Agricultural land systems importance for supporting food security and sustainable development goals: a systematic review

Agriculture provides the largest share of food supplies and ensures a critical number of ecosystem services (e.g., food provisioning). Therefore, agriculture is vital for food security and supports the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 2 (SDG 2 - zero hunger) as others SDG's. Several studies have been published in different world areas with different research directions focused on increasing food and nutritional security from an agricultural land system perspective. The heterogeneity of the agricultural research studies calls for an interdisciplinary and comprehensive systematization of the different research directions and the plethora of approaches, scales of analysis, and reference data used. Thus, this work aims to systematically review the contributions of the different agricultural research studies by systematizing the main research fields and present a synthesis of the diversity and scope of research and knowledge. From an initial search of 1151 articles, 260 meet the criteria to be used in the review. Our analysis revealed that most articles were published between 2015 and 2019 (59%), and most of the case studies were carried out in Asia (36%) and Africa (20%). The number of studies carried out in the other continents was lower. In the last 30 years, most of the research was centred in six main research fields: land-use changes (28%), agricultural efficiency (27%), climate change (16%), farmer's motivation (12%), urban and peri-urban agriculture (11%), and land suitability (7%). Overall, the research fields identified are directly or indirectly linked to 11 of the 17 SDGs. There are essential differences in the number of articles among research fields, and future efforts are needed in the ones that are less represented to support food security and the SDGs.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Milheto: alternativa de forragem para a seca.

bitstream/item/99345/1/Milheto-alternativa.pd

Genomic African and Native American Ancestry and Chagas Disease: The Bambui (Brazil) Epigen Cohort Study of Aging.

BackgroundThe influence of genetic ancestry on Trypanosoma cruzi infection and Chagas disease outcomes is unknown.Methodology/principal findingsWe used 370,539 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) to examine the association between individual proportions of African, European and Native American genomic ancestry with T. cruzi infection and related outcomes in 1,341 participants (aged ≥ 60 years) of the Bambui (Brazil) population-based cohort study of aging. Potential confounding variables included sociodemographic characteristics and an array of health measures. The prevalence of T. cruzi infection was 37.5% and 56.3% of those infected had a major ECG abnormality. Baseline T. cruzi infection was correlated with higher levels of African and Native American ancestry, which in turn were strongly associated with poor socioeconomic circumstances. Cardiomyopathy in infected persons was not significantly associated with African or Native American ancestry levels. Infected persons with a major ECG abnormality were at increased risk of 15-year mortality relative to their counterparts with no such abnormalities (adjusted hazard ratio = 1.80; 95% 1.41, 2.32). African and Native American ancestry levels had no significant effect modifying this association.Conclusions/significanceOur findings indicate that African and Native American ancestry have no influence on the presence of major ECG abnormalities and had no influence on the ability of an ECG abnormality to predict mortality in older people infected with T. cruzi. In contrast, our results revealed a strong and independent association between prevalent T. cruzi infection and higher levels of African and Native American ancestry. Whether this association is a consequence of genetic background or differential exposure to infection remains to be determined

Lexical, morphological and syntactic development in toddlers between 16 and 30 months old: a comparison across European Portuguese and Galician

The main aims of this study were to investigate the relationship between the lexical size and the emergence of morphological and syntactic markers in toddlers between the ages of 16 and 30 months and to compare these results between Galician and European Portuguese. Parents of 3012 Portuguese toddlers and those of 1081 Galician toddlers completed the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences. The results indicated that the number of words, the ability to combine words and the number of different morphemes produced increased with age. The ability to combine words was used as an indicator of syntactic development; this ability was also associated with the toddlers’ lexical size. In both samples, gender morphemes seemed to be the first to have their production generalized, followed by the plural and the past participle. The production of gender morphemes was accompanied by a small lexical size, whereas the imperfect tense and the person mark onset were associated with large lexical sizes. The implications of these results for charting the continuity between lexical, morphological and syntactical development are discussed.CiPsi - Psychology Research Centre, Uminho (UID/PSI/ 01662/2013), Portugal. National Funds through the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) and co-financed by European Regional Development Funds (FEDER) through the the National Strategic Reference Framework (QREN) - FCOMP- 01-0124-FEDER-029556 and through the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program (POCI) with the references and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007562CIEC – Research Centre on Child Studies, IE, UMinho (FCT R&D unit 317), Portugal. BPD/102549/2014info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Facultative anaerobic bacteria: key players in syntrophic fatty acids degradation under microaerophilic conditions

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a mature technology that contributes to the sustainable development through the production of energy and products, using microbes as key players. Oxygen, formerly thought as the nemesis of AD, has been shown to benefit the AD processes when provided in vestigial doses [1]. The beneficial effects of micro-aeration have been attributed to the increased activity of facultative anaerobic bacteria (FAB). Besides being involved in fermentation and acidogenesis, FAB have been referred to act as a protective shield against the damaging effects of oxidative stress to the strict anaerobic communities [2]. However, their role in the syntrophic degradation of fatty acids is not clear. In this work, the relationship between syntrophic bacteria (Syntrophomonas wolfei (Sw) and S. zehnderi (Sz)), methanogens (Methanospirillum hungatei (Mh) and Methanobacterium formicicum (Mf)) and FAB (Pseudomonas strains (Ps)) was investigated, during the degradation of short (C4, butyrate), medium (C8, octanoate) and long (C16, hexadecanoate). The syntrophic co-cultures were pre-grown and the Pseudomonas spp. were further added, along with each substrate, over a range of O2 concentrations (0-2 % v/v). A second transfer was performed, exposing each of the cultures to O2 concentrations between 0-2% (v/v). In the presence of O2 (even at the lower concentrations) the activity of the syntrophic cocultures sharply decreased or even disappeared. However, in the presence of Pseudomonas, methane production occurred, reaching the theoretically expected at days 3, 8 and 28 under 0%, 1% and 2% O2, respectively. These results were obtained for C8 degradation in the presence of Sw+Mh+Ps. The same tendency was observed for C4 and C16 degradation with both consortia. Additionally, in the 2nd transfer, the cultures previously exposed to O2, maintained their activity being able of completely convert substrates to methane, under anoxic and microaerophilic conditions. These results show the essential role of Pseudomonas in the protection of syntrophic coculture activity allowing fatty acids degradation under microaerophilic conditions. Therefore, in real AD systems, where vestigial O2 can be detected, the presence of FAB may result in more stable, resilient, and functional syntrophic communities.FCT under UIDB/04469/2020 unit; and SFRH/BD/132845/2017 grantinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio