Adjust or invest : what is the best option to green a supply chain?

Greening a supply chain can be achieved by considering several options. However, companies lack of clear guidelines to assess and compare these options. In this paper, we propose to use multiobjective optimization to assess operational adjustment and technology investment options in terms of cost and carbon emissions. Our study is based on a multiobjective formulation of the economic order quantity model called the sustainable order quantity model. The results show that both options may be effective to lower the impacts of logistics operations. We also provide analytical conditions under which an option outperforms the other one for two classical decision rules, i.e. the carbon cap and the carbon tax cases. The results allow deriving some interesting and potentially impacting practical insight

How ‘ugly’ fruit and vegetables could tackle food waste and solve supermarket supply shortages

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.The world is facing a significant food waste problem, with up to half of all fruit and vegetables lost somewhere along the agricultural food chain. Globally, around 14% of food produced is lost after harvesting but before it reaches shops and supermarkets

Can "Ugly Veg" Supply Chains Reduce Food Loss?

Appendix A. Supplementary materials: Acrobat PDF file (378KB) available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221723000668?via%3Dihub#sec0023 (Supplementary Data S1. Supplementary Raw Research Data. This is open data under the CC BY license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.)Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). The tradition of marketing only aesthetically agreeable produce by retailers contributes to a major source of food loss through “ugly veg”, i.e., the produce that does not look “regular”. In this paper, we examine the relations between different tiers of agri-food supply chains to study the impact of marketing ugly veg on different supply chain members and the food loss in the system. We examine and compare scenarios of a centralized supply chain, a traditional supply chain without ugly veg, an ugly veg supply chain with a single retailer offering both regular produce and ugly veg, and a two-retailer supply chain where an auxiliary retailer sells the ugly veg. We characterize the equilibrium decisions in these systems and also provide analytical results and insights on the effectiveness of different supply chain designs based on a comprehensive numerical study. We demonstrate the conditions under which the supply chain can reduce overall food loss. For sufficiently high cost of effort, selling ugly veg through the single retailer reduces food loss. Nonetheless, the grower is generally better off offering the ugly veg to an auxiliary retailer. We show that the ratio of food loss per cultivated land always decreases in the two-retailer supply chain, while the total food loss might increase for sufficiently high cost of effort

Detection of sugar beet-infecting beet mild yellowing luteovirus isolates with a specific RNA probe

A complementary RNA (cRNA) probe, BM1, was prepared by transcription of a 1,061 nucleotide cDNA fragment complementary to nucleotides 1 to 1,061 (open reading frame [ORF] 1) within the sequence of a French sugar beet—infecting beet mild yellowing luteovirus (BMYV) -2ITB isolate. This probe detected specifically the homologous isolate as well as 14 other BMYV isolates collected from sugar beet grown in various areas, mainly in Europe. It did not hybridize with nonbeet-infecting isolates of the closely related beet western yellows luteovirus (BWYV) or cucurbit aphid-borne yellows luteovirus (CABYV) -N isolate, but reacted weakly with two English BMYV isolates that do not infect Capsella bursa-pastoris or Montia perfoliata. The probe BM1 detected BMYV in single Myzus persicae, giving no reaction with nonviruliferous individuals. As a comparison, a second BMYV probe (BM2) was produced to the coat protein gene (ORF 4) of the French BMYV-21TB isolate. This probe detected all BMYV, BWYV and CABYV isolates, highlighting the closer sequence homology within this region among Subgroup 2 luteoviruses. The dilution end-point for the detection of virus from infected material by radioactively labeled probes was 1:500, and about 250 fg of viral RNA could be detected from purified virions preparations. Non-radioactively labeled (digoxigenin [DIG]) probes were found to be 30-fold less sensitive than radioactive cRNA probes. Probe BM1 has potential for large-scale screening with applications in epidemiology and sugar beet-breeding programs. This report shows that heterogeneity at the 5’ proximal regions of the genomes of BMYV and BWYV offers the potential for discriminating between the two viruses and identifying the sugar beet—infecting BMYV isolates

F4+ ETEC infection and oral immunization with F4 fimbriae elicits an IL-17-dominated immune response

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) are an important cause of post-weaning diarrhea (PWD) in piglets. Porcine-specific ETEC strains possess different fimbrial subtypes of which F4 fimbriae are the most frequently associated with ETEC-induced diarrhea in piglets. These F4 fimbriae are potent oral immunogens that induce protective F4-specific IgA antibody secreting cells at intestinal tissues. Recently, T-helper 17 (Th17) cells have been implicated in the protection of the host against extracellular pathogens. However, it remains unknown if Th17 effector responses are needed to clear ETEC infections. In the present study, we aimed to elucidate if ETEC elicits a Th17 response in piglets and if F4 fimbriae trigger a similar response. F4+ ETEC infection upregulated IL-17A, IL-17F, IL-21 and IL-23p19, but not IL-12 and IFN-γ mRNA expression in the systemic and mucosal immune system. Similarly, oral immunization with F4 fimbriae triggered a Th17 signature evidenced by an upregulated mRNA expression of IL-17F, RORγt, IL-23p19 and IL-21 in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Intriguingly, IL-17A mRNA levels were unaltered. To further evaluate this difference between systemic and mucosal immune responses, we assayed the cytokine mRNA profile of F4 fimbriae stimulated PBMCs. F4 fimbriae induced IL-17A, IL-17F, IL-22 and IL-23p19, but downregulated IL-17B mRNA expression. Altogether, these data indicate a Th17 dominated response upon oral immunization with F4 fimbriae and F4+ ETEC infection. Our work also highlights that IL-17B and IL-17F participate in the immune response to protect the host against F4+ ETEC infection and could aid in the design of future ETEC vaccines