ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING IN AGRICULTURE: NUTRIENT ACCOUNTING AND OTHER ASPECTS

While traditional accounting focuses on accounting for capital assets, costs, yields valued and sold in the market, environmental accounting intends to do the same with non-marketed capital assets, costs and yields, that is, externalities. The farm level nutrient balances are based on an input-output comparison, in which the nutrients entering the farm within inputs are compared to nutrients leaving the farm within the sold products. The method considers the amounts of nutrients entering the farm but not leaving it with the products to be wastes polluting the environment. The weakness of this approach is the handling of stock changes. In a farming year high amounts of nutrients contained in unsold products are not wastes, nor are they stored in the soil, but are stored in the stocks. To handle this problem the concepts of external nutrient balance and internal nutrient balance are introduced, and are tested in case studies of two Hungarian mixed farms

Investigation of antinutritive components in Hungarian potato cultivars depending on production technology

We have investigated the Total Glycoalcaloid (TGA), nitrite, and nitrate contents of some Hungarian and foreign potato cultivars in relation to the effect of different combination of fertilisers and green manure, late blight management strategies (none, programmed, or prediction based spraying), and irrigation regime for three years. The Hungarian cultivars have exotic potato species like S. acaule, S. demissum, S. stoloniferum, S. vernei, or S. tub. ssp. andigenum in their genetic background as sources of resistance genes. No effect of fertilisers or irrigation was found on the level of glycoalkaloids and nitrate contents, which were influenced mostly by the genotype and season. In conclusion, the absolute amount and the presence of different antinutritive components of potato tubers were influenced by the technology, genotype, and season in a complex manner. These results in general prove that ware potato production utilising intensive commercial agrotechnical practices and common cultivars is safe regarding the nitrate and TGA content of tubers

Changes of potentially anti-nutritive components in Hungarian potatoes from organic and conventional farming

Anti-nutritive components in multi resistant potato cultivars were investigated in relation to conventional and organic farming for three years. Glycoalkaloids, nitrate, nitrite, asparagine, and glutamine contents of tubers were examined. Farming technology was found not to have an effect on the level of glycoalkaloids, which was influenced mostly by the genotype and season. Nitrogen fertilisation caused significant increase in nitrate, asparagine, and glutamine contents as compared to organic farming. Nitrite content was found to be more independent of farming technologies than nitrate. Tubers of cultivar Rioja had the lowest nitrate content irrespective of season or technology. In conclusion, the absolute amount and changes of different anti-nutritive components of potato tubers were influenced differently by the technology, genotype, and season in a complex manner. Organic farming had no effect on the glycoalkaloid content, but the nitrate levels had a tendency to be lower compared to conventional farming. This can be seen as a positive effect of organic farming

Neuronal circuitry for pain processing in the dorsal horn

Neurons in the spinal dorsal horn process sensory information, which is then transmitted to several brain regions, including those responsible for pain perception. The dorsal horn provides numerous potential targets for the development of novel analgesics and is thought to undergo changes that contribute to the exaggerated pain felt after nerve injury and inflammation. Despite its obvious importance, we still know little about the neuronal circuits that process sensory information, mainly because of the heterogeneity of the various neuronal components that make up these circuits. Recent studies have begun to shed light on the neuronal organization and circuitry of this complex region

Fact sheet of the MÉTA database 1.2

The survey results of the MÉTA program are managed with centralised relational database management system (MS SQL 2000) developed and set up in a local area network. Besides the MÉTA database server, a publishing server, an archiving server and a GIS workstation were applied. The core information entities of the MÉTA database are: information subproject, MÉTA quadrate, MÉTA hexagon, (semi-)natural habitat, potential vegetation with numerous habitats, landscape ecology and land use attributes, and surveyor. This information is coded in the nine main tables of the normalised database. In the recent state there are almost 1,500,000 records in the main tables that are managed in 241 independent fields. The published version of the MÉTA database supports the query service, and handles this information in 7 denormalised main tables. This much more redundant version is 11 GB in size. The 20.6% (179 man-month) of the human resources in the MÉTA program were devoted to the information tasks (set up and preparation, MÉTA database and information system development, replenishment and quality assessment, MÉTA query, GIS and printing services) between 2002 and 2007. The basic structure of the MÉTA database version 1.2 is finalised and the main functions regarding data processing have been developed. The accomplishment is higher than 90%, quality assessment is under way, while scientific verification and data harmonisation are started. The area of (semi-)natural and degraded vegetation of Hungary is estimated to 1,800,000 hectares (19.4% of the country) of which the natural, semi-natural is about 1,200,000 hectares (12.9% of the country). All of these are highly fragmented and unevenly distributed over the country. It is shown by several basic figures, professional content and quality measure facts of the database. There is also a fact sheet of surveyors that shapes the important characters of their field experience profile, too