Agriculture — Open Access Journal

The establishment of permanent cover crops is becoming a common practice in vineyard floor management. Turfgrass science may provide species and techniques with a high potential for improving the sustainability of vineyard floor management. Based on this assumption, an experiment was carried out during 2018 and 2019 at the Donna Olimpia Vineyard, Bolgheri, Italy. The trial aimed at comparing an innovative floor management system based on a turf-type cultivar of bermudagrass mown with an autonomous mower with a conventional floor management system. Ground cover percentage, energy consumption, CO₂ emissions, grapevine water status, leaf nitrogen content, fruit yield and must composition have been assessed in order to perform the comparison. The innovative vineyard floor management produced an almost complete ground cover (98%) at the end of the second growing season, with the resident species reduced to a small percentage (4%). Resident species growing under-trellis were efficiently controlled without herbicide applications. A lower primary energy consumption and a reduction in CO₂ emissions were observed for the innovative management system compared to the conventional management system. Grapevine water status, leaf chlorophyll content, soil–plant analyses development (SPAD), fruit yields and must composition were similar between the different soil management systems. Based on results obtained in this trial, turf-type bermudagrass and innovative mowing machines may contribute to enhance the sustainability of vineyard floor management. Full article

Zimbabwe has recently experienced a considerable shift towards the production of more cash crops, such as tobacco, at the expense of food crops. Although cash cropping has been associated with increased income, the question is whether the income gained from cash crops would be enough to provide the food needs of farming households. This research was conducted to analyse the impact of cash crops on household food security. A cross-sectional survey consisting of 281 randomly selected smallholder farmers in Shamva District was used for primary data collection. Data were analysed using the Tobit regression model and Propensity score matching (PSM). The household dietary diversity score (HDDS) was used to measure food security. The PSM results showed a positive impact of cash crop production on the HDDS. This could be attributed to the income effect of cash cropping. Furthermore, Tobit regression results showed that cash crop production (p < 0.1), non-farm income (p < 0.01), total arable land (p < 0.05) and access to draft power (p < 0.05) positively influenced household food security. Household size negatively impacted food security (p < 0.05). While the results from this study suggest the need to promote cash crop production, it should not be regarded as the panacea for addressing food insecurity. There is a need for further research to derive optimum combinations of cash and food crops in the crop mixture for smallholder farmers to achieve food security. Furthermore, opportunities for off-farm livelihood options should be developed, since non-farm income had a positive effect on food security. Full article

One of the debates in the literature of contract farming concerns contracting firms’ preferences over large growers and if contract farming is inclusive of smallholders. The empirical evidence was mixed, which may be due to ignoring the stylized fact that modern food supply chain is characterized by large organized retailers who often contract with farmers. The present study aims at addressing this issue by incorporating sales to supermarket and hypermarket chains as one of the determinants of contract farming participation. Based on a nationally-representative farm household data set in Taiwan, this study presents empirical evidence to support the positive effects of selling farm produce to supermarkets and/or hypermarkets on the probability of contract farming participation. However, the increase in the share of chain stores, convenience stores, as well as local grocers was found to lower the probability of contract farming participation. The results suggest the effect of organized retailing on the participation of contract farming varies with different food retailers in the modern supply chain. Moreover, based on the predicted probability from the participation-determining model, contracting firms in Taiwan are found to exhibit preferences towards large-scale growers. A further analysis of the interaction between grower’s scale and membership of farmer organizations indicates participation in the farmer organizations can effectively mitigate contracting firms’ scale bias. The significance of the moderating effect of farmer organizations suggests their important role in the inclusion of smallholders into modern food supply chain. Full article

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest around agricultural science and practice in conservation tillage systems that are compatible with sustainable agriculture. The aim of this study was to assess the qualitative and quantitative changes in weed flora and soil seed bank under reduced tillage and no-till (direct sowing) in comparison with traditional ploughing. In the crop rotation: pea/rape—winter wheat—winter wheat the number and dry weight of weeds increased with the simplification of tillage. The seed bank was the largest under direct sowing and about three times smaller in traditional ploughing. Under direct sowing, most weed seeds were accumulated in the top soil layer 0–5 cm, while in the ploughing system most weed seeds occurred in deeper layers: 5–10 and 10–20 cm. In the reduced and no-till systems, a greater percentage of perennial and invasive species, such as Conyza canadensis L., was observed. The results show that it is possible to maintain weed infestation in the no-till system at a level that does not significantly affect winter wheat yield and does not pose a threat of perennial and invasive weeds when effective herbicide protection is applied. Full article

Camelina is an oil plant classified as a minor crop. The small acreage is the main cause of the small amount of plant protection products that are registered for use on camelina plantations. This contributes to difficulties in the protection of this plant. In the conducted experiment, the genetic similarity of genotypes of camelina was compared. The effect of selected herbicides (propaquizafop at rate 70 g a.i. ha⁻¹, quizalofop-p-ethyl at rate 50 g a.i. ha⁻¹, clopyralid at rate 90 g a.i. ha⁻¹, and picloram at rate 24 g a.i. ha⁻¹ applied in the three-four-leaves growth stage of camelina) on six individual genotypes of the plant and plant chlorophyll fluorescence after the use of these substances was also determined. The Przybrodzka variety showed the lowest level of damage in the assessment carried out 42 days after herbicide application and the damages of plants after quizalofop-p-ethyl and propaquizafop was completely gone. The variety Przybrodzka had the lowest genetic similarity to all analyzed genotypes. In other cases, genetic similarity of analyzed genotypes could not be linked to herbicide-related damage. Picloram contributed to the greatest damage to test plants and had the greatest impact on the operation of photosystem II (PSII). However, the level of plant chlorophyll fluorescence parameter values indicates small PSII damage for all substances and the possibility of subsequent plant regeneration. The results of the presented research indicate that it is worth referring to several plant varieties in phytotoxicity studies of herbicides towards arable crops. Full article

The number of ewes in Portugal registers a decrease since 1998. This decrease is felt particularly in the south of the country, which concentrates almost half of the existing ewes, mainly for meat production. One of the most important ewe production systems is the Montado, a High Nature Value ecosystem, occupying ca. 1.2 million ha in Portugal. The competitiveness of this system among the European ewe production systems is an important issue for the future of the Montado ecosystem. So, the objective of this paper is to analyze the ewe production systems in the Montado, using the agri benchmark database, and compare these systems with other European countries’ systems, ranking their competitiveness and efficiency among other systems in the European Union. We concluded that this methodology facilitated an in-depth understanding not only of the competitiveness and efficiency of ewe production systems in Portugal but also of their positioning regarding other systems in the European Union. The pattern of returns assures that these farms are competitive in the sense that they depend on the market on their decisions, and thus it is important that market values sheep products. Nevertheless, the diversification to other income sources would be a good option for the future sustainability of these farms and the opportunities and risks that these systems will deal with in a new green economy, with probable new functions and new opportunities for land, will be a challenge for the future. Full article

This research deals with the problem of agricultural land market efficiency using the spatial market integration concept as well as the present value (PV) model. Empirically, it aims to test the convergence of agricultural land prices across Polish provinces. In order to check the law of one price (LOP), good-quality, medium-quality and bad-quality land sales markets are examined separately. Furthermore, this study is complemented by an analysis of the drivers behind agricultural land price convergence. The main method of testing price convergence is the log t regression. The latter was performed in two configurations, i.e., based on trend components of time series extracted using the Hodrick–Prescott filter and the Hamilton filter. Additionally, traditional β- and σ-convergence tests were applied. The obtained results indicated that agricultural land prices tend to converge in relative terms, which means that the provinces share a common long-run growth path. This finding and estimates of traditional convergence tests prove the increasing integration in the agricultural land market in Poland. There is no evidence, however, to support the conclusion that the absolute version of the long-run LOP holds. Moreover, using dynamic fixed effects models, it was identified that for good-, medium- and bad-quality land prices almost the same drivers of convergence apply. The only differences concern the strength of the influence of independent variables on prices of farmland of various types. Additionally, bad-quality land prices are the only ones which are affected by livestock density. Furthermore, estimates of the present value model finally confirmed that the agricultural land sales market in Poland cannot be considered as efficient. Full article

Many tasks involved in viticulture are labor intensive. Farmers frequently monitor the vineyard to check grape conditions, damage due to infections from pests and insects, grape growth, and to estimate optimal harvest time. Such monitoring is often done manually by the farmers. Manual monitoring of large vineyards is time and labor consuming process. To this end, robots have a big potential to increase productivity in farms by automating various tasks. We propose a low-cost semantic monitoring system for vineyards using autonomous robots. The system uses inexpensive cameras, processing boards, and sensors to remotely provide timely information to the farmers on their computer and smart phone. Unlike traditional systems, the proposed system logs data `semantically’, which enables pin-pointed monitoring of vineyards. In other words, the farmers can monitor only specific areas of the vineyard as desired. The proposed algorithm is robust for occlusions, and intelligently logs image data based on the movement of the robot. The proposed system was tested in actual vineyards with real robots. Due to its compactness and portability, the proposed system can be used as an extension in conjunction with already existing autonomous robot systems used in vineyards. The results show that pin-pointed remote monitoring of desired areas of the vineyard is a very useful and inexpensive tool for the farmers to save a lot of time and labor. Full article

Interaction of grafting and shading on tomato physical properties and chemical composition after 15 days of storage at 10 °C and 90% relative humidity was investigated in ungrafted and grafted tomato cultivars ‘Optima F₁’ and ‘Big beef F₁’ grown under shading nets (red and pearl net) and nonshaded conditions. For grafted plants ‘Maxifort’ rootstock was used. The effects of two weeks of storage was statistically significant when taking into account the effects of grafting, shading and variety for all tomato fruit composition parameters, except total phenols. A principal component analysis demonstrated that the changes in tomato fruit traits during the studied storage period were the main source of differentiation in tomato fruit quality. Beside a slight loss of firmness, tomato fruits were generally expected to have lower lycopene, sugar, malic and citric acid contents, higher succinic acid content, more elastic fruit skin and higher ascorbic acid content. Additionally, after storage, fruits from grafted plants had lower total phenol, higher ascorbic acid and higher succinic acid contents compared to fruits from ungrafted plants. Storage diminishes the differences in quality achieved through convenient grafting and shading combinations. Full article

The supervision and feeding of grazing livestock are always difficult missions. Since animals act based on habits, the real-time monitoring data logger has become an indispensable instrument to assist farmers in recognizing the status of livestock. Position-tracked and acoustic monitoring have become commonplace as two of the best methods to characterize feeding performance in ruminants. Previously, the existing methods were limited to desktop computers and lacked a sound-collecting function. These restrictions impacted the late interventions from feeders and required a large-sized data memory. In this work, an open-source framework for a data collector that autonomously captures the health information of farm animals is introduced. In this portable hardware, a Wireless Location Acoustic Sensing System (WiLASS) is integrated to infer the health status through the activities and abnormal phenomena of farming livestock via chew–bite sound identification. WiLASS involves the open modules of ESP32-WROOM, GPS NEO-6M, ADXL335 accelerometer, GY-MAX4466 amplifier, temperature sensors, and other signal processing circuits. By means of wireless communication, the ESP32-WROOM Thing micro-processor offers high speed transmission, standard protocol, and low power consumption. Data are transferred in a real-time manner from the attached sensing modules to a digital server for further analysis. The module of GPS NEO-6M Thing brings about fast tracking, high precision, and a strong signal, which is suitable for highland applications. Some computations are incorporated into the accelerometer to estimate directional movement and vibration. The GY-MAX4466 Thing plays the role of microphone, which is used to store environmental sound. To ensure the quality of auditory data, they are recorded at a minimum sampling frequency of 10 KHz and at a 12-bit resolution. Moreover, a mobile software in pocket devices is implemented to provide extended mobility and social convenience. Converging with a cloud-based server, the multi-Thing portable platform can provide access to simultaneously supervise. Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol with low bandwidth, high reliability, and bi-direction, and which is appropriate for most operating systemsOS, is embedded into the system to prevent data loss. From the experimental results, the feasibility, effectiveness, and correctness of our approach are verified. Under the changes of climate, the proposed framework not only supports the improvement of farming techniques, but also provides a high-quality alternative for poor rural areas because of its low cost and its ability to carry out a proper policy for each species. Full article

A novel data analysis method for the evaluation of plant disease risk that utilizes weather information is presented in this paper. This research considers two different datasets: open weather data from the Finnish Meteorological Institute and long-term (1991–2017) plant disease severity observations in different hardiness zones in Finland. Historical net blotch severity data on spring barley were collected from official variety trials carried out by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) and the analysis was performed with existing data without additional measurements. Feature generation was used to combine different datasets and to enrich the information content of the data. The t-test was applied to validate features and select the most suitable one for the identification of datasets with high net blotch risk. Based on the analysis, the selected daily measured variables for the estimation of net blotch density were the average temperature, minimum temperature, and rainfall. The results strongly indicate that thorough data analysis and feature generation methods enable new tools for plant disease prediction. This is crucial when predicting the disease risk and optimizing the use of pesticides in modern agriculture. Here, the developed system resolves the correlation between weather measurements and net blotch observations in a novel way. Full article

In the area of plant protection and precision farming, timely detection and classification of plant diseases and crop pests play crucial roles in the management and decision-making. Recently, there have been many artificial neural network (ANN) methods used in agricultural classification tasks, which are task specific and require big datasets. These two characteristics are quite different from how humans learn intelligently. Undoubtedly, it would be exciting if the models can accumulate knowledge to handle continual tasks. Towards this goal, we propose an ANN-based continual classification method via memory storage and retrieval, with two clear advantages: Few data and high flexibility. This proposed ANN-based model combines a convolutional neural network (CNN) and generative adversarial network (GAN). Through learning of the similarity between input paired data, the CNN part only requires few raw data to achieve a good performance, suitable for a classification task. The GAN part is used to extract important information from old tasks and generate abstracted images as memory for the future task. Experimental results show that the regular CNN model performs poorly on the continual tasks (pest and plant classification), due to the forgetting problem. However, our proposed method can distinguish all the categories from new and old tasks with good performance, owing to its ability of accumulating knowledge and alleviating forgetting. There are so many possible applications of this proposed approach in the agricultural field, for instance, the intelligent fruit picking robots, which can recognize and pick different kinds of fruits; the plant protection is achieved by automatic identification of diseases and pests, which can continuously improve the detection range. Thus, this work also provides a reference for other studies towards more intelligent and flexible applications in agriculture. Full article

Phosphorus is among the main limiting nutrients for plant growth and productivity in both agricultural and natural ecosystems in the tropics, which are characterized by weathered soil. Soil bioavailable P measurement is necessary to predict the potential growth of plant biomass in these ecosystems. Visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (Vis-NIRS) is widely used to predict soil chemical and biological parameters as an alternative to time-consuming conventional laboratory analyses. However, quantitative spectroscopic prediction of soil P remains a challenge owing to the difficulty of direct detection of orthophosphate. This study tested the performance of Vis-NIRS with partial least square regression to predict oxalate-extractable P (Pox) content, representing available P for plants in natural (forest and non-forest including fallows and degraded land) and cultivated (upland and flooded rice fields) soils in Madagascar. Model predictive accuracy was assessed based on the coefficient of determination (R²), the root mean squared error of cross-validation (RMSECV), and the residual predictive deviation (RPD). The results demonstrated successful Pox prediction accuracy in natural (n = 74, R² = 0.90, RMSECV = 2.39, and RPD = 3.22), and cultivated systems (n = 142, R² = 0.90, RMSECV = 48.57, and RPD = 3.15) and moderate usefulness at the regional scale incorporating both system types (R² = 0.70, RMSECV = 71.87 and RPD = 1.81). These results were also confirmed with modified bootstrap procedures (N = 10,000 times) using selected wavebands on iterative stepwise elimination–partial least square (ISE–PLS) models. The wavebands relevant to soil organic matter content and Fe content were identified as important components for the prediction of soil Pox. This predictive accuracy for the cultivated system was related to the variability of some samples with high Pox values. However, the use of “pseudo-independent” validation can overestimate the prediction accuracy when applied at site scale suggesting the use of larger and dispersed geographical cover sample sets to build a robust model. Our study offers new opportunities for P quantification in a wide range of ecosystems in the tropics. Full article

Heat stress (HS) impairs growth performance and has a severe impact on lipid and protein metabolism, leading to serious adverse effects on meat quality. Forty-eight day-old-male Ross-308 chicks were assigned to two temperature conditions, thermoneutral or cyclical HS, and fed with either a control diet (CON) or the CON plus betaine (BET). Heat stress increased rectal temperature (p < 0.001), respiration rate (p < 0.001) and increased blood pH (p = 0.017), indicating that HS caused respiratory alkalosis. Heat stress reduced body weight during the final stage of growing period (p = 0.005), while BET improved it (p = 0.023). Heat stress tended to reduce breast muscle water content and drip loss (p = 0.089 and p = 0.082), while both were improved with BET (p = 0.008 and p = 0.001). Heat stress tended to reduce the myofibril fragmentation index (p = 0.081) whereas it increased with BET (p = 0.017). Heat stress increased thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (p = 0.017), while BET improved it (p = 0.008). Meat tenderness was not affected by HS, but was improved with BET (p < 0.001). In conclusion, BET improved growth performance over the latter stages of the growing period, and improved product quality of broiler chickens when chickens exposed to HS. Full article

γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system and of substantial physiological significance to mammals. The GABA content of plants is generally low; however, it increases significantly when plants encounter stress. The present study investigates the effects of flooding stress and high-pressure processing on GABA content enrichment in the vegetable soybean (Glycine max Merr.) cultivar Kaohsiung No. 9 and potential mechanisms. Results indicate that flooding stress increased the GABA content of vegetable soybean kernels, with the possible mechanism involving the upregulation of glutamic acid decarboxylase 5 (GAD5) and aminoaldehyde dehydrogenase (AMADH) and downregulation of succinate semialdehyde dehydrogenase (SSADH). High-pressure treatment increased the GABA content through increased GAD activity. A specific combination of flooding stress, high-pressure treatment, and storage treatment enhanced vegetable soybean GABA content up to 696.6 ± 65.7 mg/100 g. Flooding treatment prior to harvesting did not cause differences in consumption quality. These results show that flooding stress and high pressure treatment can increase GABA content and enhance the functional value of the vegetable soybean cultivar Kaohsiung No. 9. Full article

Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr) is a source of high-quality edible protein and oil for humans, but also a high-quality feed in livestock feeding. In Poland, imported genetically modified soybean meal covers 65%, and leguminous seeds that are cultivated locally cover 11% of the protein requirement in livestock nutrition. The implementation of the Polish national program and the European strategy supporting the growth of the leguminous area resulted in adaptation to local agro-climatic conditions of 36 varieties of non-genetically modified soybean (n-GM), which achieved an average seed yield of about 3.7 t·ha⁻¹ with a content of about 38% protein and 23% fat in dry matter. The 27-fold increase in n-GM soybean cultivation area observed over the past eight years resulted in the opportunities in the use of this high-protein feed in feeding cattle, the section providing 26% of gross agricultural production. In cattle feeding, soybean seeds are utilized as whole, cracked, roasted, and extruded full-fat seed; after oil pressing as cold press cakes and extruded oil cakes; and moreover, late-ripening soybean plants with late maturity are used as fodder plants. The presented review is based on literature and analysis of data on the use of each of these forms in cattle nutrition, including the limitation of their use as components of feed rations, which is caused by the high rate of nitrogen release in the rumen and the effects of fat and saponin on microbial fermentation in the rumen due to the role of endogenous seminal enzymes. Full article

Three pineapple (Ananas comosus L.) cultivation soils of the south-east Mexico were analyzed in relation to the amendment effect of two agro-industrial wastes: sugar mill filter cake (SC) and paper mill sludge (CR) jointly added by weight. The plot P50 was cultivated with only chemical fertilizer, P51 was lying fallow with only wastes added, and P52 was cultivated and fertilized by both ways. After 14 months the soils were analyzed again. The plots texture was found to be sandy loam whose organic matter widely increased, and the pH shifted from acidic to rather neutral. Low concentrations of N, P, and K were found in CR, although its content of Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ was high, while the SC contained P, N, and K in higher amounts than CR. Initially, the plots showed a low level of N, P, and K, in the specific case of P51 values clearly increased up to 522%, 190%, and 204%, respectively, due to the synergy effect of CR and SC combined as soil amendment. The cation exchange capacity (CEC) changed only in P51, increased 11.8%, but in the other two plots CEC did not change significantly. Full article

Soil phosphorus (P) is an essential element that is often limiting in ecosystems. Excessive use of P fertilizers has led to P loss from soil and introduction into the environment. However, the behavior and potential risk assessment of P in alkaline soils is not well studied. Therefore, soil sampling was performed in alkaline soils in the northern Nile Delta, Egypt. Three analytical procedures (i.e., Mehlich 3 (P_M3), Olsen (P_Olsen), and Bray 1 (P_Bray) solutions) were used to evaluate P availability and potential environmental risk from P loss. Selected soil properties were determined using standard methods. Mean values of P extracted were in the order P_M3 > P_olsen > P_Bray, and were significantly correlated with each other. The P_M3 was the highest in silt clay loam and lowest in sandy and loamy soils. To predict potential P loss from the soils, degree of P saturation (DPS), soil P storage capacity (SPSC), and P stability ratio (P_sat) were calculated. Results showed the highest DPS was recorded in sandy textured soils, indicating that they have lower sorption capacity, whereas the SPSC was highest in silt clay textures; hence, it is likely they would act as a P sink. P_sat was highest in sandy soils, which indicated a high risk for P leaching. Principal component analysis (PCA) performed on the data identified four principal components that described 83.8% of the variation between P and the studied soil parameters. The results indicated that silt was the critical soil characteristic associated with both P sorption and extractability in different textures of soil. The second component confirmed the positive association between the different soil P extraction methods (P_M3, P_Olsen, and P_Bray). Full article

In this study, we built a basic scenario for risk assessment of the introduction of Xantomonas citri (X. citri), an agent of bacterial citrus canker, through international trade activities. According to the international phytosanitary authority European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), X. citri is currently included in the European Union A1 list (quarantine pests not present in the area) of the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO). Therefore, at the moment, to counter the spread of X. citri, some pest-specific phytosanitary requirements are foreseen in the case of citrus fruit commercial activities. One possible introduction route is through some ornamental Rutaceae, which are widely cultivated in Mediterranean countries, where they are economically important and have a social impact on the employees involved and the related industries. To assess the risk of introducing X. citri, we distinguished the import and export territories and the type of import material, and formulated a basic hypothesis linked to the positive correlation between commercial dependence on citrus imports from countries of the Mediterranean Basin and potential risk of invasion. Full article