Do endangered sheep breeds have an advantage in organic farming?

Endangered breeds are not compulsory for organic farming, but adapted and local breeds are considered suitable for Organic Farming. In the year 2001, 240 ewes of six different breeds were introduced on the experimental farm of the Institute of Organic Farming in Trenthorst. Two were high yielding breeds, four older endangered German breeds. The whole herd was kept in one herd in a low input – low output system, comparable to agrienvironmental schemes. The scientific programme was to follow the herd’s development in terms of health status, growth rate and product qualities. After three lambing seasons, no real advantages could be found for the old breeds. Nevertheless, high yielding and old breeds did not show big differences in production and health performance. The result is, that even in low intensive organic farming systems, old and endangered breeds need financial support to be competitive with high yielding breeds

Mixed cropping systems for control of weeds and pests in organic oilseed crops

Agricultural advantages of mixed cropping are gained from biological effects like light competition offering weed-suppressing capacities, or by diversification of plant covers to break development cycles of pests. These effects were measured in a two-year project on mixed cropping with organic oilseed crops. It was found that weeds can be efficiently suppressed in organic linseed (Linum usitatissivum) grown in combination with wheat (Triticum aestivum) or false flax (Camelina sativa). Linseed growth was, however, impaired. In organic pea production (Pisum sativum) also, growing the crop as a mixture with false flax led to a significant decrease of weed population. Either culture showed a balanced plant development. In winter rape (Brassica napus) there were suggestions that infestation by insect pests can be directly reduced in mixtures with cereals or legumes and that parasitoids of insect pests are supported

Development of Collembolans after coversion towards organic farming

In Northern Germany, a diverse and complex experimental farm of the Federal Agricultural Research Centre (FAL) was set-up in 2001 covering all main aspects of organic farming. Previously, the 600 ha farm had been managed conventionally. Adjacent conventional farms were used as reference. The aim of this project was to study collembolans, microbial biomass and soil organic carbon in six organically farmed fields managed as a crop rotation of six different crops compared with an adjacent conventionally managed field. We hypothesised that the specific management in organic farming promotes soil biota. Soil samples were taken during the growing season in 2004. Collembolan abundances and microbial biomass were lower under organic management, but, generally, collembolan diversity was higher in organically farmed fields combined with a shifting in the dominance structure of the species. This result reveals that, even after three years, the soil biota is still changing with management conversion

Development of phosphatase and dehydrogenase activities in soils of annual cropland and permanent grassland in an organic farm

The essential nature of Phosphorus (P) in plant growth and the finite amount of P resources have result in the question: what kind of management in farming systems can lead to P sufficiency in organic farming? The release of acid and alkaline phosphatases of plant and microbes promote the plant availability of soil P. The presented results show a significant higher enzyme activity at permanent grassland (PG) than at arable land with annual crops at an organic farm in Northern Germany. Therefore livestock systems with PG for grazing ruminants seem to have high potential to improve on-farm P-cycles via feed and manure flows even to annual cropland. These systems can profit from the nutrient transfer from PG to arable land through the use of manures. Enhance the soil-plant P cycle by better use of P sources with low availability from PG could be component of sufficiency P management in organic and also conventional production

Variation in flavonoids in a collection of peppers (Capsicum sp.) under organic and conventional cultivation: effect of the genotype, ripening stage, and growing system

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Ribes-Moya, A.M., Adalid, A.M., Raigón, M.D., Hellín, P., Fita, A. and Rodríguez-Burruezo, A. (2020), Variation in flavonoids in a collection of peppers (Capsicum sp.) under organic and conventional cultivation: effect of the genotype, ripening stage, and growing system. J Sci Food Agric, 100: 2208-2223, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.10245. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.[EN] BACKGROUND In recent years, the acreage used for organic agriculture and the demand for organic fruit and vegetables have increased considerably. Given this scenario, landraces, such as Capsicum landraces, can provide valuable germplasm. Capsicum peppers are very interesting because of their high phenolic content, and particularly their flavonoid content, which provides a high added value. Moreover, the broad genetic diversity in local varieties expands the opportunities for adaptation to organic production and for exploiting genotype x environment interactions to select peppers with the highest phenolic content. RESULTS In this work, the main flavonoids of peppers were exhaustively evaluated over 2 years in a wide collection of heirlooms, both unripe and fully ripe, under organic and conventional cultivation. The genotype and ripening stage contributed to a high degree to the variation in flavonoids. The growing system influenced this variation to a lesser extent. Luteolin and quercetin showed the highest contributions to total phenolic content (70% and > 20%, respectively) at both ripening stages, while myricetin, apigenin, and kaempferol showed lower contributrions. The average flavonoid content was higher in ripe fruits, and organic management significantly increased the accumulation of total flavonoids and luteolin. Positive correlations between flavonoids were found at both ripening stages, especially between main flavonoids luteolin and quercetin and between kaempferol and quercetin (rho > 0.7). CONCLUSION Genotype x environment interaction enabled the identification of accessions with high flavonoid content grown under organic conditions at both ripening stages, particularly total flavonoids and luteolin at the fully ripe stage. Our results reinforce the importance of a wide genetic variation and of considering different ripening stages and growing conditions for breeding high-quality peppers.This work has been funded by the Instituto Nacional de Investigacion y Tecnologia Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) project RTA2014-00041-C02-02, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) funds. A.M. Ribes-Moya expresses her gratitude to the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) for her scholarship FPI-UPV-2017 (PAID-01-17). The authors also thank the farmers' association Unio de Llauradors i Ramaders (LA UNI) for the arrangement and management of fields - specifically Manuel Figueroa, Rafael Hurtado, Ricard Ballester, and Antonio Munoz, and seed providers P.W. Bosland, S. Lanteri, Francois Jourdan, Santiago Larregla, and the Regulatory Boards of the PDOs and PGIs included in this work. The authors are also grateful for the support of Professor Jaime Prohens with statistical methods.Ribes Moya, AM.; Adalid-Martinez, AM.; Raigón Jiménez, MD.; Hellín, P.; Fita, A.; Rodríguez Burruezo, A. (2020). Variation in flavonoids in a collection of peppers (Capsicum sp.) under organic and conventional cultivation: effect of the genotype, ripening stage, and growing system. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. 100(5):2208-2223. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.10245S220822231005WillerH European organic market grew by double digits and organic area reached 13.5 million hectares in2016 [Online]. 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Finding Nested Common Intervals Efficiently

International audienceIn this paper, we study the problem of effi ciently fi nding gene clusters formalized by nested common intervals between two genomes represented either as permutations or as sequences. Considering permutations, we give several algorithms whose running time depends on the size of the actual output rather than the output in the worst case. Indeed, we first provide a straightforward O(n^3) time algorithm for finding all nested common intervals. We reduce this complexity by providing an O(n^2) time algorithm computing an irredundant output. Finally, we show, by providing a third algorithm, that fi nding only the maximal nested common intervals can be done in linear time. Considering sequences, we provide solutions (modi cations of previously de ned algorithms and a new algorithm) for di fferent variants of the problem, depending on the treatment one wants to apply to duplicated genes