ALBERT

Description: Although rehydration therapy (RT) has been used to treat animals suffering from viral diarrhea, mortality among farm animals still remains high, as RT alone neither significantly minimizes the duration of the illness nor reduces the looseness of stools. As porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) is a viral disease and PED treatments are still very limited, vaccination is the common strategy to prevent it. Thus, the aim of the present study was to test whether a combination of RT and probiotics supplementation could help to improve the mortality of suckling piglets kept in a commercial farm and naturally infected with PED virus. Piglets receiving a combination of probiotic supplementation and RT showed improved (p 〈 0.01) blood parameters such as base excess and bicarbonate ion concentration when compared with untreated control piglets and piglets administered with RT alone. When compared with that of control piglets, mortality during the suckling period was the lowest (p 〈 0.05) in piglets receiving the combined therapy, but statistically unchanged between piglets receiving either RT or RT and probiotics. Our preliminary results should motivate further research on the use of a combined rehydration and probiotics therapy to reduce mortality in piglets suffering from acute diarrhea.

Description: Increasing the participation of inhabitants in the activities of local authorities has been one of the topics in the discussion on sustainable development for a long time. In rural development, there is also a demand for increasing the participation of inhabitants. This is possible thanks, among other things, to tools that enhance bonds in local communities, encompassing processes based on the mechanisms of the co-creation and co-production of public services, or various forms of participation in the decision-making processes of self-government. In Poland, some regional self-governments (voivodeships) have introduced solutions based on a system of grants for small local communities (villages/sołectwa) linked to deliberative participation, co-creation, and co-production processes. The goal of this article is thus to analyse the design, operation, and scale of grant mechanisms implemented by regional authorities for local communities in Poland’s rural areas (sołectwa). The first stage of the research process was a review of the literature, followed by analysis of the existing solutions and mechanisms for supporting small local communities in individual regions of Poland by financing or co-financing projects that engage inhabitants in the co-creation and co-production of public goods or services. Based on this, the key assumptions considered when creating this type of mechanism of support by voivodeship self-governments were determined. A subsequent stage of research involved analysing the case study of a solution introduced in 2016 by the Łódź regional self-government. The research results indicate that the analysed grant system model stimulates local communities that were previously passive/excluded by other programmes and that, as a result of the stable conditions of a grant contest, the process of “learning” and “imitating” the actions of the communities that succeeded occurs. The research results indicate that the proposed system of grants, which is conditionally based on the participation and co-operation of the inhabitants, seems to be an effective means of activating communities. The findings also point to features that could determine the success of the introduced grant model, such as its simplicity, limiting the bureaucracy (partially limiting the influence of local authorities on who obtains grants), and the transparency of the procedure.

Description: Fusarium head blight (FHB), caused by Fusarium graminearum, occurs mainly on developing wheat seeds, which are important energy sinks. Leaf cutting (removing a portion of the energy sources) could have an effect on the damage caused by F. graminearum. To determine the effects of leaf cutting on disease development, photosynthesis parameters, and yield components between resistant and susceptible wheat genotypes, the wheat FHB-resistant line L693 and FHB-susceptible line L661, which have similar genetic backgrounds, were used in this study. Different numbers of leaves were removed before inoculation with F. graminearum, and photosynthesis parameters, including the net photosynthesis rate (Pn), stomatal conductance (Gs), and intercellular CO2 concentration (Ci), were measured at various time points both before and after F. graminearum infection. The number of diseased spikelets (NDS) and yield components were also measured. The greenhouse and field experiments results showed that cutting leaves could decrease the NDS and alleviate the damage from FHB, which could partly compensate for the yield loss caused by F. graminearum under F. graminearum inoculation condition. Leaf cutting did not significantly change the total grain weight per spike (GWS) after F. graminearum inoculation in both L661 and L693. Further study found that the Pn obviously differed between L661 and L693 after infection with F. graminearum and cutting leaves could aggravate the Pn difference between L661 and L693, which revealed cutting leaves could change the balance between source and sink, with the change of Pn, which may refer to FHB resistance. This study provides new insights into both energy sources and sinks for future studies on the physiological mechanism underlying systematic resistance against FHB.

Description: Developing specialties in orchard fruits productions with ecological and economic benefits is a practical and effective way to guarantee eco-friendliness and increase farmers’ income in the Loess Plateau area. Therefore, to understand these factors, the study constructs an agriculture ecological cognition index from three dimensions of eco-agriculture cognitions (increase income cognition, water conservation cognition and eco-product price cognition). Our analysis was based on micro survey data from 416 farmers in Shaanxi and Ningxia, China. The study used two main econometric models, double-hurdle and Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM), to examine the relationship and influence pathways between cognition of ecological agriculture and farmers’ specialty orchard fruit planting behavior. The results show that: (i) the cognition of eco-agriculture affects whether farmers plant specialty fruits (participation decision). The cognition of eco-agriculture increases income and the cognition of eco-product price significantly affect the scale of specialty orchard fruits planting (quantity decision). (ii) Household resource endowments influence specialty orchard fruit planting responses through ecological farming cognitions. (iii) The factors influencing the participation and quantity decisions of orchard fruit planting are significantly different. Therefore, when the government actively encourages farmers to participate in specialty orchard planting, it should fully consider the cognitive factors of ecological agriculture of the growers and develop targeted training strategies.

Description: The information of tomato young fruits acquisition has an important impact on monitoring fruit growth, early control of pests and diseases and yield estimation. It is of great significance for timely removing young fruits with abnormal growth status, improving the fruits quality, and maintaining high and stable yields. Tomato young fruits are similar in color to the stems and leaves, and there are interference factors, such as fruits overlap, stems and leaves occlusion, and light influence. In order to improve the detection accuracy and efficiency of tomato young fruits, this paper proposes a method for detecting tomato young fruits with near color background based on improved Faster R-CNN with an attention mechanism. First, ResNet50 is used as the feature extraction backbone, and the feature map extracted is optimized through Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM). Then, Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) is used to integrate high-level semantic features into low-level detailed features to enhance the model sensitivity of scale. Finally, Soft Non-Maximum Suppression (Soft-NMS) is used to reduce the missed detection rate of overlapping fruits. The results show that the mean Average Precision (mAP) of the proposed method reaches 98.46%, and the average detection time per image is only 0.084 s, which can achieve the real-time and accurate detection of tomato young fruits. The research shows that the method in this paper can efficiently identify tomato young fruits, and provides a better solution for the detection of fruits with near color background.

Description: The effective and regular remote monitoring of agricultural activity is not always possible in developing countries because the access to cloud-based geospatial analysis platforms or expensive high-resolution satellite images are not always available. Herein, using paid high-resolution satellite images first and then free medium-resolution satellite images, we aimed to develop a cost-free, affordable method for regularly mapping the spatial distribution of sicklebush (Dichrostachys cinerea), an archetypal allochthonous invasive plant in Cuba that is becoming impossible to control owing to its rapid growth in areas planted with sugar cane in the Trinidad-Valle de los Ingenios area (Cuba), a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Two types of images were used (WorldView-2 and Landsat-8); these were subjected to supervised classification, with accuracy values of 88.7% and 93.7%, respectively. Vegetation cover was first derived from the purchased WorldView-2 image, and this information was then used as the training field to obtain spectral signatures from the Landsat-8 free image so that Landsat images may be regularly used to monitor D. cinerea infestations. The results obtained in the spatial distribution map for sicklebush in the Landsat-8 images had an overall reliability of 93.7% and a Kappa coefficient reliability of 91.9%. These values indicate high confidence in the results, which suggests that sicklebush has invaded 52.7% of the total 46,807.26-ha area of the Trinidad-Valle de los Ingenios. This process proved extremely effective and demonstrated the benefits of using high-resolution spatial images from which information can be transferred to free satellite images with a larger pixel size.

Description: The diets of many households in developing countries are monotonous and starch-based. Integrating underutilised indigenous vegetables (UIVs) to cropping systems can contribute to both crop and dietary diversities, thereby improving rural households’ nutrition and boosting food security. Therefore, this study established a link between the UIVs’ diversity and the household dietary diversity (HDD) of the UIVs producers in the rural area of Southwest Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 191 UIV-producing households in the region. Their HDD was measured based on the 12 unique food groups consumed by households over a 7-day reference period preceding the survey, and negative binomial Poisson regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between UIV diversities, other sociodemographic characteristics, and the HDD score of the UIV-producing households in the area. The results showed that only about four groups of food contributed greatly to the HDD score. The result of the negative binomial Poisson regression analysis showed UIVs diversity as a significant variable that increased the HDD score in the study area. Other factors that determined the HDD score of UIV-producing households were the marital status of the household head, farm distance from the home, UIVs land area, off-farm income, UIVs gross margin, per capita food expenditure, and Oyo location. The study concluded that the inclusion of diverse underutilised indigenous vegetables into cropping systems in rural areas and vegetable home gardening practices in the rural and urban areas of developing countries could alleviate the challenge of nutrition insecurity.

Description: Individual identification plays an important part in disease prevention and control, traceability of meat products, and improvement of agricultural false insurance claims. Automatic and accurate detection of cattle face is prior to individual identification and facial expression recognition based on image analysis technology. This paper evaluated the possibility of the cutting-edge object detection algorithm, RetinaNet, performing multi-view cattle face detection in housing farms with fluctuating illumination, overlapping, and occlusion. Seven different pretrained CNN models (ResNet 50, ResNet 101, ResNet 152, VGG 16, VGG 19, Densenet 121 and Densenet 169) were fine-tuned by transfer learning and re-trained on the dataset in the paper. Experimental results showed that RetinaNet incorporating the ResNet 50 was superior in accuracy and speed through performance evaluation, which yielded an average precision score of 99.8% and an average processing time of 0.0438 s per image. Compared with the typical competing algorithms, the proposed method was preferable for cattle face detection, especially in particularly challenging scenarios. This research work demonstrated the potential of artificial intelligence towards the incorporation of computer vision systems for individual identification and other animal welfare improvements.

Description: Potato is the fourth staple crop in China after wheat, maize and rice. The agro-pastoral ecotone (APE) in North China is a main region for potato production. However, potato yield has been seriously constrained by water shortages because of low precipitation and highly variable precipitation patterns during the growing season in this area. In this study, the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM) model was used to simulate potato water-limited yield and historical years were divided into different water-temperature year types to optimize the optimal planting period (OPP) and cultivar of potato. The results showed that the potato yield varied in different water-temperature year types. Fast-developing cultivar Favorita could obtain the highest yield in most places and water-temperature year types due to its relatively short length of tuber formation stage. In this study, we suggest changing the planting date according to the water-temperature year type, which offers a new way to adapt to a highly variable climate. However, our method should be adopted carefully because we only considered climate factors; other agronomic management practices (adjusting planting density, plastic film mulch, conservation tillage etc.) also have a great effect on planting date and cultivar selection, which should be further investigated in the future.

Description: Struvite and ammonium nitrate are products obtained from widely studied processes to remove phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) from waste streams. To boost circularity in horticulture, these recovered products should be applied to edible crops. Particularly, struvite has not been implemented in fertigation as the unique source of P fertilizer. Therefore, a soilless system greenhouse experiment was conducted for tomato crops during two growing seasons. This study aims to compare the agronomic and environmental effectiveness of recovered products used in a nutrient solution for fertigation (NS) to synthetic fertilizer treatment. Moreover, two different N concentrations of the NS were tested to evaluate the impact on the N-leaching. Additionally, struvite dissolution tests were performed to ensure its solubility. Satisfactory results of struvite solubilization were obtained. Results show that both nutrient-recovered products can be used as fertilizers in NS, due to their non-statistical significance in total yield production and fruit quality. However, ammonium nitrate treatment, depending on the crop variety, showed a lower marketable yield. Moreover, the variation on N concentration input exhibited leachate concentration differences, with N leached percentage values from 36 to 13%. These results give deeper insights into the future potential utilization of nutrient-recovered products and technical data to optimize fertigation strategies.