Maize (Zea mays L.) stands as one of the most extensively cultivated crops globally, offering significant contributions to food, animal feed, and biofuel production. Maize yield is significantly impacted by diverse climate and soil variables, yet its productivity faces hindrances due to abiotic stresses, including drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, and cold conditions. In confronting these hurdles, the field of crop breeding has undergone a transformation thanks to high-throughput sequencing technologies (HSTs). These advancements have streamlined the identification of beneficial quantitative trait loci (QTL), associations between markers and traits (MTAs), as well as genes and alleles that contribute to crop improvement. Presently, well-established omics techniques such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics are being amalgamated into maize breeding studies. These approaches have unveiled new biological markers that are being employed to bolster maize's capacity to withstand an array of challenges. In this chapter, we explore the current knowledge regarding the morpho-physiological and molecular mechanisms that underlie the resistance and tolerance of maize to biotic and abiotic stresses. The focus is on utilizing omics techniques to augment maize's ability to withstand these challenges. Moreover, it emphasizes the significant potential of integrating various omics techniques to tackle the challenges presented by biotic and abiotic stress in maize productivity, contrasting with singular approaches.

Genetic engineering in the field for designing crop improvement has become an essential element in responding to the increasing need for food safety, environmental sustainability, and climate-resilient crops. The latest molecular technology is used by many breeders today to achieve remarkable results. Fast genome editing is currently being seen in a variety of organisms, including plants, because to the high specificity, high effectiveness, and low production cost of CRISPR/Cas [Clustered regulatory interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-associated protein (Cas)] technology. Its applications in developing higher-yielding, nutrition rich, disease resistance, stress-tolerant crops fruits, and vegetables. Therefore, this technology has the potential to revolutionize agriculture and contribute to global food security. The Cas protein provides the enzymatic machinery necessary for the acquisition of new cells that target invasion elements. Cas proteins such as Cas9, Cas12, Cas13, and Cas14, among others, have distinct architectures and have been used to create new genetic tools that improve features that are important for agriculture. The versatility of Cas has accelerated genomic analysis and facilitated the use of CRISPR/Cas to manipulate and alter nucleic acid sequences in cells of different organisms. This review provides the evolution of CRISPR technology exploring its mechanisms and contrasting it with traditional breeding and transgenic approaches to improve different stress tolerance. We will also discuss the CRISPR/Cas system and explore the workings of the three Cas proteins that are currently known to exist: Cas12, Cas13, and Cas14. The edited crops by this technology do not have foreign DNA inserted into their genome, therefore, they are considered as non-transgenic by the regulatory bodies in most countries.

The concept of omics-based technological approaches has promoted translational research by integrating knowledge from diverse areas to understand their dynamics by exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying various processes paving the way for further improvements in the crops quality by providing sound knowledge on controlling plant diseases. This area is not profoundly investigated a decade back and hence this knowledge has become exceedingly important in modern times as it has got potential for being utilized in crop improvement programs. In this review, the contributions of different omics technologies including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics in understanding and materializing the ways involved in the plant pathogen interaction (PPI) is discussed. Furthermore, opportunities, challenges, and perspectives of omics linked to signaling mechanisms have also been highlighted that are significantly linked to plant-microbe interactions.

Sustainable agricultural production is endangered by several ecological factors such as drought, extreme temperatures, excessive salts, parasitic ailments, and insect pest infestation. These challenging environmental factors may have adverse effects on future agriculture production in many countries. In modern agriculture, conventional crop breeding techniques alone are inadequate for achieving the increasing population’s food demand on a sustainable basis. The advancement of molecular genetics and related technologies are promising tools for the selection of new crop species. Gene pyramiding through marker assisted selection (MAS) and other techniques have accelerated the development of durable resistant/tolerant lines with high accuracy in the shortest possible period of time for agricultural sustainability. Gene stacking has not been fully utilized for biotic stress resistance development and quality improvement in most of the major cultivated crops. This review emphasizes on gene pyramiding techniques that are being successfully deployed in modern agriculture for improving crop tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses for sustainable crop improvement.

This review article explores the significance of beneficial microorganisms in crop improvement, highlighting their roles in promoting plant growth, enhancing nutrient uptake, and protecting against pathogens. The symbiotic interactions between plants and microorganisms have been extensively studied, revealing the vast potential of these beneficial partnerships in sustainable agriculture. The article discusses various types of beneficial microorganisms, including mycorrhizal fungi, rhizobia, and plant growth-promoting bacteria, elucidating their mechanisms of action and their impact on plant health and productivity. Furthermore, it examines the application of microbial inoculants and biofertilizers in crop production systems, emphasizing their potential to enhance crop yield, nutrient use efficiency, and stress tolerance. The review also explores emerging technologies, such as metagenomics and synthetic biology, in harnessing the full potential of beneficial microorganisms for crop improvement. Overall, we highlight the importance of beneficial microorganisms in sustainable agriculture and provide insights into their promising applications in crop enhancement.

Agriculture has been experiencing a difficult situation because of limiting factors in its production, Natural biostimulants (NBs) have emerged as a novel alternative. This study reviews NBs produced through Solid-State Fermentation (SSF) from organic waste, focusing on the processes and production methods. The aim is to highlight their potential for improving agricultural productivity and promoting sustainable agriculture. Through a literature review, the effects of NBS on crops were examined, as well as the challenges associated with their production and application. The importance of standardizing production processes, optimizing fermentation conditions, and assessing their effects on different crops is emphasized. Furthermore, future research areas are identified, such as enhancing production efficiency and evaluating the effectiveness of SSF-produced NBS in different agricultural systems. In conclusion, SSF-produced NBS offers a promising alternative for sustainable agriculture, but further research and development are needed to maximize its efficacy and enable large-scale implementation.

This research presents a solution to the problem of planning the optimum area for economic crops by developed mathematical models and developed an algorithm to solve the problem of planning the optimum area by considered economic value for the maximize profit of farmers. The data were collected from farmers in 8 provinces in the northeastern region of Thailand. The 3 economic crops studied were rice, cassava and sugarcane. The solving problem methods were 1) Created mathematical models and solved the problems with Lingo V.11. 2) Improved Differential Evolution algorithms (I-DE) to solve the problems, which had 3 local search methods included (Swap, Cyclic Move and K-variable moves). The results of this study showed that in the small and medium problems instances, Lingo V.11 and DE provided equal profit outcome but DE was faster but in the large size of test instances DE generated better solution than that of Lingo v.11 when Lingo simulation time is set to 250 hours and DE simulation time has set to maximum 21.82 minutes. 2) Comparing DE and I-DE , I-DE outperforms DE in finding the better solution for all size of test instances (small, medium and large).

Climate change poses a serious threat to global agricultural activity and food production. To address this issue, plant genome editing technologies have been developed to provide an alternative solution for crop improvement. Unlike conventional breeding techniques (e.g., selective breeding and mutation breeding), modern genome editing tools offer more targeted and specific alterations of the plant genome to produce crops with desired traits, such as higher yield and/or stronger resilience to the changing environment. In this review, we discuss the current development and future applications of genome editing technologies in mitigating the impacts of biotic and abiotic stresses on agriculture. We focus specifically on the CRISPR/Cas system, which has been the center of attention in the last few years as a revolutionary genome-editing tool in various species. We also conducted a bibliographic analysis on CRISPR-related papers published from 2012 to 2021 (10 years) to identify trends and possible gaps in the CRISPR/Cas-related plant research. In addition, this review article outlines the current shortcomings and challenges of employing genome editing technologies in agriculture with notes on future prospective. We believe combining conventional and more innovative technologies in agriculture would be the key to optimizing crop improvement beyond the limitations of traditional agricultural practices.

Increasing agricultural productivity is indispensable to meet future food demand. Crop im-provement programs rely heavily on genetic diversity. The success of weeds in the ecosystem can be attributed to genetic diversity and plasticity. Weedy rice, a major weed of rice, has diverse morphology and phenology, implying wide genetic diversity. Study was conducted to genotype weedy rice accessions (n =54) previously phenotyped for herbicide tolerance and allelopathic potential using 30 SSR markers. Cultivated rice (CL163, REX) and allelopathic rice (RONDO, PI312777, PI338047) were also included in the study. Nei’s genetic diversity among weedy rice (0.45) was found to be higher than cultivated rice (0.24) but less than allelopathic rice (0.56). The genetic relationship and population structure based on herbicide tolerance and allelopathic po-tential were evaluated. Herbicide-tolerant and susceptible accessions formed distinct clusters in the dendrogram, indicating their genetic variation, whereas no distinction was observed between allelopathic and non-allelopathic weedy rice accessions. Weedy rice accession B2, which was previously reported to have high allelopathy and herbicide tolerance, was genetically distinct from other weedy rice. Results from the study will help leverage weedy rice for rice improvement programs as both rice and weedy rice are closely related, thus having a low breeding barrier.

RNA-guided genomic transcriptional regulation tools, namely Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats interference (CRISPRi) and CRISPR-mediated gene activation (CRISPRa), are a powerful technology for the field of functional genomics. Deriving from the CRISPR/Cas9 system, both systems comprise a catalytically dead Cas9 (dCas9) and a single guide RNA (sgRNA). This type of dCas9 is incapable of cleaving DNA but retains its ability to specifically bind to DNA. The binding of the dCas9/sgRNA complex to a target gene results in transcriptional interference. The CRISPR/dCas9 system has been explored as a tool for transcriptional modulation and genome imaging. Despite its potential applications and benefits, the challenges and limitations faced by the CRISPR/dCas9 system include the off-target effects, PAM sequence requirement, efficient delivery methods, and the CRISPR/dCas9-interfered crops being labeled as genetically modified organisms in several countries. This review highlights the progression of CRISPR/dCas9 technology as well as its applications and potential challenges in crop improvement.

Water deficit caused by drought is a significant threat to crop growth and production. Nitric oxide (NO), a water- and lipid-soluble free radical, plays an important role in cytoprotection. Apart from a few studies supporting the role of NO in drought responses, little is known about this pivotal molecular amendment in the regulation of abiotic stress signaling. In this review, we highlight the knowledge gaps in NO roles under drought stress and the technical challenges underlying NO detection and measurements, and we provide recommendations regarding potential avenues for future investigation. The modulation of NO production to alleviate abiotic stress disturbances in higher plants highlights the potential of genetic manipulation to influence NO metabolism as a tool with which plant fitness can be improved under adverse growth conditions.

Crop plants should be resilient to climatic factors in order to feed ever-increasing populations. Plants have developed stress-responsive mechanisms by changing their metabolic pathways and switching the stress-responsive genes. The discovery of plant transcriptional factors (TFs) as key regulators of different biotic and abiotic stresses have opened up new horizons for plant scientists. TFs perceive the signal and switch certain stress-responsive genes on and off by binding to different cis-regulatory elements. The above 50 species of plant TFs have been reported in nature. DREB, bZIP, MYB, NAC, Zinc-finger, HSF, Dof, WRKY, and NF-Y are important with respect to biotic and abiotic stresses whereas the role of many TFs is yet to explore. In this review, we summarize the role of different stress-responsive TFs with respect to biotic and abiotic stresses. Further, challenges and future opportunities linked with TFs for developing climate-resilient crops are also elaborated.

A field experiment was conducted for determination of crop coefficient (KC) and water stress coefficient (Ks) for wheat crop under different salinity levels, during 2015-16. Complete randomized block design of five treatments were considered, i.e., 0.51 dS/m (fresh water) as a control treatment and other four saline water treatments (4, 6, 8 and 10 dS/m), for S1, S2, S3 and S4 with three replications. The results revealed that the water consumed by plants during the different crop growth stages follows the order of FW>S1>S2>S3>S4 salinity levels. According to the obtained results, the calculated values of crop coefficients significantly differed from those suggested by FAO No.56 for the crops. The Ks values clearly differ from one stage to another because the salt stress causes both osmotic stress, due to a decrease in the soil water potential, and ionic stress which the average values of water stress coefficient (Ks) follows this order; FW(1.0)=S1(1.0)>S2(1.0)>S3(0.93)>S4(0.82). Overall, it was found the differences are attributed primarily to specific cultivar, the changes in local climatic conditions and seasonal differences in crop growth patterns. Thus, further studies are essential to determine the crop coefficient values under different variables, to make the best management practice (BMP) in agriculture.

Crop disease classification has always been a critical and persistent problem in the field of agricultural and forestry sciences, where often we do not have access to a sufficient number of samples to know the distribution of real-world samples. How to make full use of the existing data is the starting point of our thinking. To address this problem, this paper proposes a supervised image augmentation method Negative Contrast, which uses the contrast images of existing disease samples after removing disease areas as negative samples for image augmentation when samples are relatively scarce. Numerous experiments have shown that several classical models using this augmentation method have improved in disease classification of four crops, rice, wheat, corn, and soybean, with a maximum accuracy improvement of 30.8%. In addition, the comparative analysis of attentional heat map shows that the model using Negative Contrast is more accurate and intense on the area of interest of diseases, and thus reflects better generalization ability in real-world disease classification. Our dataset and codes can be found in https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/w970704112/corn-wheat-rice-soybean and https://github.com/hiter0/contrastaug .

This study was carried out at Kita-mura near Bibai located in central Hokkaido, Japan, with the intention of investigating the effects of different agronomical managements on CH4 emissions from paddy fields on mineral soil over peat under farmers’ actual management conditions in the snowy temperate region. Four fields were studied, including two fields with twice drainage (D1-M and D2-M) and also a single-drainage field (D3-S) under single-cropping yr-1 and a paddy-fallow-paddy crop rotation as their systems. The other field was under single cropping yr-1 with continuous flooding (CF-R) in the pattern of soybean (upland crop)-fallow-paddy. The mineral-soil thickness of these soil-dressed peatland fields varied from 20 to 47 cm. The amount of crop residues leftover in the fields ranged from 277 to 751 g dry matter m−2. Total CH4 emissions ranged from 25.3 to 116 g CH4-C m−2 per growing season. There was a significant relationship between crop-residue carbon (C) and total CH4 emissions during the rice-growing season. This study, therefore, CH4 fluxes from paddy soils in that there was a strong interaction between readily available C source for methanogens and anaerobic conditions created by water management. Despite the differences in water regime and soil type, the average values of straw’s efficiency on CH4 production in this study were significantly higher than those of southern Japan and statistically identical with central Hokkaido. Our results suggest that the environmental conditions of central Hokkaido in association with crop-residue management had a significant influence on CH4 emission from paddy fields on mineral soil over peat. Rotation soybean (upland)-to-paddy followed by drainage twice practices also largely reduces CH4 emission. However, mineral-soil dressing on peat could have a significant impact to suppress CH4 emission from beneath the peat reservoir.

Hospital bed shortage is a worldwide concern. Beds unavailability has caused elective surgery cancellations, at our hospital peaking in spring 2016 at over 50%. This is often due to difficult patient step-down from intensive care (ICU) and high-dependency units (HDU). In our general/digestive surgery service admitting approximately 1000 patients yearly, ward rounds were run on a consultant firm basis. We report a quality improvement (ISRCTN13976096) introducing in our service a structured daily multi-disciplinary board round framework (SAFER Surgery R2G) adapted from the “SAFER patient flow bundle” and the "Red to Green days” approaches to enhance flow, comparing the previous year to 2017, when our framework was applied for 12 months.We used a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) methodology. Our intervention consisted in 1) systematic communication of the key care plan after the afternoon ward rounds to the nurse in charge; 2) 30’ 10AM Monday-to-Friday multidisciplinary board rounds, attended daily by the senior-team and weekly by hospital and site managers, revising the key care plan aiming at safe, early discharges, assessing the appropriateness of each inpatient day and tackling any cause of delay. We measured patient flow by average length of stay (LOS), ICU/HDU step-downs and operation cancellations count, monitoring safety through early 30-day readmissions. Compliance was assessed by board round attendance and staff satisfaction rate surveys.After 12 months (PDSA 2, N=1032), LOS significantly decreased from 7.2(±8.9) to 6.3(±7.4) days (p=0.003); ICU/HDU bed step-down flow increased by 9.3% from 345 to 375 (p=0.197), surgery cancellations dropped from 38 to 15 (p=0.100). 30-day re-admissions increased from 0.9% (N=9) to 1.3% (N=14)(p=0.390). Average cross-specialty attendance was 80%. Satisfaction rates were >75%, regarding enhanced teamwork and faster decisions.The SAFER Surgery R2G framework has shown an increase in patient flow in the context of an enhanced multidisciplinary approach, requiring senior staff commitment to remain sustainable.

The importance of irrigation in boosting agricultural production and productivity is widely understood. Proper planning and effective and efficient management and operation of irrigation system require crop and site-specific data. Since the last few years, Ethiopia has embarked on expansion of irrigated wheat. However, crop-specific data useful for irrigation planning and management for wheat crop is limited. The objective of this research was to determine water requirements and crop coefficients for wheat crops based on field measurements. The research was carried out at the Debre Zeit Agricultural Research Center in central Ethiopia during the dry season (Bega) of 2021/22. The crop considered for the experiment was durum wheat of the Utuba variety. Two non-weighing lysimeter units were employed to measure the water balance components. The soil moisture was monitored using gravimetric method on daily basis conducted both before and after each irrigation event at various depth intervals. The crop required a total of 115 days to fully mature. The length of the growth of initial, development, mid, and late stages were about 20, 30, 42, and 23 days, respectively. Microsoft Excel was used for the data analysis and the CropWAT8.0 model to estimate the reference evapotranspiration. Crop evapotranspiration (ETc) was determined using the water balance equation, and crop coefficients were computed from ETc and reference evapotranspiration (ETo). The results indicate that the total seasonal water requirement of the crop was 392.75mm. The growth stage-based water requirement was 40.35 mm, 82.44 mm, 238.66 mm, and 31.3 mm during the initial, development, mid, and late growing stages, respectively. For the initial, development, mid, and late stages of wheat growth, the crop coefficient was calculated to be 0.51, 0.83, 1.29, and 0.52, respectively. It was found that a fourth-degree polynomial equation fits well and explains the relationship between day of growth stage and kc of the crop. Although a one-season measurement, the results generated here could be useful for crop-specific data in scarce areas.

In sustainable cultivation technologies, the method of managing crop residues and the microbiological activity of the soil supported by the application of effective microorganisms are of particular importance. Therefore, a four-year two-factor experiment was carried out with spring wheat monoculture. Six ways management of organic matter before sowing and tillage (first factor) and the application of microbiological preparations (second factor) were tested - a total - 18 experimental objects. Parameterized: weed infestation, SPAD and LAI indicators, elements of the yield structure and spring wheat yield - all features were significantly determined by the tillage technology used. In most cases, the application of biopreparations does not have a significant impact on the tested features. It was found that the highest yields of spring wheat obtained in the technology: application of EM or UGmax microbiological preparations on the shredded straw of the forecrop and mixing it with the soil using a grubber immediately after harvest, sowing of the white mustard catch crop and winter plowing.

In order to ensure food security worldwide in the face of current climatic changes, a higher quality and quantity of crops is necessary to sustain the growing human population. By developing a sustainable circular economy and biorefinery approaches, we can move from a petroleum-based to a bio-based economy. Plant biostimulants have long been considered an important source of plant growth stimulants in agronomy and agro-industries with both macroalgae (seaweeds) and microalgae (microalgae). There has been extensive exploration of macroalgae biostimulants. A lack of research and high production costs have constrained the commercial implementation of microalgal biostimulants, despite their positive impact on crop growth, development and yields. The current knowledge on potential biostimulatory compounds, key sources and their quantitative information from algae is summarized in the present review. Our goal is to provide a brief overview of the potential for microalgal biostimulants to improve crop production and quality. A number of key aspects are discussed, including the biostimulant effects caused by microalgae extracts, as well as the feasibility and potential for cocultures and coapplication with other biostimulants and biofertilizers. This article also discusses the current knowledge, recent developments and achievements in extraction techniques, types of applications, timings of applications. Ultimately, this review highlights the potential for microalgal biostimulants for sustainable agricultural practices, the algal biochemical components contributing to these traits, and finally bottlenecks and involved prospects in commercializing microalgal biostimulants.

In recent years, the interest in increasingly sustainable agriculture has also turned attention towards new crops which could enter the food chain as new protein and oil sources or that can be used as new cover crops. In this scenario, Camelina sativa is a perfect crop to study. Camelina is an annual herbaceous plant belonging to the Brassicaceae which is interesting for its oil content, since the seeds contain about 40% of oils, with a high level of polyunsaturated fatty acids (30-40% alpha linolenic acid, 15-25 % linoleic acid, 15% oleic acid and about 15% eicosenoic acid). It is a hexaploid species (2n = 40, genome size ~782 Mb) characterized by rapid growth, short life cycle (85-100 days for spring varieties, 190-210 for autumn varieties) and low input cultivation needs. All these traits make it suitable for use in marginal areas. However, its use in feed and food is limited by the presence of glucosinolates (GLS). GLS are sulfur molecules involved in plant defense. In recent years, they have been studied not only as anti-nutritionals, but also for their anti-carcinogenic effects against chronic inflammatory and heart diseases and for their use as natural pesticides. Given the recent interest in camelina and its highly nutritious oil, eight pure lines and a synthetic population were compared in two different growing periods, spring and winter. In this work, the genetic materials were characterized for different phenotypic traits, yields and yield components, bromatological and glucosinolate content. The results confirmed that in North Italy camelina has higher yields if cultivated in the autumn-winter period (about 2 t/ha vs 0.6 t/ha), furthermore, a negative correlation was found between spring and winter yields, indicating that varieties that produce more in winter cultivation produce less in spring cultivation. Moreover, to our knowledge, it is the first work in which a synthetic population of Camelina sativa has been tested and proved to be a valid solution for use in various environments both for its adaptability and for the low content of glucosinolates (about 17 mmol/ kg).

Rain-fed maize production has significantly declined in Zimbabwe especially in semi-arid and arid areas causing food insecurity. Erratic rainfall received associated with mid-season dry spells largely contribute to low and variable maize yields. This study involved a survey of current farmers’ cropping practices, analyses of climatic data (daily rainfall and daily minimum and maximum temperature) of Hwedza station and simulation of maize yield response to climate change using DSSAT CERES crop growth simulation model. The climatic and maize yield data was analysed using mean correlation and regression analyses to establish relationships between rainfall characteristics and maize yield in the study area. Survey results showed that maize was the staple food grown by 100% of the farming households while 8.7% also grew sorghum. The survey concludes that 56.2% of the farmers grew short season varieties, 40.2% medium season varieties and 3.6% long season varieties. The result of the correlation analysis of climatic data and maize yield showed that number of rain days had strong positive relationship (r = 0.7) with maize yield. Non-significant yield differences (p > 0.05) between maize cultivar and planting date criteria were obtained. Highest yields were obtained under the combination of medium season maize cultivar and the DEPTH criterion in all simulations. The range of simulated district average yields of 0.4 t/ha to 1.8 t/ha formed the basis for the development of an operational decision support tool (cropping calendar).

Background: Falls in hospitalized older patients lead to increased length of stay and poorer discharge outcomes. The Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) represents a quality improvement intervention for patient safety. Objective: To evaluate CUSP implementation for the prevention of falls at a teaching hospital. Method: An interdisciplinary CUSP team, received a four-hour online module and one-day face-to-face training. The intervention was developed using the WHO implementation science plan-do-study-act framework. Process evaluation was conducted using the UK Medical Research Council framework. The primary outcome measure of patient safety culture was determined using the Safety Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ), while annual fall rates were considered the secondary outcome measure. Results: Safety rounds were conducted during the two-year intervention period, each attended by five to eight HCPs, with nine to 29 patients reviewed each month. Risk factors, plans and actions were administered to individual patients, while local issues were identified and resolved through engagement of senior executives. SAQ domains increased from before (n=39) to after (n=30) the intervention of CUSP. Fall rates reduced from 11.18 per 1,000 bed days pre-implementation to zero falls post-implementation. Conclusion: Improvements in patient safety culture were observed after the implementation of CUSP alongside a reduction in fall rates.

Development and sustainable development are two concepts gaining the attention of scholars, historians and policy makers in recent times. This is because they represent what people and societies across the world today sincerely desired. Every human being or human society deserve improvement in quality of livelihood, health care system, access to food, housing, security, clothing and many other indices of development in a sustainable manner. Based on this momentum, this paper examines the nexus between development and sustainable development. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section spots the conceptual issue woven around the term development as well as sustainable development in literature. The second section clarifies the two concepts (development and sustainable development) and the main perspectives on development were discussed. It also identifies the common and distinctive features between the concept of development and sustainable development. The third section then presents a conceptual framework of analysis on the nexus of between development and sustainable development. Finally, the paper concludes that the duos (development and sustainable development) are two-side of a coin and they complement each other. This is due to the fact that development is people oriented hence it must be sustainable so as to ensure that the advancement of current generation does not deny future generation the opportunity to develop.

The research reported on this paper was aimed at improving the overall efficiency of a PDO certified artisanal cheese production process. Being a PDO certified foodstuff by the EU, it is considered to have properties and qualities determined by the geographical environment in which is made, with its production taking place in a specific and determined geographical location, in this case the Serra da Estrela region. In that sense, the authors conducted a mapping according to a systemic perspective of the processes involved in the context of manufacturing and distribution of certified Serra da Estrela cheese. Numerous methods were used throughout the process, such as a systemic design analysis, and techniques derived from ethnographic methods, which led to the collection of data in the field and consequently provided the immersion of the researcher in genuine work situations. Critical points were identified and emphasized in the systemic map with the purpose of encouraging initiatives to address and overcome the gaps and inefficiencies detected. The systemic design analysis triggered the development of design work. Observations following an ethnographic approach identified ergonomic risks in cheese making during the process of cutting excess chips, fostering the emergence of musculoskeletal disorders at the wrist. A tool that fits best to the task at hand was developed. A prototype of the new tool enabled collecting feedback from use in the work context, in order to inform product development. The domains of agricultural production and microbiology, considering the specific microorganisms developed trough the ripening process of the cheese, turned out to be aspects of high importance for the issue under focus, contributing to a broader understanding of the ripening process and its risks, simultaneously improving the efficiency and success of cheese production. If it were not for the systemic analysis, which served as a link between the boundaries of distinct domains such as the risk of microorganism contamination, ergonomics, energy efficiency, legislation and regulation policies, transportation challenges and economic viability, approached throughout the research. Simultaneously creating bridges between them, the various problems might not have been detected in the first place, as they are usually addressed in specialized disciplines, predetermined by the restrictions of each specific area of knowledge. As a consequence of the development of this research, which was based on an analysis that sought to establish possible connections between various disciplines and tried to constantly maintain a holistic perspective, making new connections and observing the issues from a new angle, apart from the already established methodologies. All this allowed to lay out the seeds for the development of a plan to tackle the critical points identified by the systemic analysis reported in this paper.

The experiences gathered during the past 30 years support the operational use of irrigation scheduling based on frequent multi-spectral image data. Currently, the operational use of dense time series of multispectral imagery at high spatial resolution makes monitoring of crop biophysical parameters feasible, capturing crop water use across the growing season, with suitable temporal and spatial resolutions. These achievements, and the availability of accurate forecasting of meteorological data, allow for precise predictions of crop water requirements with unprecedented spatial resolution. This information is greatly appreciated by the end users, i.e. professional farmers or decision-makers, and can be provided in an easy-to-use manner and in near-real-time by using the improvements achieved in web-GIS methodologies. This paper reviews the most operational and explored methods based on optical remote sensing for the assessment of crop water requirements, identifying strengths and weaknesses and proposing alternatives to advance towards full operational application of this methodology. In addition, we provide a general overview of the tools which facilitates co-creation and collaboration with stakeholders, paying special attention to these approaches based on web-GIS tools.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of primary liver cancer and is highly invasive and easily recurs. For HCC, chemotherapy shows a limited effect. The gold standard for HCC treatment includes curative surgical resection or liver transplantation. However, the recur-rence rate at 5 years after liver resection is estimated at approximately 70% and even at 5 years after liver transplantation, it is 20%. Therefore, improving survival outcomes after curative surgi-cal resection of liver cancer is crucial. This review highlights the importance of identifying risk factors for HCC recurrence following radical surgical resection and adjuvant therapy options that may reduce the recurrence risk and improve overall survival, including local adjuvant therapy (e.g., transcatheter arterial chemoembolization and radiotherapy), adjuvant systemic therapy (e.g., small molecule targeted therapy and immunotherapy), and other adjuvant therapies (e.g., chem-otherapy). However, further research is needed to refine the use of these therapies and optimize their effectiveness in preventing HCC recurrence.

Complex illumination condition is one of the most critical challenging problems for practical face recognition. In this paper, we propose a novel method to improve the illumination invariants for solving this challenge. Firstly, a new method based on the Lambert reflectance model is proposed to extract illumination invariant, which is less insensitive to complex illumination variations. Secondly, in order to repair the defects caused by process of illumination invariants extraction, Fast Mean Filter is utilized to smooth and remove noise. Lastly, for raising the richness of information in output image, a nonlinear normalization transformation is proposed. Compared with the state-of-the-arts, experimental results show that the proposed method can extract more robust illumination invariants. Apart from it, the richness of information in processed image is greater and superior performance in face recognition rate is superior.

Breadfruit [Artocarpus altilis (Parkinson) Fosberg] is recognized as a tropical fruit tree crop with great potential to contribute to food and nutrition security in the Caribbean and other tropical regions. However, the genetic diversity and identification of germplasm in the Caribbean and elsewhere is not well understood and documented. This hampers the effective conservation and use of the genetic resources of the tree crop for commercial activities. This study assessed the genetic identity, diversity, ancestry, and phylogeny of breadfruit germplasm existing in Caribbean and recently introduced accessions using 117 SNPs from 10 SSR amplicon sequences. The results showed that there was high genetic diversity in the breadfruit germplasm in the Caribbean, as well as the newly introduced breadfruit accessions based on nucleotide diversity (π_T) and nucleotide polymorphism (θ_W). Furthermore, based on these measures of genetic diversity, there were no significant differences between existing Caribbean breadfruit accessions and newly introduced breadfruit accessions which are known to be highly diverse. Ancestry and phylogeny analysis corroborated the genetic relatedness of these two groups with accessions of these groups being present in both main germplasm clusters. This suggests that the existing Caribbean breadfruit germplasm harbors a higher level of genetic diversity than expected.

The characteristics of the Sentinel-2 mission with a decametric resolution and frequent acquisitions allow to improve the identification of crops. The majority of the studies on crop classification using RS were targeted at herbaceous and gramineous crop classes while fewer results were obtained on woody crops which present a strong variability in management practices that make their identification difficult. Thus, this study aimed to propose a rapid, accurate, and cost-effective analytical approach for the delineation of fruit orchards (OC), vineyards (VY), and olive groves (OL) in the Mediterranean (Southern France) considering two locations. A classification based on phenology metrics (PM) de-rived from temporal Sentinel-2 time series was developed to perform the classification. The PM were computed by fitting a double logistic model on temporal profiles of vegeta-tion indices to delineate OC, VY, and a DC class gathering all remaining surfaces. The generated PM were introduced in a random forest (RF) algorithm to identify woody crops across the two sites. The method was tested on different vegetation indices, the best results being obtained with the leaf area index (LAI). To delineate OL in the DC class, the tem-poral features of the green chlorophyll vegetation index (GCVI) were found to be the most appropriated with a typical drop of the signal during the mid-season (DOY 150-250). As a final result, we obtained an overall accuracy ranging from 89-96% and Kappa of 0.86-0.95 by considering each study site and year (2016-2021), separately. This accuracy is much better than applying the RF algorithm on the LAI times series, which led to a Kappa rang-ing between 0.3 and 0.52 and demonstrates the interest of using phenological traits rather than the raw time series of the RS data. The method can be well reproduced from one year to another. Moreover, it is possible to apply the classification model of a given year to an-other, keeping good accuracy. This is an interesting feature to reduce the burden of col-lecting ground truth information. On the contrary, the use of a classification model cali-brated in one site and applied to another led to a strong degradation of the classification accuracy. Woody crop phenology is dependent on site climatic conditions as well as the cultivar and management practices that can differ from one site to another.

Nations of the world have seen unprecedented changes in climate variables in recent decades. But it is unclear to what extent climate change has impacted and will impact food systems in some developing regions, and how policymakers can frame an approach to encouraging adaptation and advancing climate-smart agriculture. Many studies attempting to link agroecology to climate change adaptation do so without understanding the potential of Agroecology not only to mitigate climate change – which is the weak response – but to reverse its impact and ‘climate proof’ our food systems. By modeling the near and far future impacts of climate change on crop production, we showed how climate will impact crop production under two crop production systems (agroecology and non-agroecology production systems). The overarching aim is to derive sustainable development strategies and lessons for policymakers and climate researchers - essential components of environment and Agricultural development. Using case studies from Nigeria, we observed that transitioning to agroecology, even at the farm level also transforms farm designs, thereby affecting their overall food and nutrition status. The result showed that the use of agroecology management practices not only reduces the impact of climate change in the near future but will also lead to increased crop yield in the future. The finding suggests that to feed the over 400 million projected population of Nigeria by 2050, the use of agroecological practices will be a better alternative to the conventional farming methods. To advance the use of agroecological farming methods, governments at every level in Nigeria need to mainstream organic agriculture in national government policies. This is important as it will not only address climate change impacts but also hunger and poverty.

Weeds are among the major constraints to any crop production system, reducing productivity and profitability. Herbicides are among the most effective methods to control weeds, and reliance on herbicides for weed control has increased significantly with the advent of herbicide-resistant crops. Unfortunately, over-reliance on herbicides leads to environmental-health issues and herbicide-resistant weeds, causing human-health and ecological concerns. Crop diversification can help manage weeds sustainably in major crop production systems. It acts as an organizing principle under which technological innovations and ecological insights can be combined to manage weeds sustainably. Diversified cropping can be defined as the conscious inclusion of functional biodiversity at temporal and/or spatial levels to improve the productivity and stability of ecosystem services. Crop diversification helps to reduce weed density by negatively impacting weed seed germination and weed growth. Additionally, diversified farming systems are more resilient to climate change than monoculture systems and provide better crop yield. However, there are a few challenges to adopting a diversified cropping system, which ranges from technology innovations, government policies, farm-level decisions, climate change, and market conditions. In this review, we discuss how crop diversification supports sustainable weed management, the challenges associated with it, and the future of weed management with respect to the diversification concept.

For water-stressed regions like Iran improving the effectiveness and productivity of agricultural water-use is of utmost importance due to climate change and unsustainable demands. Therefore, a hydro-economic model has been developed here for the Zarrine River Basin with the central concept of that demands are value-sensitive functions, where quantities of water-uses at different locations and times have a changeable economic benefits. To do this, the potential crop yields and the surface and groundwater resources, especially Boukan Dam inflow are simulated using the hydrologic model, SWAT, based on predicted climatic scenarios i.e. quantile mapping-downscaled projections. Then, to allocate the agricultural water based on the agro- economic crop water productivity (AEWP) of crops, a basin-wide water management tool, MODSIM, is customized. Next, a simulation- optimization model has been developed using a coupled CSPSO-MODSIM, to optimize the total AEWP, considering climatic impact and crop pattern scenarios, for 2020-2038, 2050-2068 and 2080-2098 periods. Finally, the optimum crop pattern and crop water irrigation depths are presented for different RCPs and periods. The results indicated that this approach will improve considerably the AEWPs and decrease the agricultural water-use up to 40%. Thus, this integrated model is able to support water authorities and other stakeholder in a water-scarce basin, as is the study area.

Climate change and the increasing frequency of high-temperature events are significant threats to global crop yields. To address this, a comprehensive understanding of how plants respond to heat shock (HS) is essential. Signaling pathways involving calcium (Ca2+), a versatile second messenger in plants, encode information through temporal and spatial variations in ion concentration. Ca2+ is detected by Ca2+-sensing effectors, including channels and binding proteins, which trigger specific cellular responses. At elevated temperatures, the cytosolic concentration of Ca2+ in plant cells increases rapidly, making Ca2+ signals the earliest response to HS. In this review, we discuss the crucial role of Ca2+ signaling in raising plant thermotolerance and we explore its multifaceted contributions to various aspects of the plant HS response.

Precision agriculture and open-source data repositories provide a plethora of field-specific ecological data about agroecosystems, but few mechanisms have been developed to turn that information into management recommendations for crop production. The On-Farm Precision Experiments (OFPE) framework is an agroecological model-based methodology to improve crop manager’s abilities to make field-scale agronomic input decisions. This work evaluates the use of field-specific experiments that employ open-source data and the data emanating from precision agriculture technologies to gain local knowledge of the spatial and temporal variability in agroeconomic performance at the sub-field scale. Quantification of the temporal variability in crop response to inputs (e.g., crop seeding rates, crop rotations, fertilizers, other soil amendments, pesticides, etc.) allows for estimation of the probability that a future management scenario will outcompete another, in terms of crop yield, crop quality, farmer net return, or environmental quality. The challenge is to integrate OFPE into applied management with minimal disruption of stakeholder practices while drawing on historic knowledge about the field and economic constraints. OFPE is the basis of a decision support system that includes a six-step cyclical process that harnesses precision agriculture technology to apply experiments and gather field-specific data, incorporates modern data management and analytical approaches, and generates management recommendations as probabilities of outcomes. The OFPE framework allows field managers to assess the tradeoffs in agronomic input management between the maximization of crop production, quality and profits from production while considering environmental effects.

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an intensive care unit (ICU) round checklist, FAST HUGS BID (Feeding, Analgesia, Sedation, Thromboembolic prophylaxis, Head-of-bed elevation, Ulcer prophylaxis, Glycemic control, Spontaneous breathing trial, Bowel regimen, Indwelling catheter removal, and De-escalation of antibiotics) in improving clinical outcomes for patients with severe trauma. Patients admitted to our trauma ICU between 2016 and 2020 were retrospectively analyzed. We divided the participants into two groups: before (before-FD, 2016-2017) and after (after-FD, 2019-2020) the checklist's implementation. We compared patient characteristics and clinical outcomes, including ICU and hospital length of stay (LOS) and in-hospital mortality. Survival analysis was performed using Kaplan–Meier curves and multivariable logistic regression models, and multiple linear regression analysis was used to identify independent factors associated with ICU and hospital LOS. Compared with the before-FD group, the after-FD group had significantly lower in-hospital mortality and complication rates, shorter ICU and hospital LOS, and reduced duration of mechanical ventilation. revealed that the checklist's implementation was a significant independent factor in reducing ICU and hospital LOS and in-hospital mortality. In this before/after study, we observed that the FAST HUGS BID checklist implementation was associated with decreased ICU and hospital LOS and in-hospital mortality.

This manuscript explores the significance of continuous improvement in software development and digital product management, highlighting its role in addressing challenges and achieving superior results in today's dynamic business landscape. Drawing on Lean Thinking and Agile principles, the paper emphasizes the importance of customer focus, multidisciplinary collaboration, respect for people, inspection and adaptation, experimentation, incremental delivery, and continuous feedback in driving continuous improvement. It identifies key problems associated with the lack of continuous improvement, including quality issues, stagnation, inefficiency, lack of learning, lack of participation and collaboration, and lack of adaptability. To overcome these challenges, the paper proposes a solution that leverages agile events and interactions, such as sprint retrospectives and daily scrum meetings, and introduces a "kaizen board" as a visual tool to manage and monitor the continuous improvement process. The manuscript highlights the benefits of continuous improvement in terms of quality enhancement, efficiency gains, improved customer satisfaction, and adaptability to change. It stresses the need for fostering a culture of learning and constant adaptation, and provides insights on applying continuous improvement across different dimensions: product, process, team, and culture. The paper concludes by emphasizing the significance of commitment and active participation from all team members for achieving sustainable progress and success in digital transformation efforts.

Managers are often faced with the task of improving the management of the production 17process in order to maintain the sustainability of production efficiency in a highly competitive en-18vironment. The submitted contribution deals with the design of a system that will support them in 19the selection of progressive methods and technologies in order to improve the management of pro-20duction processes. Managers often follow new trends in this issue, but it is not easy to work on the 21knowledge that proven progressive technologies can bring them higher efficiency. The presented system is based on the use of knowledge of existing solutions of manufacturers of automotive components, where companies solve similar problems in production management. The mix of methods and technologies used in the management of production processes brings companies different results in the achieved efficiency. The proposed system for supporting the selection of the production management method and technology is designed from blocks of data collection, benchmarking of the performance of production processes of industrial enterprises, and further from data mining technology to obtain knowledge about the effect on efficiency from already implemented technologies. The last blocks help to examine the differences in the implementation of the same methods and technologies and allow to present the obtained results to the manager in the form of recommendations for choosing a suitable progressive method and technology.

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) was considered a minor crop in the Canadian prairies until recently, but its potential for cultivation is increasing due to its positive environmental impact and economic value. This review provides a historical summary of faba bean improvement in western Canada. Although traditional breeding methods have proved useful, in the last decade faba bean improvement has benefited from advances in genetics, biochemistry and molecular breeding tools. The overall breeding goal is to develop high yielding germplasm with improved agronomic characteristics that will be of economic value to the emerging faba bean sectors, including the plant protein industry. To maximize value and acceptance by producers, processors and the food industry as a source of protein and dietary fibre, future faba bean varieties need to be high-yielding, have diverse seed size classes, disease resistance, genetically low vicine-convicine concentration, and have wider adaptation to different agro-ecological zones of Canada. The experiences over the last 40 years of faba bean improvement in western Canada may be useful to other breeding programs globally located in regions with similar agroecology. In the past 10–15 years, faba bean genetic development in Canada has benefited greatly from research and development interactions with most of the faba bean research programs in northern Europe.

Various environmental challenges, related to oil palm commodity has became a major environmental challenge to oil palm production. The aim and objective of this study is to analyze the actual water footprint of oil palm based on root water uptake under varying crop age and soil type. The research was conducted in Pundu Village, Central Kalimantan. The methodology adopted in carrying out this study consists of various stages which includes observing soil moisture, rainfall, and water table, ETo, root water uptake and oil palm water footprint. The highest rate of water consumption was the 13 years oil palm on spodosol soil type with an average daily rate of 3.73 mm/day. The lowest evapotranspiration was represented by the 7th year oil palm on spodosol with an average rate of 3.07 mm/day. The total water footprint value obtained was between 0.56 – 1.14 m3/kg for a variety of plants with various age and soil types. It can be deduced that the water footprint value of oil palm vary for different crop age and soil types on temporal scale. The study also presented that the source of green water from the first root zone of oil palm deliver the highest contribution for oil palm root water uptake.

Purpureocillium lilacinum PL11 (formerly Paecilomyces lilacinus) is a ubiquitous fungus found in several habitats, mainly in the soil, and belongs to the Ophiocordycipitaceae family. This fungus was shown to have potential applications in agriculture as a biocontrol agent and biofertilizer. P. lilacinum can inhibit plant‒pathogenic fungi and nematodes, including root-knot and potato cyst nematodes. Additionally, P. lilacinum produces siderophores and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), enhancing plant development and increasing soil nutrient availability. P. lilacinum has been extensively studied in various commodities, including pineapple, maize, soybean, and legume. Most studies have evaluated P. lilacinum as a biocontrol agent, especially for nematode control. Other studies have evaluated the production of secondary metabolites and bioremediation, and few studies have used this fungus as a plant growth promoter. This review addressed important aspects of using this fungus. P. lilacinum is a promising fungus that can be used for agricultural production, reducing environmental impact, and thus collaborating for a sustainable agriculture production system.

On-farm research was conducted at Gouripur sub-district under Mymensingh district of Bangladesh during the boro (mid November-June) season in 2013-14 and 2014-15 to evaluate the performance of non-puddled rice cultivation with and without crop residue retention. The rice var. BRRI dhan28 was transplanted by two tillage practices viz., puddled conventional tillage (CT) and non-puddled strip tillage (ST) and at two levels of mustard residues, i.e., no residue (R₀) and 50% residue (R₅₀). The experiment was designed in a randomized complete block design with four replications. There were no significant yield differences between tillage practices and residue levels in 2013-14. But in the following year, ST yielded 9% more grain compared to CT leading to 22% higher BCR. Retention of 50% residue increased yield by 3% compared to no-residue, which contributed to 10% higher benefit-cost ratio (BCR). The ST combined with 50% residue retention yielded the highest grain yield (5.81 t ha^-1) which contributed to produce the highest BCR (1.06).

The stability issues in the widely known organic inorganic halide perovskite, CH3NH3PbI3, lead to the development of alternative halide double perovskite materials which get great attention in recent times. Although the stability issue seems promising, both materials and device performance of these photovoltaic materials remain inferior and challenging for improvements. Furthermore, the power conversion efficiency of single junction organic inorganic halide perovskite is now 24.2% and 29.15% for textured monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell, but for all-inorganic halide perovskite solar cell is 7.11% and halide double perovskite solar cells based on Cs2AgBiBr6 and Cs2TiBr6 is 2.8% and 3.3%, respectively, which is far less than 24.2% and 29.15%, respectively. This creates big question and concern that can both all-inorganic halide perovskite solar cell and halide double perovskites solar cells really be an acceptable alternatives to replace organic inorganic halide perovskite solar cells or lead based perovskite solar cells in the market in order to realize the practical applications? Not only this concern, but also there are many other big challenges facing by halide double perovskite solar cells. Such big challenges include: a) geometric constraints and limited integration with interfacial materials, b) dynamic disorder and a wide bandgap and localized conduction band caused by cubic unit cell which restrains the interactions of orbitals, c) high processing temperature which may limit on the diverse applications, d) low electronic dimensionality making them less appropriate for single junction solar cell purpose and etc. Moreover, origin of electronic and optical properties such as the polarizability, the presence of molecular dipoles and their influence on the dynamics of the photo-excitations in the halide double perovskites remains unlock concern that need to be elucidated. Now, another big question is how to develop overcoming mechanisms for such challenges. Can we really overcome these current limitations faced by halide double perovskites so that we use them for commercialization? This research roadmap for performance improvement is suggested focusing on: materials surface and bulk engineering, bandgap engineering, interfacial engineering, composition engineering, doping engineering, device architectural engineering, polar and domain order engineering. This was the reason that this review was developed in order to forward great contributions to the readers and commercial ventures.

With the growing trend of urbanization and the growing number of people migrating to cities, the demand for the development and construction of new buildings as well as the infrastructure has risen, meaning that the construction industry must adapt to the trends. The growing demands with shorter deadlines for an industry already known for high costs and not delivering on time means that productivity must be increased without increasing the cost. The solution for this might lie in the application of the Lean philosophy to the construction industry. This paper analyses the application of the Lean philosophy in order to increase the productivity in the airport construction site. The paper highlights the potential for enhancing productivity in construction workplaces by concurrently fostering continuous improvement and sustainability through the implementation of the A3 methodology and Lean principles, resulting in waste reduction and increased value.

Audit&Feedback (A&F) consists of multidimensional quality improvement activities, but its optimal design is still debated. Our study aims to outline how interventions of the Italian EASY-NET research program were designed, to explore whether desirable characteristics of an "ideal" A&F were adopted. A&F design included description of the working group, targeted clinical behaviors, selected indicators, sources, feedback procedures, corrective actions expected. Information was classified into four topics: nature of the desired action, type of data available, feedback display and delivery. Out of 9 projects, 3/9 aimed at changing a focused clinical behavior, 6/9 were generic; all projects identified clinicians as recipients, 8 explicitly considered managers. It was planned to develop an average of 27 indicators from administrative databases, as needed supplemented by ad hoc data collection. Five projects included outcome measures. Comparators derived from scientific literature or from territorial real-life data. Feedback was scheduled every 12, 6 or 3 months, or upon request, delivered as aggregate data (graphs and tables) via web platforms, e-mail, workshops, and individual meetings. In conclusion, at an early stage the projects were mostly “wide focused”, but improvements in A&F design and delivery have been introduced, and projects, still ongoing, will offer interesting insights on A&F effectiveness.

This systematic review examines the potential of digital language learning in contributing to students' cognitive gains. The study reviews existing research on the relationship between digital language learning and cognitive benefits, with a focus on enhanced problem-solving skills, memory, and multitasking ability. The findings indicate that higher levels of digital competences correlate positively with language proficiency outcomes, suggesting that participants with greater digital skills achieve better language learning outcomes. Digital technologies offer interactive and engaging methods of learning, which can positively impact retention and understanding. However, the study also acknowledges the limitations of digital foreign language learning, such as the lack of face-to-face interaction and the need for high motivation and discipline. The research questions explored in this study are: (1) Does digital language learning contribute to cognitive gains in foreign language education? and (2) What are the pedagogical implications for cognitive improvement in digital foreign language education? The study employs the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) methodology to identify and analyze relevant research articles. The results of the review suggest that working with printed texts may be more effective for cognitive gains compared to electronic texts. Additionally, implementing more senses through digital language education appears to be beneficial for cognitive gains. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings and the need for further research in this area.

Background: Routine human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake continues to be suboptimal since its recommendation in 2006 for girls and in 2011 for boys. This paper aims to review published quality improvement (QI) methodologies on interventions to improve HPV vaccine uptake among adolescents; Methods: Science Direct and Scopus databases were searched for QI initiatives evaluating the effect of multimodal interventions to improve HPV vaccination rates (initiation and/or completion of series) among adolescents. Studies that included an outcome of interest among adolescents aged 10 to 18 years old were included. Two investigators worked independently to screen for potential articles and a designated investigator extracted data on study characteristics and evaluated the outcomes; Results: Preliminary search yielded a total of 523 articles and 13 were included in the final analysis. Common strategies were provider-specific and patient- and/or parent-specific interventions, with an emphasis on education and knowledge empowerment. System-level interventions such as policy changes and revised protocol were less commonly prescribed despite being associated with more significant weight on the overall outcome; Conclusions: Creative, sustainable, and economical multilevel interventions that focus not only on provider training and public education but also incorporate local policy and system enhancement can substantially improve HPV vaccination coverage among adolescents.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to prospectively evaluate parents’/guardians’ late recall of surgical procedures and risks of elective surgery after pre-operative interview with surgeons. Materials and Methods: All parents/guardians of patients <18 years of age undergoing elective procedures from January 15th to September 1st, 2022, were prospectively enrolled in the study. Before discharge, parents/guardians were asked to complete a questionnaire regarding the duration of the consent procedure, duration of the interview, quality of the informative handouts, and their ability to recall the type of disease, type of surgical procedure, and surgical risks. Answers were graded from 1 to 4. Results: One hundred and two questionnaires were returned. In all cases, informed consent was obtained between 24 and 72 hours prior to surgery. The following responses were collected: 98/102 (96%) parents/guardians reported that the duration of the consent process was adequate; 95/102 (93%) reported that the handouts were fully informative, and 7/102 (7%) reported that they were partially informative regarding explanation of the disease and surgical procedure; regarding complications, 93/102 (91%) perceived the handouts to be fully/partially informative, while 4/102 (4%) perceived the handouts to be poorly/non-informative, and 5/102 (5%) did not provide a response; 94/102 (92%) stated that they remembered the pathology, but only 87/94 (93%) recalled it correctly; 90/102 (88%) stated that they remembered the type of procedure, but only 76/90 (84%) recalled it correctly; and 53/102 (52%) stated that they remembered the surgical risks, but only 20/53 (38%) could recall more than one complication. Conclusions: Late recall of surgical complications by parents was poor despite the high perceived quality of the surgical risk handouts and medical interview.

In recent years, Chinese manufacturing enterprises compete to chase the wave of "digital revolution", digital empowerment has become an important strategic path of technological reform for many manufacturing enterprises. Based on the micro data of listed companies, this paper investigates the impact of digital transformation of Chinese listed companies on the quality of their export products. It is found that digital transformation can significantly improve the quality of enterprises' export products. After a series of robustness tests, this conclusion is still valid, and there are two ways to improve innovation performance and total factor productivity. The export product quality enhancement effect of enterprise digital transformation also has the heterogeneity of ownership, region and industry. In the further study, this paper also examines the impact of digital transformation on the internal salary gap of enterprises, and finds that digital transformation may increase the internal salary gap of enterprises, and form a "masking effect" on the quality of export products. To a certain extent, this paper deepens the understanding of the study of enterprise digital transformation on the quality of export products and its differences, and provides certain guidance for enterprises to implement the strategy of digital transformation.

The contribution deals with the selection of progressive methods and technologies to improve the management of production processes in the industrial area. The first chapter of the contribution summarises the theoretical starting points for the management of production processes and their progressive concepts. Chapter 2 deals with the analysis of the current state of play in the use of methods and technologies in production management and summarise its problem areas. Chapter 3 presents the design of a system for selecting the appropriate method and technology to improve the management of the production process. The system presented is designed from data collection blocks, a benchmark for the performance of industrial enterprises' production processes, and data mining to gain knowledge of the impact of the methods and technologies used on the performance of production processes. The last block of the system allows the presentation of the obtained results, which sets out the recommendation for the choice of progressive method and technology. The system is partially verified in the last chapter of the contribution.

Automation of vegetable seedling transplanting has provided opportunities for saving labors and improving productivity. Some changes in seedling agronomy are necessary for efficient transplanting. In this study, the local nursery substrates were added with the herbaceous peat, the sphagnum peat and the coir peat, respectively. Effects of the new compound substrates were investigated on the seedling qualities and the root-substrate strength. In the results, we found that the addition of these horticultural mediums significantly affected the physiochemical properties of the original substrates. Under the same nursery conditions, some appropriate additions could promote the seedling growth. And the deficient or excessive additions were to inhibit the growing development of seedlings and their roots. The corresponding additions would also improve the structural characteristics of the root lumps. Generally, the nursery substrates added with the sphagnum peat were relatively optimized in contribution to the seedling qualities and the root-substrate strength. Especially as the commercial substrate and the sphagnum peat were mixed at the volume ratio of 2:1, the dry matter accumulation of seedlings was 2.18 times more than the original. Their root lumps had the best consolidation strength, which may be an effective application for the necessary qualities of seedlings for automatic transplanting.

As many as 20-25% of the population experiences harm in outpatient settings, yet these locations are underrepresented in the literature compared to hospitals. We examined results from the Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture designed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The survey administered in 2012 gathered perceptions from 23,679 individuals in 934 unique medical offices. We examined associations of organizational patient safety climate composites on frequency of safety and quality issues, overall quality score, and safety rating. We found organizational patient safety composites are all positively and significantly associated with a higher overall quality score and patient safety rating, and fewer safety and quality issues. Office processes and standardization appeared to have the most consistent influence on perceived quality outcomes. Our results indicate it may be advantageous for medical offices to improve on the factors that contribute to positive safety climate.

The cluster randomized trial ARena (Sustainable reduction of antibiotic-induced antimicrobial resistance, 2017-2020) promoted the appropriate use of antibiotics for acute non-complicated infections in primary care networks (PCNs) in Germany. A process evaluation aimed to provide insights into determinants of practice and explored factors associated with antibiotic prescribing patterns. In a nested mixed-methods approach, a three-waves survey used study-specific questionnaires for participating physicians and medical assistants to assess potential impacts and uptake of the complex intervention program. Stakeholders received a one-time online questionnaire to reflect on network-related aspects. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews with a purposive sample of physicians, medical assistants and stakeholders explored aspects regarding the acceptance of the program components for daily practice and the perceived sustainability of intervention component effects. The intervention components were perceived to be smoothly integrable into practice routines. The highest uptake was reported for the educational components: feedback reports, background information, e-learning modules, and disease specific quality circles. Participation in PCNs was seen as motivational factor for guideline-oriented patient care and the adoption of new routines Future approaches to fostering appropriate use of antibiotics by targeting health literacy competencies and clinician’s therapy decisions should combine evidence-based information sources, audit and feedback reports and QCs.

Companies have been increasing the amount of data that they collect from their systems and processes, considering the decrease in the cost of memory and storage technologies in recent years. The emergence of technologies such as Big Data, Cloud Computing, E-Science, and the growing complexity of information systems made evident that traceability and provenance are promising approaches. Provenance has been successfully used in complex domains, like health sciences, chemical industries, and scientific computing, considering that these areas require a comprehensive semantic traceability mechanism. Based on these, we investigate the use of provenance in the context of Software Process (SP) and introduce a novel approach based on provenance concepts to model and represent SP data. It addresses SP provenance data capturing, storing, new information inferencing and visualization. The main contribution of our approach is PROV-SwProcess, a provenance model to deal with the specificities of SP and its ability in supporting process managers to deal with vast amounts of execution data during the process analysis and data-driven decision-making. A set of analysis possibilities were derived from this model, using SP goals and questions. A case study was conducted in collaboration with a software development company to instantiate the PROV-SwProcess model (using the proposed approach) with real-word process data. This study showed that 87.5% of the analysis possibilities using real data was correct and can assist in decision-making, while 62.5% of them are not possible to be performed by the process manager using his currently dashboard or process management tool.

Present study on land use land cover analysis and taluka wise combination of cropped area, carried out in Beed district of Maharashtra state in India and studied 11 talukas of the district. Secondary data on land use land cover and area in various crops has been collected, compiled and analyzed from various secondary sources. Simple descriptive statistics used to examine the agricultural land use land cover and J.C. Weaver’s crop combination technique was used for taluka wise analysis of crop combinations and on the basis of highest to smallest area engaged in particular crop, crops have been ranked. The study showed that, in the district as a whole, percentage of uncultivated land other than fallow was about 46 percent as compare to net sown area is only 35 percent in total geographical area (1063855ha) of Beed district. The study further revealed that about 42 percent area engaged in food crops and about 58 percent area occupied by nonfood crops, which includes cereals (25%), cotton (19%), pulses (13%), oilseed (12%), sugarcane (5%) and fruits and vegetables (3%). Results of Weaver’s crop combination technique showed that the Wadwani taluka demarcated as most diversified taluka by means of maximum number (sixteen) of crops combinations with the lowest variance value (14) found in the present investigation. Further, the study revealed that the high crop diversity found in Dharur taluka with eighteen crop combinations and the taluka has given first rank amongst others. To derive the crop diversity ranking, taluka wise maximum to minimum number of crop combinations derived in different talukas and given ranks accordingly. The study concluded that, agricultural land use analysis is essential for solving and optimizing the land use problem, maintaining socio-ecological balance, best utilization of scarce resources. The authors enlightened that the rational use of agricultural land has important for food security and biodiversity which increase the productivity and profitability of the agriculture sector and it indicates the decision making ability of farmers in study area.

The aim of this work was to describe the physiological limitations induced under drought conditions in young sweet orange trees, including the crop capability to recuperate its physiological status once re-watering, and after a water withholding. The trial was conducted during two consecutive months (July and August) in two-years old sweet orange trees. Three irrigation treatments were arranged: A full irrigation treatment; (FI); a low-frequency deficit-irrigation treatment (LFDI); and a sustained-deficit irrigation (SDI) treatment. The obtained results showed that for Stem values below -1.5 MPa, significant decreases in gas exchange rates, evidencing diffusive limitations to drought stress. Additionally, there was evidence of increased osmolyte synthesis, compatible as a defensive response to prevent oxidative damage. Likewise, the isohydric behaviour observed also resulted in significant decreases in gs even for moderate stress situations. In addition, it was observed that in the LFDI treatment, the stress levels reached caused a significant increase in the levels of Pro and MDA, which were not equal to those detected in FI during the recovery periods, which leads us to assume that potential values below -1.8 MPa would be causing significant oxidative damage with no capacity for subsequent recovery, and probably affecting the final yield.

The cultivation systems of Coffea spp in a cooperative society in Puebla, Mexico, include rustic, traditional polyculture, commercial polyculture, unshaded monoculture and shaded monoculture. In this work, the properties of the soil were analyzed through physical, chemical, and biological analysis to determine its nutritional status. Composite sample analyses were conducted to determine physical, chemical and microbiological parameters (fungi, actinomycetes, mesophilic bacteria, nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria). Leaf nutrients were determined. Rustic was the cropping system with the highest amount of K (0.76 cmol kg-1) in soil and nutrient assimilation in leaf (N= 2.79%, P= 660.01, K= 17297.22 and Fe= 271.24 mg kg-1) (p= 0.001); in addition to presenting high populations of mesophilic bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes (30.16, 0.59 and 0.83 respectively, x10 6 CFU g-1 soil) and very low nitrification and denitrification rates. The principal component analysis (PCA) (>3.25%) indicated that actinomycetes and K in soil favor the assimilation of Fe, K and P. This Coffea spp cultivation system had a lower impact on soil health than the rest of the systems and favored forest ecosystem conservation.

Floods are among the most serious natural disasters worldwide; they cause enormous crop losses every year and threaten world food security. There are many studies focused on flood impact assessments for administrative districts but fewer on postdisaster impact assessments for specific crops. Therefore, this study used remote sensing data, including the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), elevation data, slope data, and rainfall data, combined with crop growing season data to construct a crop flood damage assessment index (CFAI). First, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to assign weights to the impact factors; then, the weighted composite score method was used to calculate the CFAI; and finally, the impact was classified as slight, moderate, or severe based on the magnitude of the CFAI . This method was used for the Missouri River floods of 2019 in the U.S. Due to the lack of measured data, the disaster vegetation damage index (DVDI) was used to validate the results. The combined approach achieved a high degree of consistency in spatial distribution. The CFAI can respond well to the degree of crop impact after flooding, providing new ideas and reference standards for agriculture-related departments.

Agricultural intensification increased crop productivity but simplified production with lower diversity of cropping systems, higher genetic uniformity, and a higher uniformity of agricultural landscapes. Associated detrimental effects on the environment and biodiversity as well as the resilience and adaptability of cropping systems to climate change are of growing concern. Crop diversification may stabilize productivity of cropping systems and reduce negative environmental impacts and loss of biodiversity, but a shared understanding of crop diversification including approaches towards a more systematic research is lacking. The current review highlights the use of Cropping Systems Diversification as an Approach to Enhancing Crop Productivity. Crop diversification can be considered as an attempt to increase the diversity of crops through, e.g. crop rotation, multiple cropping or intercropping, compared to specialized farming with the aim to improve the productivity, stability and delivery of ecosystem services. It can be one measure to develop more sustainable production systems, develop value-chains for minor crops. Crop diversification practices can include higher crop diversity, more diverse crop, mixed cropping; cultivation of grain legumes in otherwise cereal dominated systems, perennial leys or grassland and regionally adapted varieties or variety mixtures. Crop diversification and/or additional diversification measures like variation of seeding time or changing cropping patterns have the potential to lead to higher and more stable yields, increase profitability and lead to greater resilience of agro-ecosystems in the long term. These practices have the potential to make cropping systems more diverse in space, time and genetics. Through a balanced portfolio approach to agricultural sustainability, cropping system performance can be optimized in multiple dimensions, including food and biomass production, profit, energy use, pest management, and environmental impacts.

The objective was to estimate the correlation between VIs and grain yield and identify the optimal timing and VIs for precise corn grain yield estimation. Furthermore, the study aims to employ photographic quantification to measure corn ear traits and establish their correlation with corn grain yield. Ten corn hybrids were evaluated in CRB with three rep-lications at three locations. Vegetation indices and green leaf area were estimated throughout the cycle using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and subsequently corre-lated with grain productivity. In addition, photographs were taken of the corn ear to esti-mate their length, width and total number of kernels and compare these values with manual measurements. The experiments consistently demonstrated significant experi-mental quality across sites, with accuracy ranging from 79.07% to 95.94%. UAV flights carried out at the beginning of the crop cycle revealed a positive correlation between grain productivity and the evaluated indices (NGRDI, VARI, GLI). Regarding the phenotyping of corn ears, the regression coefficients for width, length and TNG were 0.92, 0.88 and 0.62, respectively, indicating an association with manual measurements. However, stage V5 in the localities of Lavras and Ijaci and stage V8 in the locality of Nazareno showed a posi-tive correlation with productivity. The use of images for ear phenotyping is promising as a method for measuring corn components.

Cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) is an important woody species for production in Ecuador. Woody species have the potential to incorporate soil organic carbon (SOC) into the soil. The province of Manabí is known for its cocoa plantations and several cocoa species, which generates interest in their analysis. This study aimed to determine the concentration and accumulation of SOC in three cocoa species (EET95, EET103 and EET116) 15 years old, both under the tree and in the rows, at different depths 0-5, 5-10, 10-20 and 20-30 (cm). The results showed that soil SOC concentration was higher in the row for EET116 (2.51%) and significantly different under the tree for EET103 (1.57%) at 0-5 cm. No significant differences were found in the other sections. In the whole profile analyzed (0-30 cm), the EET116 species accumulated 41 t ha-1 and 54 t ha-1 under the tree and in the row, respectively. The species EET103 in the row presented 47 t ha-1 with no significant differences. Species EET95 and EET103 had the lowest values, but without significant differences between sampling locations, with 36 t ha-1, 37 t ha-1, and 47 t ha-1 under the tree and in the windrow, respectively. In conclusion, the species EET116 accumulated more organic carbon due to several factors, possibly a higher decomposing biomass, not only from the tree but also from other trees in the area, which contributes to the incorporation of organic matter throughout the soil profile.

In this study, we examine the possibility of proactive floodwater diversion to fields via backwater in numerical experiments using multiple elevation data products with different spatial resolutions and explore the optimal timing of water diversion from the perspective of crop calendars. First, a comparison of the elevation data products revealed that photogrammetric data can capture microtopography, such as the footpaths between rice paddies and drainage channels around a field. Numerical experiments using two elevation data products, 5mDEM and LP-derived approximately 5mDEM, revealed that floodwater diversion can reduce the peak to about 19.2 m3/s when using the 5mDEM and can reduce the peak to 16.0 m3/s when using the LP-derived approximately 5mDEM. Interviews with land improvement districts and a review of previous studies revealed that the ear-burst period is particularly vulnerable to flooding. Although the effect of flood peak reduction is reduced due to flooding of the field, it is possible that floodwater can be channeled during the ripening period in August and in late September and October when the ears have been harvested.

Crop breeding is an important global strategy to meet sustainable food demand. CRISPR-Cas is a most promising gene-editing technology for rapid and precise generation of novel germplasm, and leads to revolutionary crop breeding innovation. In this review, we summarize recent advance of CRISPR/Cas technology in gene function analyses and generation of new germplasms with increased yield, improved product quality, and enhanced resistance to biotic and abiotic stress. We highlight their applications and breakthroughs in agriculture including crop de novo domestication, decoupling the gene pleiotropy tradeoff, crop hybrid seed conventional production, hybrid rice asexual reproduction, and double haploid breeding. Moreover, the challenges and development of CRISPR/Cas technology in crops are also discussed.

Lupinus mutabilis Sweet (Fabaceae), “tarwi” or “chocho”, is an important grain legume in the Andean region. In Peru, studies on tarwi have been mainly focused on morphological features, however, the have not been molecularly characterized. Currently, it is possible to explore genetic parameters of plants with reliable and modern methods like genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS). We here for the first time used single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) markers to infer the genetic diversity and population structure of 89 accessions of tarwi from nine Andean regions of Peru. A total of 5922 SNPs distributed along all chromosomes of tarwi were identified. STRUCTURE analysis revealed that this crop is grouped into two clusters. A dendrogram was generated using the UPGMA clustering algorithm and, similar to the principal coordinate analysis (PCoA), it showed two groups that correspond to the geographic origin of the tarwi samples. AMOVA showed a reduced variation between clusters (7.59 %) and indicated that variability within populations is 92.41 %. Population divergence (Fst) between clusters 1 and 2 revealed low genetic difference (0.019). We also detected a negative Fis for both populations, demonstrating that, similar to other Lupinus species, tarwi also depends on cross-pollination. SNPs markers were powerful and effective for the genotyping process in this germplasm. We hope that this information is the beginning of the path towards a modern genetic improvement and conservation strategies of this important Andean legume.

The specialisation and intensification in agriculture have increased the productivity but have also led to the spread of monocultural systems, simplifying production and reducing genetic diversity. The purpose of this study was to propose crop diversification as a tool to increase biodiversity and achieve sustainable and resilient intensive agriculture, particularly in areas with water scarcity. In this paper, a combined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) was applied to evaluate the environmental and economic sustainability of a differentiated system of cultivation (pomegranate, almond and olive), according to modern intensive and superintensive cropping systems. Based upon the results obtained, it is deduced that pomegranate cultivation generated the highest environmental load, followed by almond and olive. From the financial analysis, it emerged that almond is the most profitable, followed by pomegranate and olive.

With the rapid population growth, there is an urgent need for innovative crop improvement approaches to meet the increasing demand for food. Classical crop improvement approaches involve, however, a backbreaking process that cannot equipoise with increasing crop demand. RNA based approaches i.e. RNAi-mediated gene regulation and site-specific nuclease based CRISPR/Cas9 system for gene editing has made advances in the efficient targeted modification in many crops for the higher yield and resistance to diseases and different stresses. In functional genomics, RNA interference (RNAi) is a propitious gene regulatory approach that plays a significant role in crop improvement by permitting down-regulation of gene expression by small molecules of interfering RNA without affecting the expression of other genes. Gene editing technologies viz. clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein (CRISPR/Cas) have appeared prominently as a powerful tool for precise targeted modification of nearly all crops genome sequence to generate variation and accelerate breeding efforts. In this regard, the review highlights the diverse roles and applications of RNAi and CRISPR/Cas9 system as powerful technologies to improve agronomically important plants to enhance crop yields and increase tolerance to environmental stress (biotic or abiotic). Ultimately, these technologies can prove to be important in view of global food security and sustainable agriculture.

Among the plant resources in pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America, the Chia (Salvia hispanica L.) is unique in being the only member of the Lamiaceae cultivated for the mericarps. Recently the crop has gained considerable attention due to its high of content omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid, antioxidants, fibre and protein classifying it as a nutraceutical.

Nutrient management of lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium Ait.) depends on several yield-limiting features. Machine learning models can process such yield-impacting variables to predict berry yield. We investigated the effects of local variables on yields and nutrient management of lowbush blueberry. We collected 1504 observations from N-P-K fertilizer trials conducted in Quebec, Canada. Meteorological indices at various phenological stages showed the greatest impact on yield. High mean temperature at flower bud opening and after fruit maturation, and total precipitation at flowering showed positive effects. Low mean temperature and low total precipitation before bud opening, at flowering, and by fruit maturity, as well as number of freezing days (< -5ºC) before flower bud opening, showed negative effects. Soil fertility variables, leaf nutrient compositions and N-P-K fertilization showed smaller effects. Gaussian processes predicted berry yields from historical weather data, soil analysis, fertilizer dosage, and leaf nutrients with a root-mean-square-error of 1447 kg ha-1 on the testing data set. An in-house Markov chain algorithm optimized yields modelled with Gaussian processes from leaf nutrient composition, soil test value, and fertilizer dosage conditioned to specified historical weather features. We propose to use conditioned machine learning models to manage nutrients of lowbush blueberry at local scale.

Glyphosate-based herbicide products are the most widely used broad-spectrum herbicides in the world for post-emergent weed control. There are ever-increasing concerns that glyphosate, if not used judiciously, may cause adverse non-target impacts in agroecosystems. The purpose of this brief review is to present and discuss the state of knowledge with respect to its persistence in the environment, possible effects on crop health, and impacts on crop nutrition.

Examining the soil microbiome structure has a great significance in exploring the mechanism behind plant growth changes due to maize (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max Merr.) crop rotation. This study explored the effects of soil microbial community structure after soybean and maize crop rotation by designing nine treatments combining three crop rotations (continuous cropping maize or soybean; and maize after soybean) with three fertility treatments (organic compound fertilizer, chemical fertilizer, or without fertilizer). Soil was sampled to 30 cm depth the second year at approximately the middle of the growing season, and was analyzed for physical, chemical, and phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) profiles. Bacteria was found to be the predominant component of soil microorganisms, which mainly contain the PLFAs i15:0, 16:1 ω 7c, 16:0, 10Me16:0, and 18:1 ω 7c. The concentration of soil gram-negative bacteria from the soybean and maize rotation was less than in soybean continuous cropping when organic fertilizer was applied to both. Crop rotation reduced the percentage of fungi in the soil, among which the effect of organic compound fertilizer application was significantly reduced 24%. The combined crop rotation with organic fertilizer can reduce maximum the percentage of fungi/bacteria. In addition, the content of soil aggregate and organic matter had great influence on gram-positive bacteria and actinomyces, and soil pH had a greater impact on other fungi.

In Bangladesh, climate change is a major concern because of its geophysical location and climate dependent agriculture. As sessile organisms, crops plants have to face difficulties often in this environmentally vulnerable country. Therefore, this study examines the seasonal trend of two climatic parameters viz. temperature (maximum and minimum) and rainfall over a period of 1983 to 2013. Besides, this study provides insight into the relationship between climatic parameters and crop yield of two major crops viz. rice and wheat during 1997-2013. To assess the relationship of climatic parameters with time and yield using Pearson correlation analysis, time series data used at an aggregate level. SPSS software utilized for this analysis. The cropping seasons such as rice growing seasons Aus (summer rice), Aman (autumn rice) and Boro (winter rice) exhibited a significant increase in maximum and minimum temperature. Rainfall found to have a decreasing trend for all the seasons. This study also revealed that the climatic parameters had significant effects on rice yield, but these results varied among three rice crops. Maximum temperature had positive effects on all rice yields, especially on Aus and Aman. Minimum temperature had a negative effect on Aman rice yield but a positive effect on Aus rice yield. Wheat yield negatively associated with temperature. Rainfall exhibited negative relation with both rice and wheat yield.

Timely crop yield forecasts at national level are substantial to support food policies, to assess agricultural production and to subsidize regions affected by food shortage. This study presents an operational crop yield forecasting system for Poland that employs freely available satellite and agro-meteorological products provided by the Copernicus programme. The crop yield predictors consist of: (1) vegetation condition indicators provided daily by Sentinel-3 OLCI (optical) and SLSTR (thermal) imagery, (2) a backward extension of Sentinel-3 data (before 2018) derived from cross-calibrated MODIS data, (3) air temperature, total precipitation, surface radiation, and soil moisture derived from ERA-5 climate reanalysis generated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The crop yield forecasting algorithm is based on thermal time (growing degree days derived from ERA-5 data) to better follow the crop development stage. The recursive feature elimination is used to derive an optimal set of predictors for each administrative unit, which are ultimately employed by the Extreme Gradient Boosting regressor to forecast yields using official yield statistics as a reference. According to intensive leave-one-year-out cross validation for 2000–2019 period, the relative RMSE for NUTS-2 units are: 8% for winter wheat, and 13% for winter rapeseed and maize. Respectively, for the LAU units it equals 14% for winter wheat, 19% for winter rapeseed, and 27% for maize. The system is designed to be easily applicable in other regions and to be easily adaptable to cloud computing environments (such as DIAS or Amazon AWS), where data sets from the Copernicus programme are directly accessible.

Phytoene desaturase (PDS) is a plant enzyme involved in carotenoid biosynthesis. The PDS gene has been used as a selective marker for genome editing in several plant species, including banana (Musa spp.). Its knockout promotes dwarfism and albinism, characteristics that are easily recognizable and highly favorable. In Musa spp., the A genome increases fruit production and quality, whereas the B genome is associated with tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. The objective of this study was to identify a molecular marker in the PDS gene to easily discriminate the A and B genomes of banana. A 2166 bp fragment for the ‘PDSMa’ marker was identified as polymorphic for the A genome (identification accuracy of 99.33%), whereas ~332 and ~225 bp fragments were detected for the ‘PDSMb’ primer with 100% accuracy using MedCalc software. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use the PDS gene to determine doses of the A genome and identify the B genome in Musa spp., which will aid in evaluating the genomic constitution of banana hybrids and accessions at the seedling stage, and accelerating their classification in crop genetic improvement programs.

Aquaculture by-products can be compromised an important liming material of increasing soil pH and soil fertility. The aim of this research was to assess the effect of mussel shells on soil pH, on organic matter and on soil nutrients. In this study a pot experiment was carried out at the De-partment of Ichthyology and Aquatic Environment (University of Thessaly, Greece). A acidic soil (pH 4.26) amended with 6 different proportions of mussel shell (0.0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 1, 3 and 6%) in two different grain sizes (Fine powder (>1 mm) and Coarse powder (1-2 mm)), resulting in 13 treatments. According to the results, it was observed that pH, organic matter, Available P and Exchangeable K increased. Specifically, the highest pH values observed at 6% rate. Available P and Exchangeable K achieved the highest content at 6% Fine powder treatment, 46.2 and 190.1 mg kg-1, respectively. Similarly, organic matter had the highest value in 6% Fine powder pots (2.27%). Moreover, Total N concentration varied from 0.11 to 0.14 but no statistically significant different was noticed between the treatments. In conclusion, mussel shells can compose a promising liming material in the agriculture section.

The escalating environmental challenges that stem from urban residential waste in densely populated areas have become increasingly prominent in recent times. As a result, the waste management sector has experienced significant growth nationwide. However, due to the predominantly manual nature of these processes, their effectiveness falls short of meeting the current demand. Addressing these issues requires process enhancement. In this context, Industry 4.0, particularly the concept of Digital Twins, emerges as a potential avenue for refining processes. To tackle both current and future industry challenges, it is imperative to create a comprehensive methodology capable of generating effective solutions within the waste management sector. This paper provides an explanation of digital twins, outlines the methodological framework comprising an architectural structure and layered model, and details a series of sequential methodical stages for implementing digital twins based on the specific scope determined by the end-user. A noteworthy aspect is the transformative potential of digital twins in enhancing efficiency and precision within waste management practices. By providing a virtual real-time representation of the waste management system, digital twins empower simulations and experimentation to fine-tune processes. Furthermore, they facilitate informed decision-making by offering a detailed visualization of the complete system, simplifying the identification of challenges and opportunities for improvement. that this article derives from the presentation titled "Digital Twin application methodology for the improvement of production and service systems. Application to waste management processes" at the "Sustainable Smart Cities and Territories International Conference" held in the city of Manizales, Colombia, from 21st to 23rd June 2023.

Background: This study aims to investigate the patient safety culture at a sports medicine hospital and explore quality of healthcare and associated factors. Methods: In a cross-sectional study design, the tool Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPC) was administered online among staff at a sports medicine hospital in Doha, Qatar. About 319 staff participated from 898 staff who received emails (35.5%). Results: The results showed that 49.2% of the staff rated the patient safety grade as excellent and 36.1% as very good, which sums up to 85.3%. Factors associated with better patient safety grade were work climate (OR 10.3 95% CI (3.2 to 33.6); teamwork OR 7.6 95% CI (2.8 to 20.9) and team communication (OR 2.9 95% CI (1.1 to 7.6). Conclusions: Addressing the work climate, enhancing communication, and cohesive work within teams facilitates a culture of trust that improves patient safety grade. Ensuring quick return to play is a team effort involving multiple disciplines, hence a high performance and safety culture can enhance teamwork. Reducing punitive response to error and encouraging staff and supervisors are key areas that can improve safety culture in sports medicine organizations, and efforts should be placed in this area.

A frequent problem in Geotechnics is the soils with inadequate physical-mechanical properties before the efforts to which they will be subjected by the constructions, incurring cost overruns caused by their engineering improvement. The need to improve the engineering properties of soils is not recent, currently observing that the most common alternatives are binders such as cement and lime. The climate change observed in recent decades and the uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases have motivated Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental researchers to seek mechanisms for soil reinforcement from a more sustainable and environmentally friendly approach by proposing the use of recycled and waste materials. An alternative is natural fibers, which can be obtained as waste from many agro-industrial processes, implying their high availability and low cost. Sawdust as a by-product of wood processing has a rough texture that can generate high friction between the fiber and the matrix of the soils, leading to a significant increase in its shearing strength and bearing capacity. This concept of improving the properties of soils using natural fibers distributed randomly is inspired by the natural phenomenon of grass and/or plants that when growing on a slope can effectively stabilize a said slope.

Opportunistic routing has emerged as one of the prominent solutions for efficient data delivery in ad hoc networks especially in highly dynamic scenarios. Opportunistic routing uses the broadcasting nature of the wireless medium to increase the number of potential forwarding nodes in the network, thereby improving the delivery rate. But most of the proposed opportunistic routing protocols suffer from increased duplicate data forwarding at the intermediate nodes in the network which leads to increase in traffic and reduced efficiency. We propose a novel method which uses acknowledgements for controlling the data forwarding by intermediate nodes and thereby eliminating most of the duplicate forwarding in the network. Simulation results show that our proposed method is much more efficient that all the major existing opportunistic protocols.

This research work is concerned in the exergy analysis of the continuous-convection drying of onion. The influence of temperature and air flow rate was studied in terms of exergy parameters. The energy and exergy balances were carried out taking into account the onion drying chamber. Its behaviour was analysed based on exergy efficiency, exergy loss rate, exergetic improvement potential rate and sustainability index. The exergy loss rates increase with the temperature and air flow rate augmentation. Exergy loss rate is augmented at higher drying air temperatures and flow rates because the overall heat transfer coefficient increase. On the other hand, the exergy efficiency increases with the air flow rate augmentation. This behavior is due to the energy utilization was improved because the most amount of supplied energy was utilized for the moisture evaporation. However, the exergy efficiency decreases with the temperature augmentation due to the free moisture is less, then, the moisture begins diffusing from the internal structure to the surface. The exergetic improvement potential rate values show that the onion drying process presents a high potential to improve the exergy efficiency. The sustainability index of the drying chamber varied from 1.9 to 5.1. To reduce the environmental impact of the process, the parameters must be modified in order to ameliorate the exergy efficiency of the process.

With the advances in industry and commerce, passengers have become more accepting of environmental sustainability issues; thus, more people now choose to travel by bus. Government administration constitutes an important part of bus transportation services as the government gives the right-of-way to transportation companies allowing them to provide services. When these services are of poor quality, passengers may lodge complaints. The increase in consumer awareness and developments in wireless communication technologies have made it possible for passengers to easily and immediately submit complaints about transportation companies to government institutions, which has brought drastic changes to the supply-demand chain comprised of the public sector, transportation companies, and passengers. This study proposed the use of big data analysis technology including systematized case assignment and data visualization to improve management processes in the public sector and optimize customer complaint services. Taichung City, Taiwan was selected as the research area. There, the customer complaint management process in public sector was improved, effectively solving such issues as station-skipping, allowing the public sector to fully grasp the service level of transportation companies, improving the sustainability of bus operations, and supporting the sustainable development of the public sector-transportation company-passenger supply chain.

Nano-nitrogen fertilizers (NNFs) have emerged as a promising technology in the field of agriculture, offering potential solutions to improve nutrient uptake efficiency, enhance crop productivity, and reduce environmental impacts. The NNFs showed superior characteristics and performance on crops and therefore, became a potential alternative to conventional nitrogen (N) fertilisers. These fertilizers enhance plant uptake while simultaneously reducing environmental losses. Additionally, their small particle size increases crop acclimation and decreases the application rate. With all these beneficial traits of NNFs, they potentially contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This review article summarises the materials used in NNFs formulation, methods of preparing NNFs, and their crop responses. This review also highlights the limitations identified in the research studies and provides research recommendations for the future. Further, this review provides a critical assessment of the current state of NNFs and their prospects for revolutionizing modern agriculture to attain SDGs.

To identify soil microbial communities, it is essential to understand their phenotypic and genetic characteristics. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are bacteria capable of promoting plant growth. In addition, rhizobacteria also serve as biological control agents. In addition to fixing atmospheric nitrogen, solubilising insoluble phosphate and secreting hormones such as indoloacetic acid, kinetics and gibberellins, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria help plants grow directly. Furthermore, they facilitate plant growth indirectly by inducing systemic resistance, siderophores, antibiotics, lytic enzymes, hydrogen cyanide production and stress regulation. This review examines in detail the direct and indirect mechanisms of PGPR action and their interaction in plant growth and resistance.

Climate change is a large and challenging collective action problem facing the world today. This seminar review impacts of climate change on r yield of major cereal crops. Literatures have indicated that climate change would likely have positive impact in the highland agro-ecology in the short run. However, in the long run climate change will have negative impact in all agro-ecology. Negative impacts will be high in low land agro-ecology. Failure to prepare for climate variability can seriously affect the livelihood of smallholder farmers. Ethiopia by enacting Climate-Resilient Green Economy strategy and National Adaptation Plan aims to minimize the impacts of CC. Despite the existing adaptation and mitigation strategies negative impacts of climate change on agriculture especially on cereal crop production is continued. Thus, both private and public investment on adaptation strategies should be expanded more. Studies regarding the impacts of climate change on labour productivity, labour market, its distributional (which section society mostly by climate change?) and why the existing adaptation strategies are not successful? are not well studied, as most literature are focused on impact of climate change on yield, its adaptation and mitigation strategies.

The Philippines is an archipelagic country composed of different indigenous cultural communities (ICCs) spread across various islands. Many of these Indigenous Peoples (IP) are marginalized and do not have access to common resources enjoyed in the lowland areas. An initial assessment focusing on the evaluation of their available livelihood and resources was conducted, in order to find common solutions to existing problems. The assessment took place at the office of the tribal council of Matigsalog in barangay Datu Salumay, Marilog District, Davao City from April 11 to 13, 2023. There were about 42 participants in total for Matigsalog tribes (26 men and 16 women) who attended the meeting and there were 15 participants from the Ata tribe (7 men and 8 women). Validation of the study separately took place through a brief presentation of the results before 15 members of the tribe and a hiking visit in their farmlands. The study determined the existing livelihoods in the two areas which are mainly agricultural, farming of crops (rice, corn, cassava, sweet potato) and fruit trees (coconut, banana, durian, jackfruit, pomelo) and the resources as well as the community’s knowledge, systems, and practices with regards to agricultural crops including climate change. Their sustainable farming practices include intercropping, seed-saving, and exchange practices, preserving these crop varieties and ensuring their availability for future planting seasons, no usage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. To conclude, the tribe’s aspirations and resulting recommendations are summarized, to facilitate more directed and effective governmental assistance.

Soil-borne oomycetes include devastating plant pathogens that cause substantial losses in the agricultural sector. To better manage this important group of pathogens, it is critical to understand how they respond to common agricultural practices, such as tillage and crop rotation. Here, a long-term field experiment was established using a split-plot design with tillage as the main plot factor (conventional tillage [CT] vs. no till [NT], 2 levels) and rotation as the subplot factor (monocultures of soybean, corn, or wheat, and corn-soybean-wheat rotation, 4 levels). Post-harvest soil oomycete communities were characterized over three consecutive years (2016-2018) by metabarcoding the Internal Transcribed Spacer 1 (ITS1) region. The community contained 292 Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) and was dominated by Globisporangium spp. (85.1% in abundance, 203 ASV) and Pythium spp. (10.4%, 51 ASV). NT decreased diversity and community compositional structure heterogeneity, while crop rotation only affected the community structure under CT. The interaction effects of tillage and rotation on most oomycetes species accentuated the complexity of managing these pathogens. Soil and crop health represented by soybean seedling vitality was lowest in soils under CT cultivating soybean or corn, while grain yield of the three crops responded differently to tillage and crop rotation regimes.

This study assessed the literature about the use of high tunnels (HTs) in agricultural systems in the United States since the 2009 launch of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) High Tunnel Initiative. This NRCS program led to an increase in HT adoption nationwide. The literature searches were conducted using the Web of Science (WoS) database. The final sample was 133 peer-reviewed articles published between 2009 and February 2023. We used CiteSpace 6.2.R1 and Gephi 0.9.2 to conduct co-citation, co-author, co-institution, and clustering techniques. The findings showed that the peer-reviewed literature about HT use has increased since 2009, substantially rising between 2017 and 2021. Horticulture was the top subject category in the literature, and most articles were published in peer-reviewed journals of the American Society for Horticultural Science (i.e., HortTechnology and HortScience). The research field evolved from general HT practices, nutrient management, and plant pathology to focus on trials of specific crops and integrated pest management. The institutions with the most contributions to the HT literature were Kansas State University, the University of Florida, Michigan State University, Purdue University, and the University of Minnesota. The patterns of HT research revealed in this study offer a greater understanding of the current state of knowledge to inform the focus of future research.

To meet an ever global population's food demand, crop yields must be sustained and increased. Drought, which is getting harsher as a result of global warming, is largely impeding the agricultural productivity. Maize is widely used as food and animal feed in many regions of the world, but its yields are largely effected by drought and heat stress. Historical data on climate change predicts that drought and heat stress becoming major threat for maize cultivation in coming years, which will have huge impact on food security of the world especially in Africa and Asia. Thus there is an immense necessary to develop drought tolerant and climate resilient maize to feed the predicted population of the world. Availability and accessibility of crop genetic resources plays a huge role in development of drought-tolerant maize cultivars. A huge genetic resources of maize, including its landraces and crop wild relatives (CWR) have been reported naturally and many of them have stored in National and International gene banks globally. Conventional breeding methods have been tremendously increased maize yields, but these methods frequently fall short of achieving the demand for improved drought stress resistance. In this article, we have briefly discussed about impact of climate variability on crop production, maize yield losses due to drought, drought tolerance in maize landraces and CWR, and origin and evolution of Mexican landraces. This information may help in utilization of these potential resources in various pre-breeding programs.

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a spore-forming bacterium that produces insecticidal proteins and other virulence factors and is considered one of the most successful bioinsecticides available to control pests in agriculture. Bt strains have been reported as endophyte or rhizospheric bacteria, but little is known about the implications of this property of Bt in crop protection. Here, we review if Bt can establish as an endophyte/rhizobacterium and evaluate if Bt as an endophyte/rhizobacterium can simultaneously act against different phytopathogens (fungi, bacteria, insects and viruses) plus promote plant growth. The implications of the proposed review will broaden our understanding of Bt as a versatile entomopathogen by exhibiting differential behavior depending on context.

The desert locust remains a major threat to global food security. Control operations are a crucial tool to manage crisis; this research investigated the nature of control operations conducted between 2019-2021. Historical data on desert locust and control operations were obtained from the survey reports at the FAO Locust Hub and analysed with respect to survey reports, land cover types, cropland/rangeland extent and crop productivity data. We found that 16.1% of the grid cells with locust presence and 14.9% of the grid cells with control operations had a proportion of rangeland higher than 0.75; while 13.3% of the grid cells with locust presence and 13.2% of the grid cells with control operations had a proportion of croplands higher than 0.75, highlighting that locust presence and control operations were reported in both rangeland and cropland. Control operations continue to be used both to reduce overall locust numbers and to protect crops. Furthermore, through identifying which crops were most at risk, our analyses indicate that wheat production was under the highest strain during periods of increased locust infestations.

Macadamia (Macadamia integrifolia) nuts have become an essential commodity crop in Malawi. The nuts are a lucrative commodity and are used for household consumption and income generation among farming families and as a foreign exchange earning crop at country-level. In addition, macadamia production has increased significantly in recent years in the country. Currently, Malawi is the seventh top producer of macadamia nuts, with a global market share of three percent (1,846 metric tonnes on kernel basis). In 2018, exports of macadamia kernel had a value of US$24.3 million (£19.8 million or MKW 18.01 billion). However, the bulk (85%) of the crop is grown on large commercial plantations, but the smallholder sector is emerging as vital for the future growth of the macadamia sub-sector in Malawi. Furthermore, Malawian smallholders consider macadamia production to be a low-input crop with large returns per unit area (US$14.37 kg^-1ha^-1 or MKW 10,701kg^-1ha^-1) thus a lucrative crop with high potential for poverty reduction and wealth creation among these farming families. This paper, therefore, explores: (i) the historical and current trends in macadamia nut production in Malawi; (ii) analyses the country’s macadamia value chain and (iii) discusses the constraints of macadamia production in Malawi for informed policymaking. Thus, the synthesis of the Malawian macadamia sub-sector provides an understanding of the vital contributions of macadamias to Malawi’s economic growth and improvement of livelihoods.

This study examines the environmental challenges faced by Malaysian industries in adhering to industrial effluent regulations with the research question, what are the challenges in complying with environmental legislations from industries? It investigates the primary factors contributing to non-compliance and the perspectives, knowledge, and needs of Malaysian industries regarding environmental compliance. This study recommends the best strategy for promoting self-compliance. Thirteen stakeholders from various industries with environmental management experience were interviewed. Over the past seven years, these industries have shown low com-pliance with the Industrial Effluent Regulation 2009, prompting an exploration of their adaptability to regulations. Challenges identified include cost, employee attitudes, technology, management support, public complaints, and jurisdictional issues. Responses varied from divergent to unified viewpoints, highlighting the complexity of compliance issues. Respondents suggested enhancing compliance through behavioral changes, including incentives, enforcement, awareness, guidance, industry ratings, management commitment, and public disclosure of emissions. Suggestions for improvement and innovative solutions emerged based on participants' experiences, emphasizing the importance of continuous improvement. The study emphasizes the government's crucial role in ensuring regulation adherence but underscores the need for analyzing barriers and exploring alternative approaches. Understanding industry perspectives and strategies is essential for progress. Compliance, however, requires an analysis of the current challenges and adopting adaptive measures. It is important to understand industries' perspectives and strategies to move forward.

Accurate clinical diagnosis of patients presenting to primary care settings with acute sore throat remains challenging, often resulting in the over-prescribing of antibiotics. Using point-of-care tests (POCTs) to differentiate between respiratory infections is well-accepted, yet evidence on the application within primary care is sparse. We assessed the application of testing patients (n=160) from three family practices with suspected Streptococcal infections using rapid molecular tests (ID NOW Strep A2, Abbott). In addition to comparing clinical evaluation and prescription rates with either usual care or with testing, patients and staff completed a questionnaire about their experience of molecular POCT in primary care. The immediate availability of the result was important to patients (100%) and staff (≈90%) stated that molecular testing improved quality of care. Interestingly, only 22.73% of patients with a Centor score >2 tested positive for Strep A and overall, less than 50% of Centor scores 3 and 4 tested positive for Strep A with the ID NOW testing platform. The addition of rapid molecular POCTs to clinical assessment resulted in a 55- 65% reduction in immediate and deferred antibiotic prescriptions. The intervention was popular with patients and medical staff but was associated with increased cost and a longer appointment length.

This work focused on proposing a plan for improvement and control of the customer service process in a customer service center, based on a waiting line analysis where it describes all the elements that interact in the system and a statistical analysis of processes to define the state in which it operates. Subsequently, the simulation of processes is applied to represent the system studied, and with it, to be able to evaluate different strategies for improvement and increase in productivity. The following strategies were evaluated: correction of the instability of customer service processes, establishment of new specification limits according to the promise of value to be fulfilled to customers, human resource management, administrative technical support. Finally, with the results obtained from the simulation of the system, the improvement and productivity increase plan is planned according to the DMAMC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, or DMAIC) continuous improvement cycle established in six sigma

The objective of the prototype is to eliminate the polluting contamination of water sources, due to the leak of industrial waste without any kind of treatment, mainly generated by the industries and home sector. In this project, a prototype of water purification by plasma technology has been designed. The prototype will convert contaminated water into the plasma stream and eliminate the pathogens from the water by exposing it to ultraviolet radiation and plasma sterilisation. The polluted water will be accelerated at high speed using a water pump in order to convert it into a liquid-gas mixture for ease plasma generation. This process will be achieved when the electric supply from a source of alternating current (AC) is applied to the water by means of high voltage electrodes. After which, the mixture slows down to return into liquid form and the clean water is obtained. The whole process takes place without significantly raising the temperature also knows as non-thermal plasma. The device also has an automatic flow and pressure control system. Finally, a short feasibility study has been conducted on the water samples collected and report obtained from Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewage boards are reported. It has been concluded that this new plasma-based water treatment system will be more efficient and cheaper than the current wastewater treatment techniques and can be used in the future as the replacement of current secondary and tertiary treatments of industrial wastewater.

Toby Walsh in “The Singularity May Never Be Near” gives six arguments to support his point of view that technological singularity may happen but that it is unlikely. In this paper, we provide analysis of each one of his arguments and arrive at similar conclusions, but with more weight given to the “likely to happen” probability.

High-density olive groves, despite their interesting production potential, have several limitations, also due to the high fruit load and the irrigation requirements.The study aimed to evaluate the effects of fruit load and deficit irrigation on oil yield and fruit quality, and on olive chemical composition in a high-density olive grove (cv Sikitita). Our main hypothesis was that the primary metabolism, as influenced by crop load and stress, could modify the accumulation of different phenolic classes.Different fruit loads were generated through flower thinning (66%, 50%, 33%, 0%) and two deficit irrigation treatments (-60%, -75%) were compared to the well-watered control (920 m3/ha).Thinning treatments had a limited effect on oil yield, on the other hand, deficit irrigation caused considerably less oil accumulation in the fruit on all sampling dates.Thinning 66% and deficit irrigation 75% were considered with the control for untargeted metabolomic analysis, considering three sampling dates. 233 different phenolic compounds were annotated. Multivariate HCA results indicated the impact of harvest time on the phenolic profile of olive fruits, yielding two separate clusters grouping t1 and t2 together and apart from t3. Regarding agronomic techniques, they played a differential role in the phenolic profile (supervised OPLS – DA). Fruit load mostly affected flavonoid glycosides. In contrast, the phenolic response to deficit irrigation is more heterogeneous, with phenolic acids (35%), flavonoids (25%), LMW, and other phenols (25%).

Multi-cropping is becoming an increasingly popular approach in agriculture to tackle major and complex agroecosystem problems such as biodiversity and soil fertility losses, erosion and degradation, increased greenhouse gas emissions, etc. Comprehensive assessment of the impact of multi-cropping intensity on the agroecosystem is a new and still under-researched approach that provides a better understanding of the impact of the individual indicators studied on the overall functioning of the biodiversed agroecosystems. Data from a stationary field experiment with multi-cropping at the Vytautas Magnus University, Experimental Station between 2020 and 2022 were used to achieve this objective. The study included maize, hemp and faba bean as single, binary, and ternary crops. A complex assessment approach (CEI value) was used to determine the impact of these diversified crops on the agroecosystem, the interrelationships between the main indicators and the strength of their effects. It was found that the most positive effect on agroecosystem had ternary maize-hemp-faba bean crop. The effectiveness of other crops was from 2 to 35% less. The lowest one was calculated for the maize-faba bean crop.

Insurance serves as a mechanism to effectively manage and transfer revenue-related risks. We conducted a study to explore the potential financial advantages of index insurance, which protects agricultural producers, specifically sugarcane, against excessive rainfall. Creation of the index involved utilizing generalized additive regression models, allowing for consideration of non-linear effects and quantile generalized additive regression to evaluate relationships with lower quantiles, such as low yield events. To quantify the financial benefits for farmers, should they opt for excessive rainfall index insurance, we employed efficiency analysis based on metrics such as Conditional Tail Expectation, Certainty Equivalence of Revenue, and Mean Root Square Loss. The results of the regression model demonstrate its accuracy in predicting sugar cane yields, with a split testing R2 of 0.691. Additionally, our study suggests that this type of insurance could also apply to sugarcane farmers and other crop producers in regions where extreme rainfall threatens the financial sustainability of agricultural production.

The use of biostimulants consisting of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) is rapidly expanding in horticulture in recent years. In the current study, a novel mix of six Bacillus sp. strains was tested as a PGPR biostimulant in two experiments with zucchini squash (Cucurbita pepo L.) cultivated in the greenhouse soil and in an open field, respectively. In both experiments, seeds of the local landrace ‘Kompokolokytho’ and the commercial hybrid ‘ARO-800’ were either inoculated or non-inoculated with the PGPR biostimulant. The application of the six Bacillus sp. strains increased both the vegetative growth and the yield of zucchini squash, and these effects were associated with significantly higher shoot phosphorus levels in both experiments and both genotypes. Furthermore, at the end of the cultivation, the colony forming units of Bacillus sp. were appreciably higher in plants originating from inoculated compared to non-inoculated seeds, indicating that the tested mix of Bacillus sp can be successfully applied through seed inoculation. ‘ARO-800’ produced more vegetative and fruit biomass than ‘kompokolokytho’ under greenhouse cropping conditions, while in the open-field crop both genotypes performed equally, presumably because the local landrace is traditionally grown in open fields, and thus it is not well adapted to greenhouse cropping.

Leaf area estimation is a critical component in the study of plant growth and productivity within agricultural systems. This research introduces the LeafArea package, a specialized tool designed to calculate the leaf area of six distinct Andean fruit species: S. quitoense, S. betaceum, P. peruviana, R. fruticosus, P. ligularis and P. edulis. Leveraging response variables such as species type, leaf length and width, the package employs advanced machine learning algorithms to estimate leaf area accurately. The primary focus of the study is to identify the most effective model for describing the relationship between leaf width, length, and area for each plant species. Currently, the LeafArea package utilizes four different machine learning algorithms, namely generalized linear model (GLM), generalized linear mixed model (GLMM), Random Forest and XGBoost. Among these, XGBoost stands out as a top-performing algorithm, exhibiting exceptional predictive accuracy. The evaluation metrics employed in the program provide valuable insights for researchers, aiding in informed decision-making. Specifically, XGBoost demonstrates significantly lower prediction errors and approaches a near-perfect R2 value, emphasizing its potential to enhance predictive accuracy. These results underscore the efficacy of machine learning techniques, as a compelling choice for researchers seeking precise and robust predictions in leaf area estimation. The LeafArea package thus represents a valuable tool for advancing our understanding of plant growth dynamics, resource allocation, and overall productivity within agricultural ecosystems.

Studies on the domestication, genetic differentiation, and crop evolution of foxtail millet are re-viewed. Several genetic studies were carried out to elucidate the genetic relationships among foxtail millet accessions originating mainly from Eurasia, based on intraspecific hybrid pollen semi-sterility, isozymes, DNA markers, and single-nucleotide polymorphisms. Most studies suggest that China is the center of diversity of foxtail millet, and landraces were categorized into geographical groups. Furthermore, the evolution of genes was reviewed (i.e., the Waxy gene conferring amylose content in the endosperm, the Si7PPO gene controlling polyphenol oxidase, the HD1 and SiPRR37 genes controlling heading time, the Sh1 and SvLes1 genes involved in grain shattering, and the C gene controlling leaf sheath pigmentation), and the variation and distribu-tion of these genes suggested complex patterns of evolution under human and/or natural selec-tion.