Assessing the ecological soundness of organic and conventional agriculture by means of life cycle assessment (LCA) - a case study of leek production

Purpose – Sustainable agriculture implies the ability of agro-ecosystems to remain productive in the long-term. It is not easy to point out unambiguously whether or not current production systems meet this sustainability demand. A priori thinking would suggest that organic crops are environmentally favourable, but may ignore the effect of reduced productivity, which shifts the potential impact to other parts of the food provision system. The purpose of this paper is to assess the ecological sustainability of conventional and organic leek production by means of life cycle assessment (LCA). Design/methodology/approach – A cradle-to-farm gate LCA is applied, based on real farm data from two research centres. For a consistent comparison, two functional units (FU) were defined: 1ha and 1?kg of leek production. Findings – Assessed on an area basis, organic farming shows a more favourable environmental profile. These overall benefits are strongly reduced when the lower yields are taken into account. Related to organic farming it is therefore important that solutions are found to substantially increase the yields without increasing the environmental burden. Related to conventional farming, important potential for environmental improvements are in optimising the farm nutrient flows, reducing pesticide use and increasing its self-supporting capacity. Research limitations/implications – The research is a cradle-to-farm gate LCA, future research can be expanded to comprise all phases from cradle-to-grave to get an idea of the total sustainability of our present food consumption patterns. The research is also limited to the case of leek production. Future research can apply the methodology to other crops. Originality/value – To date, there is still lack of clear evidence of the added value of organic farming compared to conventional farming on environmental basis. Few studies have compared organic and conventional food production by means of LCA. This paper addresses these issues

On the Spinor Representation

A systematic study of the spinor representation by means of the fermionic physical space is accomplished and implemented. The spinor representation space is shown to be constrained by the Fierz-Pauli-Kofink identities among the spinor bilinear covariants. A robust geometric and topological structure can be manifested from the spinor space, wherein, for instance, the first and second homotopy groups play prominent roles on the underlying physical properties, associated to the fermionic fields.Comment: 16 page

Jornalismo Ambiental: explorando além do conceito

The Brazilian journalism presents several syndromes that influence the quality of environmental coverage as the sensationalism; the almost exclusive use of authorities as sources; or the fragmentation of theapproach because of its segmentation in different sections. The analysis of the journalistic coverage in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo demonstrates that the environmental news occupies a good space in the main newspapers, with important variations in terms of subjects and perspective

Improvement of Grapevine Leafroll-Associated Virus 1 Detection through a Novel Specific Quantitative Real-Time RT-PCR

[ES] En la actualidad, la vid (Vitis vinifera L.) es uno de los cultivos más importantes del mundo por su impacto económico y social. Como en muchos otros cultivos, las plantas de vid son susceptibles a varios tipos de enfermedades causadas por microorganismos patógenos. El virus del enrollado 1 (GLRaV-1) está asociado a la enfermedad del enrollado de la vid y se considera a nivel nacional y europeo como un patógeno que debe estar ausente en el material vegetal propagativo. Por ello, es importante utilizar técnicas de detección específicas, sensibles y fiables que permitan determinar el estado sanitario de las plantas. El objetivo de esta investigación se ha centrado en el desarrollo de un nuevo método basado en una RT-PCR cuantitativa en tiempo real dirigida a la región genómica de la prote.na de recubrimiento para mejorar la detección de GLRaV-1 en la vid, incluyendo un control interno del huésped en una reacción dúplex. Con este fin, se han recuperado tres nuevos genomas completos de GRLaV-1 mediante secuenciación masiva (High-throughput sequencing, HTS) y se han alineado con todas las secuencias disponibles en las bases de datos. Para la validación del método siguiendo los estándares de la EPPO, se han analizado 65 muestras naturalmente infectadas por GLRaV-1 de diferentes orígenes y variedades y se han comparado con otros dos métodos de detección descritos previamente basados en PCR. Los resultados muestran que el nuevo protocolo diseñado en este estudio es mucho más específico y sensible que los otros métodos. El método diseñado permite la cuantificación absoluta del título viral y es capaz de detectar tan solo 2 copias del virus. La nueva técnica se ha aplicado para el diagnóstico de 241 muestras de campo.[EN] Nowadays, grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) is one of the most important crops in the world due to its economic and social impact. As in many other crops, grapevine plants are susceptible to various types of diseases caused by pathogenic microorganisms. Grapevine leaf roll associated virus-1 (GLRaV-1) is a virus associated with grapevine leafroll disease and it is considered at national and European level as a pathogen that must be absent in propagative plant material. For this reason, it is important to use specific, sensitive, and reliable detection techniques that allow determining the sanitary status of the plants. The objective of this research has focused on the development of a new method based on a TaqMan quantitative real time RT-PCR targeted to coat protein genomic region to improve the detection of GLRaV-1 in grapevine, including a host internal control in a duplex reaction. To this end, three new GRLaV-1 full genomes have been recovered by HTS and aligned with all sequences available in the databases. For the validation of the method following EPPO standards, 65 naturally infected samples from different origins and cultivars were analyzed and compared with two other PCR-based detection methods previously reported. The results show that the new protocol designed in this study is much more specific and sensitive than the other methods. The method designed allows the absolute quantitation of the viral titter, it is able to detect as little as 2 viral target copies and has been applied for the diagnosis of 241 field samples.Bueno Da Silva, M. (2021). Improvement of Grapevine Leafroll-Associated Virus 1 Detection through a Novel Specific Quantitative Real-Time RT-PCR. Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/174764TFG

How land title affects child labor ?

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. However, evaluation of the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task. Since 2004, the Brazilian government, through a program called"Papel Passado,"has issued titles to more than 85,000 families and has the goal to reach 750,000. Another topic in public policy that is crucial for developing economies is child labor force participation. In Brazil, about 5.4 million children and teenagers between 5 and 17 years old are working full time. This paper examines the direct impact of securing a property title on child labor force participation. In order to isolate the causal role of ownership security, this study uses a comparison between two close and similar communities in the City of Osasco case (a town with 650,000 people in the São Paulo metropolitan area). The key point of this case is that some units participate in the program and others do not. One of them, Jardim Canaã, received land titles in 2007; the other, Jardim DR, given fiscal constraints, will not be part of the program until 2012, and for that reason became the control group. Estimates, generated using the difference-in-difference econometric technique suggest that titling results in a substantial decrease in child labor force participation for the families that received the title compared with the others. These findings are relevant for future policy tools for dealing with informality and how it affects economic growth.Labor Policies,Access to Finance,,Debt Markets,Gender and Law

Effective lagrangian for a mass dimension one fermionic field in curved spacetime

In this work we use momentum-space techniques to evaluate the propagator $G(x,x^{\prime})$ for a spin $1/2$ mass dimension one spinor field on a curved Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime. As a consequence, we built the one-loop correction to the effective lagrangian in the coincidence limit. Going further we compute the effective lagrangian in the finite temperature regime. We arrive at interesting cosmological consequences, as time-dependent cosmological `constant', fully explaining the functional form of previous cosmological models.Comment: 9 pages, 0 figure

On the bilinear covariants associated to mass dimension one spinors

In this paper we approach the issue of Clifford algebra basis deformation, allowing for bilinear covariants associated to Elko spinors which satisfy the Fierz-Pauli-Kofink identities. We present a complete analysis of covariance, taking into account the involved dual structure associated to Elko. Moreover, the possible generalizations to the recently presented new dual structure are performed.Comment: 9 pages, 0 figure