Research on the presence of fishery products in the Moldovan diet’

The paper proposes an analysis of the presence of fish-based food products in the nutrition of the population in the Republic of Moldova, highlighting the traditional Moldovan cuisine elements in the public catering services. The research methodology was based on the analysis of restaurant menus in the city of Chișinău emphasising the items in which fishery products were identified, differentiated by the raw materials used, the cooking technique and services, source, energy value or price. Research has highlighted the fact that, although the share of fishery products in the supply of public catering establishments is moderate, the food of the population between the Prut and the Nistru keep the tradition, originality, the ethnic significance and modality of food, characterised by some taste and visual particulars, according to which foods transmit the information, ancient knowledge and the food balance characteristic of the Romanian population

Enhancing the Performance of a Simulated WWTP: Comparative Analysis of Control Strategies for the BSM2 Model

This study aimed to improve the performance of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) simulated with Benchmark Model No. 2 (BSM2). To achieve this objective, three control strategies were implemented and tested. The first control strategy aimed to maintain the concentration of nitrate and nitrite nitrogen (SNO) by controlling the external carbon flowrate (strategy A1), and the second control strategy aimed to maintain the ammonia and ammonium nitrogen (SNH) at a desired level with the use of a cascade controller (strategy A2). The third strategy was applied to control the total suspended solids (TSS) (strategy A3). Combinations of these strategies were considered (B1, B2, and B3 strategies), as well as the use of all three together (strategy C1). The control strategies presented in this paper were compared to the default control strategy of BSM2 to validate and identify the one that provided the best performance. The results revealed that the B1 strategy was the most environmentally friendly, while C1 obtained the highest overall performance. Several Monte Carlo simulations were performed for the validated control strategies, to identify the optimal setpoint values. For the C1 strategy, a second method of optimization regarding polynomial interpolation was considered. The applied optimization methods provided the optimal reference values for the PI (proportional integral) controllers

Limiting Factors that Influence the Formation of Producer Groups in the South-East Region of Romania: A Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA)

The fragmentation of the Agricultural Real Estate in Romania, which is due to the lack of vision regarding the retrocession of the land and to the ineffective measures for reparcelling farmland, manifests by the existence of a record number of about 3422 million farms in Romania, of which about 92% have a utilized agricultural area (UAA) below 5 ha. The Romanian agricultural sector possesses about 30% of the total European farms but contributes only 3% to the total EU agricultural production. The association of local agricultural producers may be an alternative to reparcelling farmland on a short-term basis in order to reduce the fragmentation degree and increase the competitiveness of the national agricultural sector. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, 25 active groups of agricultural producers are registered in the South-East Region in 2018, where these associative entities have been recorded to have a low degree of viability. The paper proposes an analysis on the farmers’ motivation regarding the access to/exit from a form of agricultural association and the identification of some alternatives for increasing the viability of the associative forms in the agricultural sector in the South-East of Romania. In this respect, a study was carried out on a sample of 16 entities that gave up their status of producer groups in the analyzed region in 2011–2018. The Fuzzy Set Quantitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) Qualitative analysis method was applied, which identified the main influence factors that have led to the disappearance of this associative form. We consider this study relevant for drawing attention to the main obstacles that Romanian farmers face in joining an associative form. The study has shown that mainly the factors directly influenced by government policies have led to the withdrawal of a relatively large number of producers from producer groups in the studied region