Opportunities and bottlenecks for upstream learning within RSPO certified palm oil value chains: A comparative analysis between Indonesia and Thailand

Smallholders play a key role in implementing best management practices that increase productivity and reduce environmental effects. However, they often lack the knowledge to implement these standards. This study investigates if and how RSPO certification fosters upstream learning to improve farming practices. Taking a comparative approach between Thailand and Indonesia we find that the current structure of the value chain is not always well-suited for upstream learning beyond knowledge transfer. In particular, farmers in Indonesia suffer from the delegation of practices to the mill and cooperative, and from incentive-incompatible pricing practices, limiting the extent to which farmers absorb new knowledge on farming practices. In Thailand instead, price incentives based on quality are more developed, and only hindered by the presence of intermediary collectors. This makes that Thai farmers are systematically more aware of farming and environmental practices, and more likely to report compliance with RSPO principles and criteria. Their relatively higher independence in farming decision-making, however, results in weaker peer-to-peer interactions and higher deviations from best management practices, with consequences both for productivity and quality. This research highlights the major bottlenecks in upstream learning within RSPO-certified palm oil value chains in Indonesia and Thailand. Addressing such bottlenecks is a precondition to improving smallholders’ farming practices.</p

Abstracts from the 23rd Italian congress of Cystic Fibrosis and the 13th National congress of Cystic Fibrosis Italian Society

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) occurs most frequently in caucasian populations. Although less common, this disorder have been reported in all the ethnicities. Currently, there are more than 2000 described sequence variations in CFTR gene, uniformly distributed and including variants pathogenic and benign (CFTR1:www.genet.sickkids.on.ca/). To date,only a subset have been firmily established as variants annotated as disease-causing (CFTR2: www.cftr2.org). The spectrum and the frequency of individual CFTR variants, however, vary among specific ethnic groups and geographic areas. Genetic screening for CF with standard panels of CFTR mutations is widely used for the diagnosis of CF in newborns and symptomatic patients, and to diagnose CF carrier status. These screening panels have an high diagnostic sensitivity (around 85%) for CFTR mutations in caucasians populations but very low for non caucasians. Developed in the last decade, Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) has been the last breakthrough technology in genetic studies with a substantial reduction in cost per sequenced base and a considerable enhancement of the sequence generation capabilities. Extended CFTR gene sequencing in NGS includes all the coding regions, the splicing sites and their flankig intronic regions, deep intronic regions where are localized known mutations,the promoter and the 5'-3' UTR regions. NGS allows the analysis of many samples concurrently in a shorter period of time compared to Sanger method . Moreover, NGS platforms are able to identify CFTR copy number variation (CNVs), not detected by Sanger sequencing. This technology has provided new and reliable approaches to molecular diagnosis of CF and CFTR-Related Disorders. It also allows to improve the diagnostic sensitivity of newborn and carrier screeningmolecular tests. In fact, bioinformatics tools suitable for all the NGS platforms can filter data generated from the gene sequencing, and analyze only mutations with well-established disease liability. This approach allows the development of targeted mutations panels with a higher number of frequent CF mutations for the target populationcompared to the standard panels and a consequent enhancement of the diagnostic sensitivity. Moreover, in the emerging challenge of diagnosing CF in non caucasians patients, the possibility of customize a NGS targeted mutations panel should increase the diagnostic sensitivity when the target population has different ethnicities