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It is important to implement detection and assessment of plant diseases based on remotely sensed data for disease monitoring and control. Hyperspectral data of healthy leaves, leaves in incubation period and leaves in diseased period of wheat stripe rust and wheat leaf rust were collected under in-field conditions using a black-paper-based measuring method developed in this study. After data preprocessing, the models to identify the diseases were built using distinguished partial least squares (DPLS) and support vector machine (SVM), and the disease severity inversion models of stripe rust and the disease severity inversion models of leaf rust were built using quantitative partial least squares (QPLS) and support vector regression (SVR). All the models were validated by using leave-one-out cross validation and external validation. The diseases could be discriminated using both distinguished partial least squares and support vector machine with the accuracies of more than 99%. For each wheat rust, disease severity levels were accurately retrieved using both the optimal QPLS models and the optimal SVR models with the coefficients of determination (R2) of more than 0.90 and the root mean square errors (RMSE) of less than 0.15. The results demonstrated that identification and severity evaluation of stripe rust and leaf rust at the leaf level could be implemented based on the hyperspectral data acquired using the developed method. A scientific basis was provided for implementing disease monitoring by using aerial and space remote sensing technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is one of the most important forage crops in the world. Drought is recognized as a major challenge limiting alfalfa production and threatening food security. Although some literature reviews have been conducted in this area, bibliometric reviews based on large amounts of published data are still lacking. In this paper, a bibliometric analysis of alfalfa drought stress from 1998-2023 was conducted using the Web of Science Core Collection database in order to assess global trends in alfalfa drought stress research and to provide new directions for future research. The results showed that the annual publication output maintained an increase in most years, with China and the United States contributing significantly to the field. Most of the journals published are specialized journals in botany, environmental science, soil science and crop science, as well as related agribusiness journals. "plant growth" and "yield" were the most frequently used keywords, reflecting the important purpose of research in this field. And two main research directions were identified: research on drought response mechanism of alfalfa and exploration of drought-resistant technology. In addition, physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses of drought tolerance and high yield in alfalfa, transgenics, and microbial fertilizer research have been hot research topics in recent years and may continue in the future. The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide a foundational reference for future research on alfalfa's drought resistance and yield optimization mechanisms, thereby enhancing the crop's application in agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances understanding of the impacts of climate change on crops in China by moving from ex-post analysis to forecasting, and by demonstrating how the effects of climate change will affect the growth period and the planting boundaries of winter wheat. Using a multiple regression model based on agricultural meteorological observations and the IPCC AR5 GCMs simulations, we find that the sowing date of winter wheat in the base period, 2040s and 2070s, shows a gradually delayed trend from north to south and the growth period of winter wheat in China will be shortened under climate change. The simulation results also show that (i) the north planting boundaries of winter wheat in China will likely move northward and expand westward in the future, while the south planting boundary will rise and spread in south Hainan and Taiwan; and (ii) the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region will have the largest increases in planting areas in 2040s and 2070s. Our simulation implies that Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia are more sensitive to climate change than other regions in China and priority should be given to design adaptation strategies for winter wheat planting for these provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seed traits (ST) influence seedling establishment, population dynamics, community composition and ecosystem function and reflect the adaptability of plants and the environmental conditions they experienced. There has been a historical and global accumulation of studies on ST, but with few pertaining to visual and quantitative analyses. To understand the trends in the field of ST research in the past 30 years, we conducted a bibliometric analysis based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) database. The analysis provided annual publications, time trends for keywords, the most productive journals, authors, institutions and countries, and a comprehensive overview of the ST field. Our results showed that in the past 30 years, the number of publications in ST research has increased at an average annual growth rate of 9.1%, while the average number of citations per paper per year showed a rapid increase–slow increase–decrease trend. Keyword analysis showed that "germination" was the most popular research section. Crop Science ranked first among the top journals and Theoretical and Applied Genetics had greater influence in this area and more citations than other journals. The 10 most productive institutions were mostly located in the United States, China and Australia. Furthermore, the three countries also had the largest number of publications and citations. Our analysis showed that the research interests in ST have evolved from genetics and agricultural science to ecological research over the last thirty years; as more fields embrace ST research, there are opportunities for international and interdisciplinary collaborations, cooperative institutions and new advances in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into an innovative weed management approach should focus on a long-term ecological approach, taking into account the interaction between weed communities, crops, management actions, and environmental and socio-economic aspects for each specific agroecosystem [[7], [12]]. From 2018 to 2023, I Agronomy i published 323 papers in the areas of weed science and weed management. Other topics, like VRM (3%), BHM (6%), and INM (7%), confirm the current interest within weed science research towards alternative methods within an integrated and sustainable management approach. [Extracted from the article]

An evolving green agenda as the UK seeks to achieve 'net zero' in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, coupled with our new trading relationship with the European Union, is resulting in new government policies, which will be disruptive to Britain's traditional food and farming practices. These policies encourage sustainable farming and land‐sparing to restore natural habitats and will provide an opportunity to address issues such as high emissions of GHGs and dwindling biodiversity resulting from many intensive agricultural practices. To address these and other food challenges such as global conflicts and health issues, Britain will need a revolution in its food system. The aim of this paper is to make the case for such a food revolution where additional healthy food for the UK population is produced in‐country in specialised production units for fruits and vegetables developed on sites previously considered unsuitable for crop production. High crop productivity can be achieved in low‐cost controlled environments, making extensive use of novel crop science and modern controlled‐environment technology. Such systems must be operated with very limited environmental impact. In recent years, growth in the application of plasticulture in UK horticulture has driven some increases in crop yield, quality and value. However, the environmental cost of plastic production and plastic pollution is regarded as a generational challenge that faces the earth system complex. The distribution of plastic waste is ubiquitous, with a significant pollution load arising from a range of agricultural practices. The primary receptor of agriplastic pollution is agricultural soil. Impacts of microplastics on crop productivity and quality and also on human health are only now being investigated. This paper explores the possibility that we can mitigate the adverse environmental effects of agriplastics and thereby exploit the potential of plasticulture to enhance the productivity and positive health impact of UK horticulture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt has been made to test whether crop science literature follows Bradford law. The dataset comprised 10,100 papers indexed in Indian Science Abstracts and CAB Abstracts during the period 1965-2010. A ranked list of journals has been prepared and Leimkuhler test was conducted. The list of core journals is provided. The dataset does not follow Bradford law even with Leimkuhler formulation. The crops covered are rice, wheat, barley, maize, sorghum and millets. Possibly combining of data for six crops together and cumulating of data of every fifth year deviated the dataset from Bradford law of scattering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tobacco industry interference has been identified as the greatest obstacle to the implementation of evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use. Understanding and addressing industry interference in public health policy-making is therefore crucial. Existing conceptualisations of corporate political activity (CPA) are embedded in a business perspective and do not attend to CPA's social and public health costs; most have not drawn on the unique resource represented by internal tobacco industry documents. Building on this literature, including systematic reviews, we develop a critically informed conceptual model of tobacco industry political activity.Methods and Findings: We thematically analysed published papers included in two systematic reviews examining tobacco industry influence on taxation and marketing of tobacco; we included 45 of 46 papers in the former category and 20 of 48 papers in the latter (n = 65). We used a grounded theory approach to build taxonomies of "discursive" (argument-based) and "instrumental" (action-based) industry strategies and from these devised the Policy Dystopia Model, which shows that the industry, working through different constituencies, constructs a metanarrative to argue that proposed policies will lead to a dysfunctional future of policy failure and widely dispersed adverse social and economic consequences. Simultaneously, it uses diverse, interlocking insider and outsider instrumental strategies to disseminate this narrative and enhance its persuasiveness in order to secure its preferred policy outcomes. Limitations are that many papers were historical (some dating back to the 1970s) and focused on high-income regions.Conclusions: The model provides an evidence-based, accessible way of understanding diverse corporate political strategies. It should enable public health actors and officials to preempt these strategies and develop realistic assessments of the industry's claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seed moisture content (SMC) is an important attribute to seed quality. Maintaining seed dryness throughout supply chain (The Dry Chain) prevents seed germination and quality losses. Ambient relative humidity (RH) and temperature affect seed moisture and thereof seed moisture isotherm. Present study was conducted to compare the moisture adsorption isotherms of wheat, maize, cotton and quinoa seeds packed in hermetic Super Bag and traditional packaging materials including paper, polypropylene (PP), jute and cloth bags. Seeds were incubated at 60, 70, 80 and 90% static RH. Nearly straight line moisture isotherms for all crop seeds were obtained in Super Bag. Seed moisture contents increased in traditional packaging materials with increasing RH. At higher level of RH, moisture contents increased slightly (1–2%) in Super Bag, whereas this increase was much higher in traditional packaging materials (≈9% higher than original SMC at 90% RH). In second study, seeds were dried to 8 and 14% initial seed moisture contents using zeolite drying beads and were stored in hermetic and conventional packaging materials for a period of 18 months. For all crop seeds, germination was severely affected in all packaging materials both at 8 and 14% initial SMC except storage in Super Bag at 8% SMC. Wheat seed stored in Super Bag at 8% SMC almost maintained initial germination while germination of cotton, maize and quinoa seeds declined 7%, 14% and 30% respectively in Super Bag at 8% SMC. Seed storage in Super Bag can help to prevent the significant increase in seed moisture at higher RH as is evident from moisture isotherm study, thus helps to preserve quality of maize, wheat, cotton and quinoa seeds by maintaining The Dry Chain throughout the storage period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In natural capital accounting, ecosystems are assets that provide ecosystem services to people. Assets can be measured using both physical and monetary units. In the international System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, ecosystem assets are generally valued on the basis of the net present value of the expected flow of ecosystem services. In this paper we argue that several additional conceptualisations of ecosystem assets are needed to understand ecosystems as assets, in support of ecosystem assessments, ecosystem accounting and ecosystem management. In particular, we define ecosystems’ capacity and capability to supply ecosystem services, as well as the potential supply of ecosystem services. Capacity relates to sustainable use levels of multiple ecosystem services, capability involves prioritising the use of one ecosystem service over a basket of services, and potential supply considers the ability of ecosystems to generate services regardless of demand for these services. We ground our definitions in the ecosystem services and accounting literature, and illustrate and compare the concepts of flow, capacity, capability, and potential supply with a range of conceptual and real-world examples drawn from case studies in Europe and North America. Our paper contributes to the development of measurement frameworks for natural capital to support environmental accounting and other assessment frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main manifestations of climate change will be increased rainfall variability. How to deal with this in agriculture will be a major societal challenge. In this paper we explore flexibility in land use, through deliberate seasonal adjustments in cropped area, as a specific strategy for coping with rainfall variability. Such adjustments are not incorporated in hydro-meteorological crop models commonly used for food security analyses. Our paper contributes to the literature by making a comprehensive model assessment of inter-annual variability in crop production, including both variations in crop yield and cropped area. The Ganges basin is used as a case study. First, we assessed the contribution of cropped area variability to overall variability in rice and wheat production by applying hierarchical partitioning on time-series of agricultural statistics. We then introduced cropped area as an endogenous decision variable in a hydro-economic optimization model (WaterWise), coupled to a hydrology-vegetation model (LPJmL), and analyzed to what extent its performance in the estimation of inter-annual variability in crop production improved. From the statistics, we found that in the period 1999–2009 seasonal adjustment in cropped area can explain almost 50% of variability in wheat production and 40% of variability in rice production in the Indian part of the Ganges basin. Our improved model was well capable of mimicking existing variability at different spatial aggregation levels, especially for wheat. The value of flexibility, i.e. the foregone costs of choosing not to crop in years when water is scarce, was quantified at 4% of gross margin of wheat in the Indian part of the Ganges basin and as high as 34% of gross margin of wheat in the drought-prone state of Rajasthan. We argue that flexibility in land use is an important coping strategy to rainfall variability in water stressed regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the growth and development of individual plants is of central importance in modern agriculture, crop breeding, and crop science. To this end, using 3D data for plant analysis has gained attention over the last years. High-resolution point clouds offer the potential to derive a variety of plant traits, such as plant height, biomass, as well as the number and size of relevant plant organs. Periodically scanning the plants even allows for performing spatio-temporal growth analysis. However, highly accurate 3D point clouds from plants recorded at different growth stages are rare, and acquiring this kind of data is costly. Besides, advanced plant analysis methods from machine learning require annotated training data and thus generate intense manual labor before being able to perform an analysis. To address these issues, we present with this dataset paper a multi-temporal dataset featuring high-resolution registered point clouds of maize and tomato plants, which we manually labeled for computer vision tasks, such as for instance segmentation and 3D reconstruction, providing approximately 260 million labeled 3D points. To highlight the usability of the data and to provide baselines for other researchers, we show a variety of applications ranging from point cloud segmentation to non-rigid registration and surface reconstruction. We believe that our dataset will help to develop new algorithms to advance the research for plant phenotyping, 3D reconstruction, non-rigid registration, and deep learning on raw point clouds. The dataset is freely accessible at https://www.ipb.uni-bonn.de/data/pheno4d/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cotton is the main source of renewable fiber in the world and is primarily used for textile production. This study analyzed 3,487 papers on cotton research published during 1990 to 2021 from the agronomy category of the Web of Science (WoS). Papers were mainly written in English (96.329%), from 8,860 authors, 87 countries/territories, 1,661 organizations, and published in 107 journals and book series. The top five core journals were Crop Science (433, 12.418%), Agronomy Journal (310, 8.89%), Weed Technology (205, 5.879%), Field Crops Research (203, 5.822%), and Euphytica (189, 5.42%) with each publishing more than 189 papers. The top five countries and regions were the U.S., Peoples Republic of China, India, Brazil, and Australia. The top five organizations were USDA ARS, Texas A&M Univ., North Carolina State Univ., Univ. Georgia, and Cotton Incorporated. The top five authors were Johnie N. Jenkins, Don C. Jones, Jack C. McCarty, Jr., Jinfa Zhang, and C. Wayne Smith, with each publishing 72 papers or more. Visualizations using VOSviewer were conducted on WoS data to determine co-occurrence and clusters of connected publications, country input, organizations, and author collaboration (coauthorship) as well as clusters of all keywords of interrelated research topics. Based on the analysis of the network map of VOSviewer, there is cooperation among authors, organizations, and countries or regions. All keywords of the cotton research papers published during 1990 to 2021 from WoS agronomy category separated into six clusters based on different research topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-fat diet is associated with hypercholesterolemia and seminal alterations in White New Zealand rabbits. We have previously reported disorders in the development of the manchette-acrosome complex during spermiogenesis and decreased testicular efficiency in hypercholesterolemic rabbits. On the other hand, olive oil incorporated into the diet improves cholesterolemia and semen parameters affected in hypercholesterolemic rabbits. In this paper, we report the recovery—with the addition of olive oil to diet—from the sub-cellular mechanisms involved in the shaping of the sperm cell and testicular efficiency altered in hypercholesterolemic rabbits. Using morphological (structural, ultra-structural and immuno-fluorescence techniques) and cell biology techniques, a reorganization of the manchette and related structures was observed when olive oil was added to the high-fat diet. Specifically, actin filaments, microtubules and lipid rafts—abnormally distributed in hypercholesterolemic rabbits—were recovered with dietary olive oil supplementation. The causes of the decline in sperm count were studied in the previous report and here in more detail. These were attributed to the decrease in the efficiency index and also to the increase in the apoptotic percentage in testis from animals under the high-fat diet. Surprisingly, the addition of olive oil to the diet avoided the sub-cellular, efficiency and apoptosis changes observed in hypercholesterolemic rabbits. This paper reports the positive effects of the olive oil addition to the diet in the recovery of testicular efficiency and normal sperm shaping, mechanisms altered by hypercholesterolemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognized that increasing agricultural production to the levels needed to feed an expanding world population requires sharply increased public investment in research and development and widespread adoption of new technologies, but funding for national and international agricultural research has rather declined in recent years. In this situation, priority setting has become increasingly important for allocating scarce research resources among competing needs to achieve greater impacts. Using partial equilibrium economic surplus models and poverty impact simulations, this paper assesses cassava research priorities in Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, and Asia based on the potential economic and poverty reduction impacts of alternative research and technology options. The results showed that efficient planting material production and distribution systems and sustainable crop and soil fertility management practices have the greatest expected economic and poverty reduction impacts in the three regions. Lack of clean planting materials is a major constraint to adoption and it is envisaged that efficient production and distribution systems for planting material can accelerate technology adoption by farmers. Similarly, sustainable crop and soil fertility management practices play a key role in closing the observed yield gaps, especially in Africa. The paper discusses the results of the priority assessment for key cassava research options and concludes with the implications for cassava research priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report on an automated procedure to capture and characterize the detailed structure of a crop canopy by means of stereo imaging. We focus attention specifically on the detailed characteristic of canopy height distribution—canopy shoot area as a function of height—which can provide an elaborate picture of canopy growth and health under a given set of conditions. We apply the method to a wheat field trial involving ten Australian wheat varieties that were subjected to two different fertilizer treatments. A novel camera self-calibration approach is proposed which allows the determination of quantitative plant canopy height data (as well as other valuable phenotypic information) by stereo matching. Utilizing the canopy height distribution to provide a measure of canopy height, the results compare favourably with manual measurements of canopy height (resulting in an R2 value of 0.92), and are indeed shown to be more consistent. By comparing canopy height distributions of different varieties and different treatments, the methodology shows that different varieties subjected to the same treatment, and the same variety subjected to different treatments can respond in much more distinctive and quantifiable ways within their respective canopies than can be captured by a simple trait measure such as overall canopy height. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper retraces the GRASPgfs endeavor (Geospatial Resource for Agricultural Species and Pests with integrated workflow modelling to support Global Food Security) between multiple disciplines around a common objective of facilitating research and model simulations for sustainable food security. Within this endeavor, the geospatial media has been the enabler for multidisciplinary research in crop modelling. Geospatial genetic-trait variations and associations with environmental forecasting were the main focus of the GRASPgfs. Designing the platform achieving this objective generated a transdisciplinary vision of modelling and forecasting for sustainable agriculture. Based on interoperability principles, seamless access as well as sharing for data, metadata and processing models, the design is described in this paper. This geospatial binding facilitates and supports new types of hypotheses and analysis as illustrated in the paper with a landscape genetic case study (bambara groundnut) and a crop disease modelling (eyespot disease). The approach and the eGRASP platform are generic enough to accommodate further complexity into the integrated modelling that this geospatial binding enables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prediction of phenotypic traits using high-density genomic data has many applications such as the selection of plants and animals of commercial interest; and it is expected to play an increasing role in medical diagnostics. Statistical models used for this task are usually tested using cross-validation, which implicitly assumes that new individuals (whose phenotypes we would like to predict) originate from the same population the genomic prediction model is trained on. In this paper we propose an approach based on clustering and resampling to investigate the effect of increasing genetic distance between training and target populations when predicting quantitative traits. This is important for plant and animal genetics, where genomic selection programs rely on the precision of predictions in future rounds of breeding. Therefore, estimating how quickly predictive accuracy decays is important in deciding which training population to use and how often the model has to be recalibrated. We find that the correlation between true and predicted values decays approximately linearly with respect to either FST or mean kinship between the training and the target populations. We illustrate this relationship using simulations and a collection of data sets from mice, wheat and human genetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Senna alata, a flowering shrub, is widely cultivated in the Philippines for its anti-fungal properties. Despite this, its chloroplast genome is not yet established. We assembled and annotated the complete chloroplast genome of accession from the germplasm collection of the Institute of Crop Science, University of the Philippines, Los Baños, using Illumina sequencing data. The complete cp genome was 159,176-bp long characterized by a large single copy of 88,769 bp, short single-copy of 18,301 bp and a pair of inverted repeat regions of 26,053 bp each. The overall GC content of the chloroplast genome was 36.4%. The plastome comprised 37 tRNA genes, 8 rRNA genes and 78 mRNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that S. alata is closely related to S. siamea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Research in crop science in recent years has advanced at an unprecedented rate, and the intermingling of old and new crop breeding technologies has made the term "genetically modified" – and its variant, Genetically Modified Organism, or "GMO" – virtually obsolete. A kind of pseudo-category, it is primarily used pejoratively to refer to the use of the newest, most precise, most predictable, molecular genetic techniques. Prodigious amounts of time, effort and care have been expended to ensure that crops developed for commercialization using molecular techniques are safe, and that new traits are beneficial. Â Yet, despite these advances, some skepticism persists about them, partly due to the publication of fraudulent, poorly designed, and biased studies by a few "rogue scientists" whose intention is to contaminate the scientific literature and sow mistrust about molecular genetic modification among regulators and the public. We discuss how such flawed studies make it to publication and how the scientific community can combat such disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding processes in sources and sinks that contribute to crop yields has taken years of painstaking research. For crop yield improvement, processes need to be understood as standalone mechanisms in addition to how these mechanisms perform at the crop level; currently there is often a chasm between the two. Fundamental mechanisms need to be considered in the context of crop ideotypes and the agricultural environment which is often more water limited than carbon limited. Different approaches for improvement should be considered, namely is there genetic variation? Or if not, could genetic modification, genome editing, or alternative approaches be utilized? Currently, there are few examples where genetic modification has improved intrinsic yield in the field for commercial application in a major crop. Genome editing, particularly of negative yield regulators as a first step, is providing new opportunities. Here we highlight key mechanisms in source and sink, arguing that for large yield increases integration of key processes is likely to produce the biggest successes within the framework of crop ideotypes with optimized phenology. We highlight a plethora of recent papers that show breakthroughs in fundamental science and the promise of the trehalose 6-phosphate signalling pathway, which regulates carbohydrate allocation which is key for many crop traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings advances in weather data collection and modeling, and developments in socioeconomic climate microsimulations to bear on the analysis of the implications of climate change (CC) in the design of public policies to combat food insecurity. It uses new downscaled predictions of future climate in 2050, derived from three Earth System Models calibrated with a new historical weather station dataset for Peru. This climate data is used in a three-stage socioeconomic microsimulation model that includes climate risk, and deals with the endogeneity of incomes and simultaneity of expected food consumption and its variability. We estimate the impact of CC on agricultural yields, and find results consistent and fully bounded within what the global simulations literature has found, with yields falling up to 13% in some regions. However, we show that these drops (and increases) in yields translate to much smaller changes in food consumption, and also surprisingly, to very minor impacts on vulnerability to food insecurity. The document explores what explains this surprising result, showing that in addition to characteristics that are specific to Peru, there are household and market mediating mechanisms that are available in all countries, which explain how changes in yields, and corresponding farm incomes have a reduced impact in vulnerability to food insecurity. Finally, in light of these findings, we explore which policies might have greater impact in reducing food insecurity in contexts of hunger prevalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, high-resolution magnetometry surveys have led to the discovery of a special category of buildings–so-called ‘mega-structures’–situated in highly visible positions in the public space of Tripolye giant-settlements of the late 5th and first half of the 4th millennium BCE. In this paper we explore what these buildings actually are and how they can contribute to the understanding of the development of social space in Tripolye giant-settlements. For this investigation, we linked newly obtained excavation data from the giant-settlement Maidanetske, Ukraine, with a much larger sample of such buildings from magnetic plans obtained in the region between the Carpathian foothills and the Dnieper River. Accordingly, Tripolye mega-structures represent a particular kind of integrative building documented in many non-ranked ethnographic contexts. Based on our results we are interpreting that these buildings were used for various ritual and non-ritual activities, joint decision-making, and the storage and consumption of surplus. In Tripolye giant-settlements at least three different categories of mega-structures could be identified which most likely represent different levels of socio-political integration and decision-making. The emergence of this hierarchical system of high-level integrative buildings for the whole community and different low-level integrative architectures for certain segments of local communities was related to the rise of Tripolye mega-sites. The presence of different integrative levels most likely reflects the fusion of different previously independent communities in the giant-settlements. Later in the mega-site development, we observe how low-level integrative buildings increasingly lose their importance indicated by shrinking size and, finally, their disappearance. This observation might indicate that the power which was previously distributed across the community was transferred to a central institution. It is argued that the non-acceptance of this concentration of power and the decline of lower decision-making levels might be a crucial factor for the disintegration of Tripolye giant-settlements around 3600 BCE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our food security depends on finding a sustainable alternative to rock phosphate for fertilizer production. Furthermore, over 2 billion people worldwide are currently affected by micronutrient deficiencies, and crop concentrations of essential minerals are declining. This paper examines whether a novel multi-element fertilizer, Thallo®, can produce crop yields comparable to conventional rock phosphate derived fertilizers, and have an additional benefit of increasing essential mineral concentrations. Thallo®, produced from abattoir and recycled industrial by-products, was tested against conventional mineral fertilizers in a pot trial with wheat and grass. In soil, yields were comparable between the fertilizer types, but, in a low-nutrient substrate, Thallo® showed a yield benefit. Elemental concentrations in the plant material typically reflected the relative concentrations in the fertilizer, and Thallo® fertilized plants contained significantly more of some essential elements, such as selenium and zinc. Furthermore, concentrations of the toxic element cadmium were significantly lower in Thallo® fertilized crops. Among the fertilizers, manganese concentrations were greatest in the Thallo®, but within the fertilized plants, they were greatest under the mineral fertilizer, showing the complexity of assessing whether nutrients will be taken up by crops. In summary, fertilizers from livestock waste have the potential to improve wheat and grass concentrations of essential elements while maintaining yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly used within plant science, yet it is far from being routinely and effectively implemented in this domain. Particularly relevant to the development of novel food and agricultural technologies is the development of validated, meaningful and usable ways to integrate, compare and visualise large, multi-dimensional datasets from different sources and scientific approaches. After a brief summary of the reasons for the interest in data science and AI within plant science, the paper identifies and discusses eight key challenges in data management that must be addressed to further unlock the potential of AI in crop and agronomic research, and particularly the application of Machine Learning (AI) which holds much promise for this domain.

'Biasong' (Citrus micrantha), native to the Southern Philippine Islands, is an important cultivated fruit tree but has no published plastome sequence. We assembled and characterized the C. micrantha chloroplast genome from accession in the germplasm collection of the Institute of Crop Science, University of the Philippines Los Baños. The complete chloroplast (cp) genome sequence is 159,928-bp long with 128 coding genes comprising 83 mRNA genes, 37 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA genes. Out of the mRNA genes, 45 genes code for photosynthesis, 30 genes code for self-replication, and five genes code for other functions. A phylogenetic analysis of the assembled genome, along with 24 Citrus species and three other Rutaceae species, identified Citrus aurantiifolia as its closest relative with available complete cpDNA sequence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large amount of medical waste is produced during disaster relief, posing a potential hazard to the habitat and the environment. A comprehensive understanding of the composition and characteristics of medical waste that requires management is one of the most basic steps in the development of a plan for medical waste management. Unfortunately, limited reliable information is available in the open literature on the characteristics of the medical waste that is generated at disaster relief sites. This paper discusses the analysis of the composition and characteristics of medical waste at a disaster relief site using the retrospection-simulation-revision method. For this study, we obtained 35 medical relief records of the Wenchuan Earthquake, Sichuan, May 2008 from a field cabin hospital. We first present a retrospective analysis of the relief medical records, and then, we simulate the medical waste generated in the affected areas. We ultimately determine the composition and characteristics of medical waste in the affected areas using untreated medical waste to revise the composition of the simulated medical waste. The results from 35 cases showed that the medical waste generated from disaster relief consists of the following: plastic (43.2%), biomass (26.3%), synthetic fiber (15.3%), rubber (6.6%), liquid (6.6%), inorganic salts (0.3%) and metals (1.7%). The bulk density of medical relief waste is 249 kg/m3, and the moisture content is 44.75%. The data should be provided to assist the collection, segregation, storage, transportation, disposal and contamination control of medical waste in affected areas. In this paper, we wish to introduce this research method of restoring the medical waste generated in disaster relief to readers and researchers. In addition, we hope more disaster relief agencies will become aware of the significance of medical case recording and storing. This may be very important for the environmental evaluation of medical waste in disaster areas, as well as for medical waste management and disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Agricultural technologies developed by national and international research institutions were not benefiting the rural population of Ethiopia to the extent desired. As a response, integrated agricultural extension approaches are proposed as a key strategy to transform the smallholder farming sector. Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers project is one of the development projects initiated by integrating productivity enhancement technological schemes with market development model. This paper explores the impact of the project intervention in the smallholder farmers’ wellbeing. Methods: To test the research hypothesis of whether the project brought a significant change in the input use, marketed surplus, efficiency and income of farm households, we use a cross-section data from 200 smallholder farmers in Northwest Ethiopia, collected through multi-stage sampling procedure. To control for self-selection from observable characteristics of the farm households, we employ Propensity Score Matching (PSM). We finally use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques to estimate technical efficiency of farm households. Results: The outcome of the research is in line with the premises that the participation of the household in the IPMS project improves purchased input use, marketed surplus, efficiency of farms and the overall gain from farming. The participant households on average employ more purchased agricultural inputs and gain higher gross margin from the production activities as compared to the non-participant households. The non-participant households on average supply less output (measured both in monetary terms and proportion of total produce) to the market as compared to their participant counterparts. Except for the technical efficiency of production in potato, project participant households are better-off in production efficiency compared with the non-participant counterparts. Conclusion: We verified the idea that Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) of Ethiopian farmers’ project has contributed for the input and out market integration and/or market oriented agricultural production. Overall, we argue that these can be seen as an experimental model with a promising potential to improve the livelihood of the poor. Furthermore, we suggest that it is worthwhile to employ integrated agricultural extension programs with further targeting in the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demand for spring onion seeds is variable and maintaining its supply is crucial to the success of seed companies. Spring onion seed demand forecasting, which can help reduce the high operational costs increased by long-period propagation and complex logistics, has not previously been investigated yet. This paper provides a novel perspective on spring onion seed demand forecasting and proposes a hybrid Holt-Winters and support vector machine (SVM) forecasting model. The model uses dynamic factors, including historical seed sales, seed inventory, spring onion crop market price and weather data, as inputs to forecast spring onion seed demand. Forecasting error, i.e. the difference between actual and forecasted demand, is assessed. Two advanced machine learning models are trained on the same dataset as benchmark models. Numerical experiments using actual commercial sales data for three spring onion seed varieties show the proposed hybrid model outperformed the statistical-based models for all three forecasting errors. Seed inventory, spring onion crop market price and historical seed sales are the most important dynamic factors, among which seed inventory has short-term influence while other two have mid-term influence on seed demand forecasting. The absolute minimum temperature is the only factor having long-term influence. This study provides a promising spring onion seed demand forecasting model that helps understand the relationships between seed demand and other dynamic factors and the model could potentially be applied to demand forecasting of other crop seeds to reduce total operational costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is used for aerial spraying, the downwash airflow generated by the UAV rotor will interact with the crop canopy and form a conical vortex shape in the crop plant. The size of the vortex will directly affect the outcome of the spraying operation. Six one-way spraying were performed by the UAV in a rice field with different but random flying altitude and velocities within the optimal operational range to form different vortex patterns. The spraying reagent was clear water, which was collected by water sensitive paper (WSP), and then the WSP was analyzed to study the droplets deposition effects in different vortex states. The results showed that the formation of the vortex significantly influenced the droplet deposition. To be specific, the droplet deposition amount in the obvious-vortex (OV) state was about 1.5 times of that in the small-scale (SV) vortex state, and 7 times of that in the non-vortex (NV) state. In the OV state, the droplets mainly deposited directly below and on both sides of the route. The deposition amount, coverage rate and droplet size increased from top to bottom of the crops with the deposition amount, coverage rate, and volume median diameter (VMD) ranging 0.204–0.470 μL/cm2, 3.31%-7.41%, and 306–367μm, respectively. In the SV state, droplets mainly deposited in the vortex area directly below the route. The deposition amount in the downwind direction was bigger than that in the upwind direction. The maximum of deposition amount, coverage rate and droplet size were found in the middle layer of the crops, the range are 0.177–0.334μL/cm2, 2.71%-5.30%, 295–370μm, respectively. In the NV state, the droplet mainly performed drifting motion, and the average droplet deposition amount in the downwind non-effective region was 29.4 times of that in the upwind non-effective region and 8.7 times of the effective vortex region directly below the route. The maximum of deposition amount, coverage rate and droplet size appeared in the upper layer of the crop, the range are 0.006–0.132μL/cm2, 0.17%-1.82%, 120–309μm, respectively, and almost no droplet deposited in the middle and lower part of the crop. The coefficient of variation (CV) of the droplet deposition amount was less than 40% in the state of obvious-vortex and small-scale vortex, and the worst penetration appeared in the non-vortex amounting to 65.97%. This work offers a basis for improving the spraying performance of UAV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]