were found to be altered in the nil mutant. Furthermore, the expression of two regulators of flowering, Hd3a and OsMADS1, was also affected in the nil mutant. On the basis of these findings, we propose that NL1 is an intrinsic factor that modulates and coordinates organogenesis through regulating the expression of PLA1 and other regulatory genes during reproductive development in rice.