Materiale eterogeneo per agricoltura biologica

Il miglioramento genetico dei cereali per l'agricoltura biologica: materiale eterogeneo, Frumenti del patrimonio, La registrazione di nuove varietà di girasole Helianthus annuus, La riproduzione dei semi di soia in Italia (2010-2016), Nuove varietà di semi di colza registrati nel catalogo italiano delle varietà,Elaborabio: analisi delle tendenze del database di semi biologici.   Il miglioramento genetico dei cereali per l'agricoltura biologica: materiale eterogeneoFrumenti del patrimonioLa registrazione di nuove varietà di girasole Helianthus annuusLa riproduzione dei semi di soia in Italia (2010-2016)Nuove varietà di semi di colza registrati nel catalogo italiano delle varietàElaborabio: analisi delle tendenze del database di semi biologic

Health and nutrition studies related to cereal biodiversity: a participatory multi-actor literature review approach

Recently, a large and growing body of literature has investigated the health potential of different wheat species. In particular, a considerable number of studies dealing with nutritional aspects has grown up around the theme of the recovery of ancient wheat varieties (species that have remained unchanged over the last hundred years). According to several studies, indeed, ancient varieties present a healthier nutritional profile than modern ones. In the framework of the European project "CERERE, CEreal REnaissance in Rural Europe: embedding diversity in organic and low-input food systems", this paper aimed to review recent research on the issue of health and nutritional cereal systems by adopting an innovative and participatory multi-actor approach which involved practitioners along with researchers. The participatory approach is the main innovation and peculiarity of this literature review. Nevertheless, the review highlights the many positive effects derived from eating whole and ancient grains such as a significant reduction in the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and also a more favorable long-term weight management and increase in satiety. This review may be considered as a fruitful starting point that integrates research results to foster current and future healthier and sustainable practices in cereal systems

Variational Approach to Molecular Kinetics

The eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the molecular dynamics propagator (or transfer operator) contain the essential information about the molecular thermodynamics and kinetics. This includes the stationary distribution, the metastable states, and state-to-state transition rates. Here, we present a variational approach for computing these dominant eigenvalues and eigenvectors. This approach is analogous the variational approach used for computing stationary states in quantum mechanics. A corresponding method of linear variation is formulated. It is shown that the matrices needed for the linear variation method are correlation matrices that can be estimated from simple MD simulations for a given basis set. The method proposed here is thus to first define a basis set able to capture the relevant conformational transitions, then compute the respective correlation matrices, and then to compute their dominant eigenvalues and eigenvectors, thus obtaining the key ingredients of the slow kinetics

Materiale eterogeneo per agricoltura biologica – Grani antichi – Progetto Elaborabio

The genetic improvement of cereals for organic farming: heterogeneous materialHeritage wheatsThe registration of new varieties of sunflower Helianthus annuus The soybean seed reproduction in Italy (2010-2016)New seed rape varieties registered in the Italian Variety CatalogueElaborabio: trend analysis of biological seeds databas

Participatory Evaluation of Rice Varieties for Specific Adaptation to Organic Conditions in Italy

Rice is the fourth most important crop in Italy with a growing area under organic management. We conducted a participatory evaluation of 21 rice cultivars (10 old, 10 modern and a mixture) in four organic/biodynamic farms, for two cropping seasons, to assess the extent of varieties × farms and varieties × years within farm interactions and farmers’ preferences. There were significant differences between farms and varieties, as well as large interactions between varieties and farms, particularly in the case of plant height and reactions to Fusarium fujikuroi Nirenberg (bakanae) and Magnaporthe oryzae B Cooke (leaf and neck blast), but also for grain yield. There were also large interactions between varieties and years, which resulted in considerable differences in stability among varieties with one of the old, one modern and the mixture combining high grain yield and stability. Farmers, regardless of gender, were able to visually identify the highest yielding varieties in a consistent way across years, and although accustomed to seeing uniform varieties, they scored the mixture higher than the mean. The results are discussed in the context of a decentralized-participatory breeding program, to serve the target population of heterogenous environments represented by organic and biodynamic farms