ORWINE: towards a European regulation for organic wine-making

The project aims at solving the legislative problem of the lack of EU regulation on organic wine-making by producing a scientific data set to support the EU commission to develop the legislative framework. Data about currently applied practices, consumer and market needs in significant areas were gathered in all significant wine producing areas of EU and some new member states. Test series with suitable and innovative technologies to improve the quality of wines from organic viticulture, allowing using a low level of sulphites are conducted and validated on selected pilot wineries. Moreover the results and regulatory proposals are discussed with a participatory approach with stakeholders on national levels as well as on European level, ensuring a high acceptance of the proposed legislative framework. Besides a code of best practices as well as a simplified environment assessment tool will be developed to give guidance to produce high quality wine while limiting the impact on the environment

Report on quality characteristics of varieties to be used in organic farming

The key questions which will be addressed in this report are: • Which variety characteristics are important for organic farming and are they different from conventional farmers demand? • What is an “appropriate“ variety for organic farming? • Is the actual variety offer available to organic farmers satisfactory? Is it different per crops type and/or per geographic area? • How should variety trials be conducted in order to supply the information needed by organic operators? The main answers may be synthesized as follows: Characteristics of varieties to be used in organic farming are partly different from the ones requested in conventional farming. Main differences are related to yield stability, processing properties and root-system development; The definition of “appropriateness”, related to variety for organic farming, is not easy to state as it may involves different aspects, depending on perspective (producers, processor, trader etc.). A list of characters that should be considered within the “appropriateness” concept is presented in the report; Among involved Members States experts there is no common evaluation of the actual variety availability: in general if for cereals there is a reasonably good level of availability, for vegetables and fodder crops mixtures the situation is never very positive even if it varies greatly among Member States; Valuable guidelines for cereal variety testing in organic farming have been produced by the COST 860 action “SUSVAR” (Sustainable low-input cereal production: required variety characteristics and crop diversity) and they are summarized in the report; Guidelines for vegetable variety testing are difficult to identify as among vegetables species the characteristics and requirements are very different. In the report some indications are reported. Recommendation for variety evaluation and testing in organic farming Several recommendation result from the report. For clarity sake they have been grouped in 3 parts, depending on which institution they are aimed to: Recommendations to EU and international authorities: • To implement the possibility offered by EU directives on seed trading (EEC Dir. 66/4021; EEC Dir. 66/4012 and EC Dir. 2002/553) to run controls on seeds for organic farming additional to the routine controls. This possibility may be used to evaluate variety appropriateness to organic farming conditions and consequently orientate the choice of varieties that seed companies offer to the organic sector. • To consider specific variety traits requested by organic farming systems in the test for variety inclusion into the registers of varieties. Recommendations to Member States: • To keep record of the variety requested for derogation and make it public. It may be a useful instrument for seed producers’ orientation. • To include specific local (National/Regional) demands from organic farmers in the variety trials. It means to include varieties that are supposed as fit to organic conditions by farmers but also to include specific characteristics in the evaluation criteria. • To promote public breeding for organic farming and to support spin-off of seed companies dedicated to organic seed production. A low-cost option may be participatory breeding that combines the advantages of introducing variety traits asked for by organic producers and facilitate dissemination. Recommendations to other stakeholders: • To involve nurseries in the debate about organic variety choice as they result to be an important bottle-neck for the use of organic seeds in vegetable production. • To promote timely programming of variety used and amounts of seed needed among producers in order to facilitate seed producers and distributors but at the same time to grand producers the right variety choice

THE SEED SOURCES OF ORGANIC FARMERS IN ITALY

This paper presents the result of the survey done in 2010 by AIAB on the seed sources in Organic Agriculture (OA) in Italy. The aim of this work is to better understand and clarify the relationships between the formal and informal seed system (Almekinders and Louwaars, 2000) and quantify the role of the latter in OA. In a time where the choice of the varieties to grow will be in the hands of public institutions or seed industries (GRAIN, 2008), it is pivotal to check the needs of Organic farmers and the seed they are sowing. The questions addressed were: a. Are Organic farmers still self-producing seeds? b. Are they using only varieties listed in Official National Catalogue? c. What is the role of old varieties not listed anymore or local varieties in organic systems? d. What is the role of exchange amongst farmers in the supply of new varieties? e. What are their needs in term of variety characteristics? This survey was undertaken within the EU project SOLIBAM and in the framework of the Italian National Plan on Organic Seed

A Step Toward AI Tools for Quality Control and Musicological Analysis of Digitized Analogue Recordings: Recognition of Audio Tape Equalizations

Historical analogue audio documents are indissolubly linked to their physical carriers on which they are recorded. Because of their short life expectancy these documents have to be digitized. During this process, the document may be altered with the result that the digital copy is not reliable from the authenticity point of view. This happens because digitization process is not completely automatized and sometimes it is influenced by human subjective choices. Artificial intelligence can help operators to avoid errors, enhancing reliability and accuracy, and becoming the base for quality control tools. Furthermore, this kind of algorithms could be part of new instruments aiming to ease and to enrich musicological studies. This work focuses the attention on the equalization recognition problem in the audio tape recording field. The results presented in this paper, highlight that, using machine learning algorithms, is possible to recognize the pre-emphasis equalization used to record an audio tape

Italian networking of public experimental sites working on Organic Farming: an experience of networking in research

Research in organic farming, especially with an agro-ecological approach, is strictly linked to local conditions and interactions among several variables. The paper will present an example of a process developed in the Italian context to integrate and harmonize research in organic farming from different research stations, with different local conditions. Collecting similar and comparable data from different research stations participating in the network can have an interesting impact in results of organic farming experiments, due to high number and variability of data. ARSIA Toscana, with the aim of creating an Italian National Network of public experimental stations working in organic farming, involved FIRAB as a facilitator of the participatory process. The proposed process follows two parallel paths: individual questionnaire to single experimental sites to know the specific activities in place on organic farming and a series of meetings with direct involvement and exchange among researchers and policy makers from different regions to comment results of the questionnaire and future development of organic research in public experimental stations. The main outcome of the process has been the choice of a specific transversal topic to build the network: the development of synthetic agro-environmental indicators

Circulating cell-free DNA: a powerful biomarker for tumor management and a possible monitor tool in other pathological conditions.

\u2018Liquid biopsy\u2019, i.e. the analysis of cfDNA in blood or body fluids, can give a live, \u2018total\u2019 image representing the entire heterogeneity of the system. The application of high throughput analytical procedures, such NGS or ddPCR, are necessary to obtain reliable data on such a small amount of starting material. Only few applications have achieved a clinical validation, due to the great variability in preanalytical procedures. In our work we evaluated cfDNA with three different aims. \u2022 Presence of mutation in a panel of 16 genes of the HR pathway in genomic and cfDNA in patients affected by breast cancer. We observed mutations in 3 out of 6 samples; in one case variant fraction in cfDNA was higer than in genomic DNA, probably due to limited ability to detect clonal heterogeneity in tissue. \u2022 Monitoring tool for determining septic risk in patients undergoing dialysis. We detected in a sample, in accordance with the emoculture, a Staphylococcus strain together with Propionibacterium and Streptococcus strains. The detection of Burkholderia multivorans in another sample raised the possibility to identify those bacteria that take more than the canonical 5 days of emoculture to growth, or that completely do not grow in emoculture conditions. \u2022 Detection of donor-derived cfDNA in transplanted patients. We identified more than 50% of donor derived polymorphisms just after reperfusion, falling down to 10% one day after surgery and then disappearing. The possibility to cross our data with clinical parameters will help us to better describe the pertinence of our results to the effective status of patients. In all the three settings, we are collecting other samples to have a broader amount of data that will allow us to perform statistical analysis to effectively validate our procedures

New criteria for inputs

Hot points of the actual version of art.7 Non-contact clause “the conditions for their use preclude any direct contact with the seed, the crop, crop products or livestock and livestock products; however, in the case of perennial crops, direct contact may take place, but only outside the growing season of the edible parts (fruits) provided that such application does not indirectly result in the presence of residues of the product in the edible parts” Traditional use condition “The conditions provided for in paragraph 1 shall not apply to products which were in common use before the adoption of this Regulation according to the codes of practice on organic farming followed in the Community.

A robust feature tracker for active surveillance of outdoor scenes

In this paper, we propose a robust real-time object detection system for outdoor image sequences acquired by an active camera. The system is able to compensate background changes due to the camera motion and to detect mobile objects in the scene. Background compensation is performed by assuming a simple translation (displacement vector) of the background from the previous to the current frame and by applying the well-known tracker proposed by Lucas and Kanade. A reference map containing all well trackable features is maintained and updated by the system at each frame by introducing new good features related to new regions that appear in the current image. A new method is applied to reject badly tracked features. The current frame and the background after compensation are processed by a change detection method in order to locate mobile objects. Results are presented in the contest of a visual-based surveillance system for monitoring outdoor enviroments