An Insight into the Hormonal Interplay Regulating Pigment Changes and Colour Development in the Peel of ‘Granny Smith’, ‘OPAL®’ and ‘Royal Gala’ Apples

Three apple cultivars with different peel colour and known ripening dynamics were examined throughout development and on-tree ripening to unravel how the hormonal crosstalk may influence colour changes. Our results indicate that the colour of ripe apples in ‘Granny Smith’ and ‘Opal®’ cultivars was primarily influenced by chlorophyll levels masking the contribution of other pigments, whilst the development of red colour in the ‘Royal Gala’ was not only due to an important loss of chlorophyll during ripening but also to anthocyanins accumulation. The interplay amongst indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), ethylene and abscisic acid (ABA) seemed to control pigment content during the later stages of development, indicating that variations in the hormonal profile contribute to colour differences in ripe apples. In ‘Granny Smith’ apples, basal levels of IAA, ethylene and ABA were associated with the inhibition of chlorophyll loss, which was responsible for its green colour, despite the presence of high carotenoid levels. In contrast, the peel of ‘Opal®’ and ‘Royal Gala’ apples underwent a degreening process facilitated by the IAA-mediated activation of ethylene metabolism, in a crosstalk facilitated by MdARF5. The accumulation of anthocyanins in the peel of ‘Royal Gala’ apples seemed to be regulated in an ethylene-dependent manner, with MdMYB1 acting as the mediator between ethylene signalling and the anthocyanins biosynthesis and vacuolar transport pathways. On the other hand, the decline in carotenoid content during fruit development in the three cultivars appeared to be regulated at the catabolic level through ABA and its derivatives and possibly also facilitated by ethylene-mediated mechanisms. Notably, chlorophyll levels, crucial for the observed colour changes, were likely controlled by MdGLK1, a transcription factor involved in chloroplast biogenesis, working in coordination with ethylene-dependent catabolic enzymes. Overall, understanding the cultivar-specific hormonal regulation of apple colour provides valuable insights for developing preharvest and postharvest strategies to ensure an optimal fruit colour aligned with consumer preferences.Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), PID2020-117607RR-I00, Jordi Giné-Bordonaba; CERCA Programme from the ‘Generalitat de Catalunya’; Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI); and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), BES-2017-080741, Pablo Fernández-Cancelo.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

El control biológico en los cultivos hortícolas en Cataluña

Cataluña ha sido pionera en la cuenca Mediterránea en la utilización del control biológico de plagas en cultivos hortícolas. Los primeros protocolos de utilización de enemigos naturales para combatir plagas empezaron a aplicarse a finales de los años 70 en los invernaderos de tomates de las comarcas del Maresme y el Baix Llobregat (ambas en la provincia de Barcelona), de la mano del IRTA.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cultius d'hivern de cereal i lleguminosa per optimitzar la producció de proteïna del farratge ecològic de les explotacions de vaquí de llet

El principal cost de producció de llet i carn de les explotacions agro-ramaderes ecològiques és la compra d’ingredients per a la dieta dels animals, destacant l’elevat preu de la proteïna ecològica. Aquesta recerca ha comparat diferents alternatives farratgeres d’hivern basades en cereals i lleguminoses per identificar les que més proteïna poden produir permetent una reducció més gran de les importacions d’aquest ingredient. Es va establir un assaig de camp on es va comparar la producció i qualitat farratgera de cinc tipus de cereals d’hivern (ordi, ordi híbrid, civada, blat tou de primavera i d’hivern), sols o associats amb diferents espècies de lleguminoses(favó, pèsol, veça, trèvol violeta i trèvol balança), en una proporció de 75% cereal i 25% lleguminosa respecte la densitat d’un cultiu pur, amb aprofitament a l’estadi fenològic de fi de floració o de gra pastós. Els resultats de la recerca han mostrat un efecte significatiu del cultiu i de la data d’aprofitament, però no de l’associació amb lleguminosa, sobre la producció i la proteïna, així com en la major part dels paràmetres de qualitat dels farratges obtinguts. Els farratges d’aprofitament més precoç amb els ordis són els que han produït més quantitat de proteïna. L’associació tendeix a incrementar la proteïna, però l’efecte de les lleguminoses a les proporcions avaluades ha estat limitat, el que també s’ha reflectit en la seva contribució al nitrogen residual del sòl. S’ha fet un càlcul teòric per estimar la contribució a les necessitats anuals de proteïna de les vaques en lactació amb els farratges d’hivern. En base als resultats de l’assaig, s’ha trobat que el farratge d’hivern pot provocar reduccions significatives, fins un 30%, en les necessitats de compra de proteïna. Es conclou que l’optimització de la producció farratgera és clau per disminuir els costos de producció i millorar la sostenibilitat de les explotacions agro-ramaderes.El projecte ha estat finançat pel Departament d’Acció Climàtica, Alimentació i Agenda Rural de la Generalitat de Catalunya a través de l’ajut per incentivar la recerca aplicada en matèria de producció agroalimentària ecològicainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Gestión de un rebaño público de ovino y caprino frente a la despoblación y el riesgo de incendios

La baja rentabilidad en las explotaciones situadas en zonas de montaña, junto con otros factores, como el bajo reconocimiento social o la baja densidad de población joven, hace difícil tanto el relevo generacional como la incorporación de nuevos emprendedores. De este modo, profesiones tradicionales de zonas de montaña ligadas a la actividad agropecuaria van mermado o, lo que es peor, desapareciendo poco a poco. Las consecuencias en el medio rural son cada vez más evidentes y van, desde la despoblación rural hasta la pérdida de las zonas de pasto, lo que permite el avance de la superficie de matorral y masa boscosa sin gestionar, lo que a su vez incrementa el riesgo de incendios forestales.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reviving Europe's rivers: Seven challenges in the implementation of the Nature Restoration Law to restore free-flowing rivers

The EU Nature Restoration Law represents an important opportunity for freshwater habitat restoration and, consequently, freshwater biodiversity protection. However, a number of challenges must be anticipated in its implementation, which may compromise its success. Some aspects, particularly those relating to freshwater ecosystems, require more clarification. We use riverine ecosystems to illustrate existing ambiguities in the proposed legislation and the potential consequences of leaving these aspects open to interpretation during the implementation process. We also discuss potential solutions to these problems which could help ensure that the law's objectives are met. We argue that river network structure and connectivity dimensions, which result into river meta-ecosystems, must be explicitly considered. For that purpose, we ask for clear definitions of the critical terms “free-flowing rivers,” “barriers,” and “reference areas.” In addition, we recommend developing methods for integrated assessment of connectivity across river networks. As a key property of river ecosystems, this must be used to prioritize actions to increase the length and number of free-flowing rivers. Adequate restoration planning at larger spatial scales will benefit from a meta-ecosystem perspective and accurate representation of aquatic-terrestrial linkages, which will significantly improve the efficacy of restoration efforts. Furthermore, stakeholder and citizen engagement offer important opportunities at local, national, and European scales, and should be fostered to ensure inclusive decision-making. The conservation challenges outlined here are particularly important for rivers, but they also have implications for other ecosystems. These considerations are useful for policymakers, conservationists, and other stakeholders involved in the Nature Restoration Law and related policy initiatives.This study was supported by the following funding sources: the MERLIN project funded under the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme, Grant agreement No. 101036337; the DANUBE4ALL project funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 101093985; the BioAgora project funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 101059438; the Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs and the Christian Doppler Research Association (CD Laboratory MERI); the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) project RIMECO (I 5006); a Hungarian ANN-OTKA 141884 grant; project FLUFLUX (ERC-STG 716196); and the Leibniz Competition project “Freshwater Megafauna Futures” (P74/2018).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Immunization with V987H-stabilized Spike glycoprotein protects K18-hACE2 mice and golden Syrian hamsters upon SARS-CoV-2 infection

Safe and effective severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2) vaccines are crucial to fight against the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Most vaccines are based on a mutated version of the Spike glycoprotein [K986P/V987P (S-2P)] with improved stability, yield and immunogenicity. However, S-2P is still produced at low levels. Here, we describe the V987H mutation that increases by two-fold the production of the recombinant Spike and the exposure of the receptor binding domain (RBD). S-V987H immunogenicity is similar to S-2P in mice and golden Syrian hamsters (GSH), and superior to a monomeric RBD. S-V987H immunization confer full protection against severe disease in K18-hACE2 mice and GSH upon SARS-CoV-2 challenge (D614G or B.1.351 variants). Furthermore, S-V987H immunized K18- hACE2 mice show a faster tissue viral clearance than RBD- or S-2P-vaccinated animals challenged with D614G, B.1.351 or Omicron BQ1.1 variants. Thus, S-V987H protein might be considered for future SARS-CoV-2 vaccines development.This work was supported by Grifols pharmaceutical, the CERCA Program (2021 SGR 00452 to B.C.; Generalitat de Catalunya), Direcció General de Recerca i Innovació en Salut (Generalitat de Catalunya) (projects SLD0015 to J.C. and SLD0016 to J.B.), the Carlos III Health Institute (PI17/ 01518 to J.B. and PI18/01332 to J.C.). J.B. is supported by the Health Department of the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya). In addition, the project was also supported by the crowdfunding projects “YomeCorono” (to A.V., V.G., J.C., B.C., J.B. and N.I.-U.), BonPreu/Esclat, and Correos (to J.B.). CAN was supported by a predoctoral grant from Generalitat de Catalunya and Fons Social Europeu (2020 FI_B_0742). A.P.G. was supported by a predoctoral grant from Generalitat de Catalunya and Fons Social Europeu (2022 FI_B_00698). P.A.R. was funded by a predoctoral fellowship from the Government of Catalonia (2020FI_B2_00138). E.P. was supported by a doctoral grant from National Agency for Research and Development of Chile (ANID: 72180406). N.I.-U. is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PID2020-117145RB-I00), EU HORIZON-HLTH-2021- CORONA-01 (grant 101046118). This study was also supported by CIBER—Consorcio Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red (CB 2021), Carlos III Health Institute, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and Unión Europea—NextGenerationEU. We would like to thank Foundation Dormeur that support the acquisition of the QuantStudio-5 real time PCR system, an Eclipse Ts2R-FL Inverted Research Microscope, and an ÄKTA go protein purification system. Funders had no role in study design, data analysis, decision to publish, or manuscript preparation. We thank to Ismael Valera, the CMCiB’s staff (Sara Capdevila, Jordi Grifols, Rosa Maria Ampudia, Jorge Diaz, Yaiza Rosales and Sergi Sunye) and the BSL3 IRTA-CReSA staff (Xavier Abad, Ivan Cordon, Anna Pou, Oscar García, Joanna Wiacek, Maria Angeles Osuna, Luís Ribas and Claudia Pereira Sunyé) for their technical assistance with in vivo animal studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Use of wood and cork in biofilters for the simultaneous removal of nitrates and pesticides from groundwater

About 13% and 7% of monitored groundwater stations in Europe exceed the permitted levels of nitrates (50 mg NO3− L−1) or pesticides (0.1 μg L−1), respectively. Although slow sand filtration can remove nitrates via denitrification when oxygen is limited, it requires an organic carbon source. The present study evaluates the performance of the use of wood pellets and granulated cork as carbon sources in bench-scale biofilters operated under water-saturated and water-unsaturated conditions for more than 400 days. The biofilters were monitored for nitrate (200 mg L−1) and pesticide (mecoprop, diuron, atrazine, and bromacil, each at a concentration of 5 μg L−1) attenuation, as well as for the formation of nitrite and pesticide transformation products. Microbiological characterization of each biofilter was also performed. The water-saturated wood biofilter achieved the best nitrate removal (>99%), while the cork biofilters lost all denitrification power over time (from 38% to no removal). The unsaturated biofilter columns were not effective for removing nitrates (20–30% removal). As for pesticides, all the biofilters achieved high removal rates of mecoprop and diuron (>99% and >75%, respectively). Atrazine removal was better in the wood-pellet biofilters than the cork ones (68–96% vs. 31–38%). Bromacil was only removed in the water-unsaturated cork biofilter (67%). However, a bromacil transformation product was formed there. The water-saturated wood biofilter contained the highest number of denitrifying microorganisms, with Methyloversatilis as the characteristic genus. Microbial composition could explain the high removal of pesticides and nitrates achieved in the wood-pellet biofilter. Overall, the results indicate that wood-pellet biofilters operated under water-saturated conditions are a good solution for treating groundwater contaminated with nitrates and pesticides.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Field evaluation of an automated mosquito surveillance system which classifies Aedes and Culex mosquitoes by genus and sex

Background Mosquito‑borne diseases are a major concern for public and veterinary health authorities, highlighting the importance of efective vector surveillance and control programs. Traditional surveillance methods are labor‑ intensive and do not provide high temporal resolution, which may hinder a full assessment of the risk of mosquito‑ borne pathogen transmission. Emerging technologies for automated remote mosquito monitoring have the potential to address these limitations; however, few studies have tested the performance of such systems in the feld. Methods In the present work, an optical sensor coupled to the entrance of a standard mosquito suction trap was used to record 14,067 mosquito fights of Aedes and Culex genera at four temperature regimes in the laboratory, and the resulting dataset was used to train a machine learning (ML) model. The trap, sensor, and ML model, which form the core of an automated mosquito surveillance system, were tested in the feld for two classifcation purposes: to discriminate Aedes and Culex mosquitoes from other insects that enter the trap and to classify the target mosqui‑ toes by genus and sex. The feld performance of the system was assessed using balanced accuracy and regression metrics by comparing the classifcations made by the system with those made by the manual inspection of the trap. Results The feld system discriminated the target mosquitoes (Aedes and Culex genera) with a balanced accuracy of 95.5% and classifed the genus and sex of those mosquitoes with a balanced accuracy of 88.8%. An analysis of the daily and seasonal temporal dynamics of Aedes and Culex mosquito populations was also performed using the time‑stamped classifcations from the system. Conclusions This study reports results for automated mosquito genus and sex classifcation using an optical sensor coupled to a mosquito trap in the feld with highly balanced accuracy. The compatibility of the sensor with commer‑ cial mosquito traps enables the sensor to be integrated into conventional mosquito surveillance methods to provide accurate automatic monitoring with high temporal resolution of Aedes and Culex mosquitoes, two of the most con‑ cerning genera in terms of arbovirus transmission.This research was supported by the project VECTRACK. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and inno‑ vation programme under grant agreement no. 853758. This research was also supported by the project IDAlert. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101057554.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Exploring large-scale gene coexpression networks in peach (Prunus persica L.): a new tool for predicting gene function

Peach is a model for Prunus genetics and genomics, however, identifying and validating genes associated to peach breeding traits is a complex task. A gene coexpression network (GCN) capable of capturing stable gene–gene relationships would help researchers overcome the intrinsic limitations of peach genetics and genomics approaches and outline future research opportunities. In this study, we created four GCNs from 604 Illumina RNA-Seq libraries. We evaluated the performance of every GCN in predicting functional annotations using an algorithm based on the ‘guilty-by-association’ principle. The GCN with the best performance was COO300, encompassing 21 956 genes. To validate its performance predicting gene function, we performed two case studies. In case study 1, we used two genes involved in fruit flesh softening: the endopolygalacturonases PpPG21 and PpPG22. Genes coexpressing with both genes were extracted and referred to as melting flesh (MF) network. Finally, we performed an enrichment analysis of MF network and compared the results with the current knowledge regarding peach fruit softening. The MF network mostly included genes involved in cell wall expansion and remodeling, and with expressions triggered by ripening-related phytohormones, such as ethylene, auxin, and methyl jasmonate. In case study 2, we explored potential targets of the anthocyanin regulator PpMYB10.1 by comparing its gene-centered coexpression network with that of its grapevine orthologues, identifying a common regulatory network. These results validated COO300 as a powerful tool for peach and Prunus research. This network, renamed as PeachGCN v1.0, and the scripts required to perform a function prediction analysis are available at https://github.com/felipecobos/PeachGCN.We acknowledge financial support through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centers of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2015-0533 and CEX2019-000902-S). Also, this work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the Estate Agency of Research: Project PID2020-118612RR-I00 (Better Almonds) and PID2019-110599RR-I00. Authors F.P. C., I. E., I. B. are grateful to CERCA Program from Generalitat of Catalonia for its support. F. P. C. wishes to acknowledge the receipt of a FPI doctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. This work was also supported by grants PID2021-128865NB-I00 and RYC- 2017-23645 awarded to J.T.M. and the PRE2019-088044 fellowship awarded to L.O. from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIU, Spain), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI, Spain), and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER, European Union).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Preweaning piglet survival on commercial farms

Preweaning piglet mortality (PWM), a trait highly related to litter size, is one of the main concerns associated with productive efficiency and animal welfare in commercial pig farms. The objectives of this work were to study piglet survival at the farm level, to establish a survival rate (SR) as a target indicator to be improved, and to model it based on other reproductive parameters. Analyzed data corresponded to 580 Spanish commercial farms with a total inventory of 809,768 sows. These farms showed a mean SR of 85.70% piglets born alive (BA), which decreased to 81.81% when total piglets born (TB) were considered. The SR was strongly associated with prolificacy (P < 0.01), the parities with the highest prolificacy being those that had the lowest SR. Thus, the highest correlations were for the SR of piglets BA in the third and fourth parities (r = −0.460 and r = −0.452, respectively, P < 0.01), and for the SR of piglets TB in the fourth parity (r = −0.546, P < 0.01), which was the one with the highest prolificacy. The values corresponding to the quartile of farms with the highest SR within the most productive farms were established as targets to be improved, which were ≥88.5% of piglets BA and 83.2% of piglets TB. Nevertheless, the direct associations shown between the piglet’s survival and prolificacy and other productive factors, such as the age of piglets at weaning, the farrowings per sow and year and the farrowing interval, suggest the convenience of modeling the risk of PWM on farms to have its own target of survival index to be improved.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio