Search Results (2)

Grape cultivation in Sonora, Mexico is one of the most notable in the world, but it is restricted to certain areas and uses a conventional production approach. The objective of this work is to evidence the development of the establishment of an organic vineyard as a novel cultivation pattern in an agrosystem of the intermontane valley of the Sonoran Desert, Mexico, from its endogenous variables and its link with the surrounding environment, to an integrated approach between the organic and the sustainable. The approach is conducted by conceptualizing the vineyard as a Strategic Multifactorial Node (SMN) with ecological influence towards its immediate environment, evaluated from endogenous variables of the vineyard itself and those linked to the agrosystem of direct influence. To measure the degree of influence between the vineyard and the surrounding ecosystems, sustainability values between 0 and 1 were assigned, derived from the activities and conditions included in SDGs 13 and 15. Among the vineyard’s results, a percentage of weed cover equal to 96% stands out, as well as the presence of entomofauna and avifauna in a ratio of 78:22. In the component exogenous to the vineyard, that is, the degree of sustainable influence for the elements of the adjacent desert agrosystem, resulted in 0.98 for Soil Conservation Areas; 0.79 for edaphic organic matter, 0.97 for maintenance of water, and 0.96 for soil microorganisms. SMN promoted lateral conservation of the water-soil binomial, limited erosion, decreased soil loss, and increased soil fertilization. Full article

Against the backdrop of Romania’s successive negative performance in attracting European funds (coming last in the EU top), as indicated by audit reports for projects that have been funded so far, this paper proposes a new approach in relation to analysis and performance improvement in securing EU funds, while identifying viable solutions for the betterment of the current situation. Furthermore, the authors develop a new audit performance analysis model (NOP), described as a dynamic and flexible model, based on reducing the fraud and error risk in the structural fund management of European-funded projects. The analysis methods encompass literature reviews, observational studies, database management, statistical analysis, and the synthesis of the whole findings. The main conclusion of the analysis is the critical necessity of integrity improvement in the context of managing the non-reimbursable funds through audit activities based on ISA805, the international standard on auditing European-funded projects. Full article