Cacao agroforestry systems do not increase pest and disease incidence compared with monocultures under good cultural management practices

Pests and diseases threaten cacao production worldwide. Agroforestry systems are traditionally seen by farmers as one of the causes of increased pest and disease incidence, in contrast with full-sun monocultures. Cultural management practices - e.g. regular tree pruning, frequent pod harvest, regular removal of infested pods, weed management - have been reported to be crucial for pest and disease management. We performed two experiments for the purpose of assessing the effect of (i) different cacao production systems, and (ii) the frequency of harvest and removal of infested pods on the incidence of pests and diseases and on the cacao yield. The first experiment was performed in a long-term system comparison trial in Bolivia, where data on pest and disease incidence were recorded for three years in five production systems: two monocultures and two agroforestry system under organic and conventional farming, and one successional agroforestry system, i.e. a high tree density multi-strata system. Pest and disease management did not differ between systems and relied on cultural management practices. Overall, the incidence of pests and diseases did not differ between production systems, which indicated they were not the driver of yield differences between them. Across production systems, only 14% of the pods were affected by pests and diseases; 70% of these were affected by frosty pod rot. More than 80% of the pods infected by frosty pod rot were removed before the sporulation phase. In the second experiment, the effects of the frequency of harvest and removal of infected pods - every 15 days versus every 25 days - on pest and disease incidence and yield were tested in four farmers’ fields. Fortnightly harvest and diseased pod removal significantly decreased disease incidence and increased cacao yield, by 25% and 46% respectively. Our results show that cacao agroforestry systems do not increase pest and disease incidence compared with monocultures when good cultural management practices are implemented, which, in turn, can increase the productivity of the cacao plantations

MOSAIX: a tool to built large mosaics from GALEX images

Large sky surveys are providing a huge amount of information for studies of the interstellar medium, the galactic structure or the cosmic web. Setting into a common frame information coming from different wavelengths, over large fields of view, is needed for this kind of research. GALEX is the only nearly all-sky survey at ultraviolet wavelengths and contains fundamental information for all types of studies. GALEX field of view is circular embedded in a squared matrix of 3840 x 3840 pixels. This fact makes it hard to get GALEX images properly overlapped with the existing astronomical tools such as Aladin or Montage. We developed our own software for this purpose. In this article, we describe this software and makes it available to the community.Comment: 7 pages, including 8 figures, accepted by Astrophysics and Space Scienc

A1-512 Efecto del laboreo mínimo sobre el rendimiento, la abundancia de la flora arvense y el balance energético y económico en una rotación de espelta, garbanzos y trigo en la Región Mediterránea

El laboreo mínimo en sistemas herbáceos extensivos ecológicos en Europa, se ha llevado a cabo sobre todo en climas templados. El equipo de investigación Ecología de los Sistemas Agrícolas de la Universidad de Barcelona estableció un experimento a largo plazo en 2011 que tiene el objetivo de evaluar la viabilidad del laboreo mínimo en cultivos herbáceos extensivos ecológicos en clima mediterráneo. Este trabajo analiza el efecto del tipo de laboreo y la fertilización con estiércol compostado sobre el rendimiento de los cultivos de cereales y leguminosas, la abundancia de la flora arvense y el balance económico y energético. El laboreo mínimo no afectó los rendimientos de los cultivos y la fertilización favoreció a los cultivos de cereales. Los balances económico y energético no mostraron diferencias significativas con el tipo de laboreo ni con la fertilización, con la excepción de una mayor cantidad de salida de energía en las parcelas fertilizadas en el cultivo de trigo

The Economic Value of Residential Land in Historical Areas: An Application of the Residual Method to the Secondary Market

Land value bears significant weight in house prices in historical town centers. An essential aim for regulating the mortgage market, particularly in the financial and property crisis that countries such as Spain are undergoing, is to have at hand objective procedures for its valuation, whatever the conditions (location, construction, planning). Of all the factors contributing to house price make-up, the land is the only one whose value does not depend on acquisition cost, but rather on the location-time binomial. That is to say, the specific circumstances at that point and at the exact moment of valuation. For this reason, the most commonly applied procedure for land valuation in town centers is the use of the residual method: once the selling price of new housing in a district is known, the other necessary costs and expenses of development are deducted, including those of building and the developer’s profit. The value left is that of the land. To apply these procedures it is vital to have figures such as building costs, technical fees, tax costs, etc. But, above all, it is essential to obtain the selling price of the new housing. This is not always feasible, on account of the lack of newbuild development in this location. This shortage of information occurs in historical town cities, where urban renewal is slight due to the heritage-protection policies, and where, nevertheless there is substantial activity in the secondary market. In these circumstances, as an alternative for land valuation in consolidated urban areas, we have the adaptation of the residual method to the particular characteristics of the secondary market. To these ends, there is the proposal for the appreciation of the dwelling which follows, in a backwards direction, the application of traditional depreciation methods proposed by the various valuation manuals and guidelines. The reliability of the results obtained is analyzed by contrasting it with published figures for newly-built properties, according to different rules applied in administrative appraisals in Spain and the incidence of an eventual correction due to conservation state

Giant deep lobe parotid tumor removal via total parotidectomy without mandibulotomy. A simple and safe technique

The transmandibular route is often combined with the transparotid-transcervical approach when extensive surgical field exposure is required, as in the case of deep parotid lobe tumors measuring over 4 cm in size. This procedure implies great morbidity an

La Historia Antigua de Valencia en la obra de Teixidor

La figura de José Teixidor se corresponde con uno de los historiadores más relevantes de Valencia en el siglo XVIII. En este artículo vamos a hablar sobre sus aportaciones a la investigación de la Historia Antigua de Valencia en sus estudios; además, aprovecharemos para hablar de su metodología, de su espíritu crítico y de su vinculación a la corriente científica de la investigación histórica que se desarrolló en el XVIII. (A

Signatures of diffuse interstellar gas in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer all sky survey

The all sky survey run by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX AIS) mapped about 85% of the Galaxy at ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths and detected the diffuse UV background produced by the scattering of the radiation from OBA stars by interstellar dust grains. Against this background, diffuse weak structures are detected as well as the UV counterparts to nebulae and molecular clouds. To make full profit of the survey, unsupervised and semi-supervised procedures need to be implemented. The main objective of this work is to implement and analyze the results of the method developed by us for the blind detection of ISM features in the GALEX AIS . Most ISM features are detected at very low signal levels (dark filaments, globules) against the already faint UV background. We have defined an index, the UV background fluctuations index (or UBF index), to identify areas of the sky where these fluctuations are detected. The algorithm is applied to the images obtained in the FUV (1344 -1786 Angstroms) band since this is less polluted by stellar sources, facilitating the automated detection. The UBF index is shown to be sensitive to the main star forming regions within the Gould's Belt, as well as to some prominent loops like Loop I or the Eridanus and Monogem areas. The catalogue with the UBF index values is made available on-line to the community.Comment: The online catalogue will be made available through the CDS services and in the jcuva.ucm.es website. Accepted A&

Beikrautsamenvorrat im Vergleich reduzierter und konventioneller Bodenbearbeitung unter Biobedingungen

Armengot L, Berner A, Blanco-Moreno J, Mäder P & Sans FX (2014) Long-term feasibility of reduced tillage in organic farming. Agron Sustain Dev 35(1): 339-346. Cooper J et al. (2016) Shallow non-inversion tillage in organic farming maintains crop yields and increases soil C stocks: a meta-analysis. Agron Sustain Dev 36: 1-20. Gruber S & Claupein W (2009) Effect of tillage intensity on weed infestation in organic farming. Soil and Tillage Research 105(1): 104-111. Montgomery DR (2007) Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. University of California Press, California. Moonen AC & Barberi P (2004) Size and composition of the weed seedbank after 7 years of different cover-crop-maize management systems. Weed Research 44(3): 163-177