1,721,047 research outputs found
Deliverable 5.7.Technical report on alternative fertilisers (arable farming and vegetables)
Full text linkThis Deliverable D5.7 is a ‘Technical report on alternative fertiliser’. It is a shorter version, containing key facts and characteristics about the material investigated and described in the much longer ‘Summary paper of alternative fertilisers’ (Deliverable D5.6), from the Horizon2020 project "Organic-PLUS" (2018-2022). In organic farming, a considerable amount of nutrients and organic matter are derived from conventional farming as fertilisers from organic sources are not available in sufficient quantities, in particular for stockless organic farms or intensive vegetable and fruit production. Furthermore, the EU Regulation on Organic Food and Farming restricts the use of recycling fertilisers from urban sources. Relying on fertilisers from conventional production is a challenge for the integrity of organic production.
The ‘contentious fertilisers’ include animal manure and other animal-derived products such as hydrolysed proteins or keratins from non-organic, conventional, animal husbandry, but also plant-derived products such as vinasse from conventional sugar-beet production. Furthermore, there may be issues with veterinary drugs and pesticide residues in such fertilisers, as shown for liquid vinasse-based fertiliser which contained residues of pyralid, a herbicide used frequently in conventional sugar beet farming (e.g. McKinnon et al. 2021). In addition, the rapidly increasing demand for vegan products and the reduced consumption of meat for environmental reasons contributes to the importance of finding alternatives to animal-derived fertilisers in general. We also addressed other soil-related contentious inputs in Work Package 5 in Organic-PLUS: Within Deliverable 5.1 the current use of peat in growing media, plastic for mulch films and fertilisers in organic agriculture was assessed, followed by a report discussing possible alternatives to these contentious inputs (Deliverable 5.2). The topics of peat in growing media and biodegradable plastic for mulching made from renewable materials have been described in separate deliverables (D5.8; D5.9; D5.10; D5.11).
For alternative fertilisers, several trials have been conducted with funding from Organic-PLUS in five countries: Norway (NORSØK), UK (CU), Denmark (ICOEL), Poland (CUT) and Germany (UHOH). In work package SOIL, Task 5.4 “Examination of promising alternatives, fertilisers” the trials investigated the use of the alternative fertilisers in the open field, protected cropping and in pot trials in organic vegetable production and in arable farming. For some trials, fertiliser effects were assessed for the main crop and the residual effects were tested in subsequent crops. In Task 5.4, we have collaborated to produce two deliverables, D5.6 and 5.7, where D5.6 is a summary paper describing the output of the fertiliser trials. As outlined this deliverable (D5.7) is a technical report describing some essential characteristics of the fertiliser materials which were tested at different locations in Europe and reported in deliverable (5.6).
To structure a scientific discussion about the future fertilisation inorganic agriculture, we have developed three categories to classify the fertilisers applied in Organic-PLUS: URBAN, VEGAN, and RESID:
URBAN fertilisers are defined as materials which contribute to close the rural-urban nutrient and organic matter cycles by recycling resources derived from agricultural land, via urban food systems and back to the land. A relevant example which has been intensively studied in Organic-PLUS is digestate from source-separated organic household waste, which is used for biogas production by anaerobic digestion. These fertilisers are available in several European countries at the level of a municipality
Summary paper on alternative fertilisers
No full textFertilisation in organic agriculture is today highly dependent on the import of external nutrients and organic matter by fertilisers derived from conventional farming and conventional food industries. Within Deliverable (D) 5.1 of the project Organic-PLUS the current use of peat in growing media, plastic for mulching and fertiliser inputs in organic agriculture was already addressed, followed by a report discussing possible alternatives to these contentious inputs (D5.2). The current D5.6 develops the topic further and shows in more detail the results of research on the use of alternative non-contentious fertilisers conducted in Task 5.4, ‘Alternatives to contentious sources of fertility’, of Work package 5 SOIL in Organic-PLUS. The objectives of Task 5.4 were a) to characterise relevant alternatives for contentious inputs for physio-chemical and other characteristics (e.g. availability), and study how well they function compared with existing contentious inputs (manure from conventional farming, commercial fertilisers from conventional sources) and b) to develop system approaches to integrate the alternatives in existing organic cropping systems/ sequences. The characteristics of the individual fertilisers as well as short recommendations for their application in practice are presented in D5.7 (a technical report) along an overview of nutrient concentrations and other essential characteristics of the fertilisers tested
Report on trials with alternative growing media (replacement of contentious input peat).
Full text linkThis report describes studies and experiments conducted to replace peat in growing media for certified organic growers. Peat in growing media is one contentious input which has been extensively studied in Organic-PLUS, under the lead of Rafaela Caceres (IRTA) who coordinated Task 5.5, “Examination of promising alternatives, peat”. While some of the studies referred to here have already been described in other publications, some studies are primarily described in the present report. Hence, the level of detail described here varies between the studies. The studies were conducted in countries with greatly different climatic conditions. They range from raising of olive saplings (cuttings) in Turkey (MFAL), various crops in Catalonia (IRTA, EAM), production of extruded fibre from many different plant materials in Germany (ATB), tests to reduce the need for vermiculite in growing media from composted woodchips in UK (CU) and composted horse manure with leaves from hardwood trees for vegetable transplants in Norway (NORSØK). This report includes the main results of the activity done during the project
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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