Contribution of agronomy to land management issues - A Comparison of five interdisciplinary PhD theses

An introductory literature review highlights the growing attention within the processes taking place at farming region and landscape scale beside the classical spatial scales at cultivated/experimental plot level. This recent evolution in agronomy finds its origin in newly emerging land management issues. Meanwhile, geography and other disciplines are stressing the need for a greater integration of multifunctional agricultural activities into the decision-making processes at the various levels of land management, such as provinces, municipalities or watersheds. This requires also that studies on farmland management include explicitly the different environmental and social contexts influencing farming activities. In this paper we aim to analyse how recent agronomic oriented research are facing and supporting various land management issues. We have compared five interdisciplinary PhD theses examining their definitions and methods of analysis for: the farming system, the local land management issues at stake, the spatial scale selected for the study, the stakeholders' involvement and the interaction with other disciplines. Common issues which emerged from this comparison are delivery of agro-environmental services, sustainable land management and landscape conservation. Multiple spatial levels were considered, which included at least one administrative unit of policy decision/implementation. Consequently, the explicit (re)definition of some agronomic concepts and methods was needed. Regarding the interdisciplinary framework, the theses have stressed the interactions among agronomy, geography and ecology. All theses aimed at delivering tools for decision-making support, mainly in the form of cartography. Nevertheless the participation of local stakeholders was generally included as a final step; herewith the settings of stakeholders' involvement were various. In conclusion, we discuss how the produced knowledge has enhanced the land management issues in local planning tools. On these bases, we stress finally the issues at stake to strengthen the roles and contributions of agronomic oriented education and research to agricultural land management and development. (Résumé d'auteur

Agri-urban patterns in Mediterranean urban regions: the case study of Pisa

Urban regions require planning tools in order to manage agricultural areas under urban pressure. The aim of our paper is to test an analytical framework that combines both the composition in urban and agricultural land covers and their spatial configuration into four general agri-urban patterns: isolated fields, urban belt fields, periurban agricultural areas and rural areas. We evaluated the spatial distribution and the changes of such patterns in the short-term (2003-2011) starting from Spot images for the case study of Pisa, Italy. The results indicate an increase of the most urban patterns despite continuing to have cash crops, a stability of periurban agricultural land patterns although highly fragmented, and a decrease of the rural agricultural land patterns. The applied methodology can help to identify new measures and actions suitable in order to strengthen the relationships between city and agriculture existing in urban regions

Transcriptome analysis in Coffea arabica, under several abiotic stresses, reveals differentially expressed genes in leaves.

In recent years, Coffea ssp. has become subject of increasing research in gene expression analysis, in the quest to find genetic factors associated to abiotic stress responses with special attention to transcription factors such as the DREB family. This focus was due to their involvement in the regulation of many stress-related genes that play an important role in cascading a response to an environmental stimuli. RNA-seq analysis, creates the possibility to s study the transcriptome and to identify differentially expressed genes upon an abiotic stress or any important agronomic trait. The main objectives of this work were to obtain an overview of the transcriptionally active genes in Arabica coffee leaves when subjected to several abiotic stresses and to analyze specific highly expressed candidate genes for environmental-stresses tolerance

Genomic selection in Coffea canephora.

Coffee is one of the most heavily globally traded commodities and its production is based on Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora and Brazil being the world's largest coffee producer. It is believed that all this production will be affected due to climatic changes, with low flower viability, fruit development, yield and beverage quality. An alternative to assist in obtaining coffee plants more adapted to future climatic conditions would be genomic selection (GS). The implementation of these programs requires a lot of genetic markers, which are more readily discovered now after the reference genome of C. canephora became available. Another important factor is the high genetic variability of C. canephora, due to its level of allogamy, being of great importance for breeding programs of coffee

Targeted capture of Dreb subfamily genes as candidates genes for drought tolerance polymorphism in natural population of Coffea canephora.

Coffea canephora, (Robusta), provides 33% of worldwide coffee production, 80% and 22% of Ugandan and Brazilian coffee production, respectively. Abiotic stress such as temperature variations or drought periods, aggravated by climate changes, are factors that affect this production. This sensitivity threatens both the steady supply of quality coffees and the livelihood of millions of people producing coffee. The natural genetic diversity of C. canephora offer a potential for detecting new genetic variants related to drought adaptation. In particular, modifications occurring in genes related to abiotic stress tolerance make these genes candidate for breeding programs in order to enhance the resilience to climate change

Development and validation of a 26K Axiom® SNP array for Coffea canephora.

World coffee production is higly affected by climate changes due to the occurrence of severe droughts and high temperatures resulting in low flow er viability, fruit development and yield. Faster breeding methods are required to obtain adapted coffee plants to a changed climate cenario, as conventional breeding in perennial crops such as coffee, requires a long time. With the recent advances in coffee genomics, such as the availability of a C. canephora reference genome , the objective of this work was to develop and validate a 26K Axiom SNP array for C. canephora aiming at a reliable high throughput genotyping platform to be used in the breeding programmes of the species. The chip design was based on a whole - genome resequencing panel comprised by DNA pools of C. canephora Conilon and pools formed by individuals representing the different genetic diversity groups of C. canephora

Açúcares solúveis, sacarose sintase e sacarose fosfato sintase durante o desenvolvimento do fruto de café, sob diferentes condições de luz e carga.

Foram abordados nesse trabalho aspectos fisiológicos de carboidratos envolvidos na relação fontedreno, sendo a sacarose o principal carboidrato exportado. Sabendo-se que a sacarose não é utilizada diretamente como substrato para a maioria dos processos envolvidos no crescimento, desenvolvimento e armazenamento, tanto na fonte como no dreno, o destino metabólico da sacarose é mediado pelas enzimas invertases, sacarose sintase e sacarose fosfato sintase. Nesse estudo foram dosadas as enzimas sintase da sacarose (SUSY) e sacarose fosfato sintase (SPS), assim como os teores de açúcares solúveis totais, redutores e sacarose, durante o desenvolvimento do fruto de cafeeiro em diferentes tecidos: polpa, perisperma e endosperma e em diferentes condições de tratamento: controle, onde as plantas foram expostas a pleno sol? com sombrite 50% e com carga do cafeeiro reduzida à 30%. Foi mostrado que, apesar de SUSY e SPS tenderem a ter menor atividade nos tratamentos de sol e menor produção, os teores de açúcares não variaram. Foi observado que as enzimas seguem o mesmo padrão de atividade em todos os tecidos aumentando com a maturação, independente do tratamento

Açúcares solúveis, sacarose sintase e sacarose fosfato sintase durante o desenvolvimento do fruto de café, sob diferentes condições

Foram abordados nesse trabalho aspectos fisiológicos de carboidratos envolvidos na relação fontedreno, sendo a sacarose o principal carboidrato exportado. Sabendose que a sacarose não é utilizada diretamente como substrato para a maioria dos processos envolvidos no crescimento, desenvolvimento e armazenamento, tanto na fonte como no dreno, o destino metabólico da sacarose é mediado pelas enzimas invertases, sacarose sintase e sacarose fosfato sintase. Nesse estudo foram dosadas as enzimas sintase da sacarose (SUSY) e sacarose fosfato sintase (SPS), assim como os teores de açúcares solúveis totais, redutores e sacarose, durante o desenvolvimento do fruto de cafeeiro em diferentes tecidos: polpa, perisperma e endosperma e em diferentes condições de tratamento: controle, onde as plantas foram expostas a pleno sol? com sombrite 50% e com carga do cafeeiro reduzida à 30%. Foi mostrado que, apesar de SUSY e SPS tenderem a ter menor atividade nos tratamentos de sol e menor produção, os teores de açúcares não variaram. Foi observado que as enzimas seguem o mesmo padrão de atividade em todos os tecidos aumentando com a maturação, independente do tratamento