On-farm investigations on integrated weed management in maize in three European countries

In 2011 and 2012, a total of 9 on-farm experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of different integrated weed management strategies (IWM) against the conventional approach (CON) in three important European maize producing countries. These sites were located in Italy, Germany and Slovenia and represent the range of various geographic, climatic and cultivation types in Europe. The IWM strategies tested were:Italy: the early-post emergence herbicide broadcast application when-if indicated by a predictive model of weed emergence after performing one scouting in the field, followed by hoeing,Germany: the early-post emergence band application combined with hoeing followed by a second hoeing andSlovenia: the harrowing at BBCH 12-13 of maize and low doses of post-emergence herbicide.Results showed that the different IWM strategies tested in the countries were similarly effective with the CON broadcast herbicide application in reducing weed density. In terms of mean weed density in the 3 countries and 2 years the efficacy of CON was significantly higher than IWM in only 2 out of 6 trials across two growing seasons. Furthermore, there were no significant differences of both management strategies in terms of grain yield. The study highlights the potential of IWM tools already available in Europe.Integriertes Unkrautmanagement in Mais auf Praxisbetrieben in drei europäischen LändernAn insgesamt 9 Standorten in 3 wichtigen europäischen Maisanbaugebieten wurden 2011 und 2012 auf Praxisbetrieben vergleichende Versuche mit Verfahren des integrierten Unkrautmanagements (IWM) und der konventionellen Unkrautbekämpfung (CON) durchgeführt. Die Versuchsstandorte lagen in Italien, Deutschland und Slowenien und repräsentieren unterschiedliche geographische, klimatische produktionstechnische Bedingungen in Europa. Folgende IWM-Strategien wurden getestet:Italien: Herbizid-Flächenbehandlung im frühen Nachauflauf nach Bonitur und standortspezifischem Entscheidungsmodell, gefolgt von Hackmaßnahme;Deutschland: Herbizid-Bandspritzung in Kombination mit Hackscharen und nachfolgende Hackmaßnahme undSlowenien: Striegeln im BBCH 12-13 und Flächenbehandlung mit reduzierten Herbizid-Aufwandmengen.Die Versuche zeigten, dass die verschiedenen IWM-Strategien in den Ländern die Unkrautdichte signifikant reduzieren konnte. Bezogen auf die mittlere Unkrautdichte in den 3 Ländern und 2 Jahren war die Wirksamkeit der konventionellen Behandlung (CON) nur in 2 von 6 Versuchen signifikant höher als die der integrierten Varianten (IWM). Die Kornerträge vom Mais unterschieden sich in keinem Fall signifikant voneinander. Die Untersuchungen verdeutlichen das Potenzial von IWM-Methoden, die bereits in Europa zur Verfügung stehen

Digitizing Dionysios Solomos' manuscripts

This paper focuses on the design principles and features of the 'Digital Solomos' project, a digital edition of the corpus of Dionysios Solomos' manuscripts that is currently being developed at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The digital edition in question will include digital facsimiles of almost all of Solomos' draft manuscripts (provided by the institutes where they are housed) as well as digital tools to enhance the reader's interaction with the digital surrogates and the transcribed text. After a brief overview of the editing traditions developed around the editorial problem of Solomos' unfinished works, the paper focuses on the relationship between the digital edition under development and the groundbreaking diplomatic edition that Linos Politis envisioned and compiled in 1964. The features of the diplomatic digital edition are then described, namely its layout and the options it provides for manipulating the document facsimiles and analyzing the texts contained within them. Finally, the paper's closing section refers to the design and characteristics of the digital genetic edition of Funeral Ode II, a small poem by Dionysios Solomos, which will be the first (experimental) genetic edition to be included within the 'Digital Solomos' project.This paper focuses on the design principles and features of the 'Digital Solomos' project, a digital edition of the corpus of Dionysios Solomos' manuscripts that is currently being developed at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The digital edition in question will include digital facsimiles of almost all of Solomos' draft manuscripts (provided by the institutes where they are housed) as well as digital tools to enhance the reader's interaction with the digital surrogates and the transcribed text. After a brief overview of the editing traditions developed around the editorial problem of Solomos' unfinished works, the paper focuses on the relationship between the digital edition under development and the groundbreaking diplomatic edition that Linos Politis envisioned and compiled in 1964. The features of the diplomatic digital edition are then described, namely its layout and the options it provides for manipulating the document facsimiles and analyzing the texts contained within them. Finally, the paper's closing section refers to the design and characteristics of the digital genetic edition of Funeral Ode II, a small poem by Dionysios Solomos, which will be the first (experimental) genetic edition to be included within the 'Digital Solomos' project

Assessing innovative cropping systems with DEXiPM, a qualitative multi-criteria assessment tool derived from DEXi

Modern intensive agriculture has to face the challenge of feeding the world’s growing population while reducing its environmental impacts. Assessing in an ex ante way the sustainability of innovative cropping systems will increase the efficiency of the innovation process. To this aim, DEXiPM (DEXi Pest Management) has been developed for ex ante assessment of the sustainability of arable cropping systems, particularly integrated crop management systems with a limited use of pesticides. It has 75 basic indicators describing the cropping system and the context of the assessment, and 86 aggregated indicators, assessing the usual three dimensions of sustainability in terms of social, environmental and economic issues. DEXiPM was implemented to assess and compare current and innovative winter crop- and maizebased cropping systems for a French region. The evaluation results showed that innovative cropping systems with a limited use of pesticides can have a better overall sustainability, despite the fact that some of the indicators can be negatively impacted. DEXiPM is a relevant tool to evaluate the sustainability of actual cropping systems, to diagnose their strong and weak points and, on this basis, to encourage discussions during the design of innovative cropping systems that will afterwards be tested in fields. The design of DEXiPM is also based on a state of the art on agricultural sustainability which led to point out gaps in knowledge that need to be filled (e.g. the impact of crop management on biodiversity). From the discussions of the design phase and the implementation test, improvements have been highlighted. The version presented here includes them as well as the results of the first feedbacks from users and from an evaluation phase. The coherency of cropping system assessments has been judged by experts and found consistent, constituting the first step of the model evaluation. Sensitivity analysis and comparison with quantitative methods are currently on-going to evaluate the accuracy of the model to rank cropping systems