1,720,990 research outputs found
RETRACTED: De Corato, U. Soil Microbiome Manipulation Gives New Insights in Plant Disease-Suppressive Soils from the Perspective of a Circular Economy: A Critical Review. Sustainability 2021, 13, 10
No full textThe journal retracts the article “Soil Microbiome Manipulation Gives New Insights in Plant Disease-Suppressive Soils from the Perspective of a Circular Economy: A Critical Review” by Ugo De Corato [...
Soil Quality and Ecosystem Services: Towards a New Perspective of Soil Use and Management
Full text linkAll soil ecosystems provide good services for society, so- called “ecosystem services”. The health of a soil ecosystem can therefore be determined from its physical, chemical, and biological properties, such as activity levels, stability, resilience, and organization. Both soil protection and soil remediation will therefore benefit from describing desirable soil quality in ecological terms. In view of these topics, the present Special Issue intends to present a rational soil use within a management framework for the identification of ecosystem aspects that can be considered as critical issues of soil, needing protection to achieve a soil which is suitable for agricultural use or other purposes. The main goal of this Special Issue is to give a general description of ecosystem services and representative indicators for a selection of specific soil types and land use, and to develop a rational and systematic approach to identify the highest-risk scenarios in land use in view of environmental stressors, based on vulnerability assessment of indicators for ecosystem services
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
Fungal Population Dynamics in Ready-to-eat Salads During a Shelf-life in Italy
Full text linkThe aim of this work was to investigate the fungal population dynamics in ready-to-eat bagged samples of rocket (Diplotaxis spp.), lettuce baby leaf (Lactuca sativa L.) and “songino” (Valerianella olitoria L.) during a shelf-life, in order to evaluate the effects of the storage length and season of production on the spoilage processes. The incidence of toxigenic moulds was particularity studied in order to evaluate a potential production of mycotoxins and allergenic conidia. A total of 900 samples collected from 10 Italian trademarks were analyzed at the 2nd, 5th and 8th day after the packaging in the spring and summer. A very high number of fungi was found and a great variability of moulds and yeasts at the 1st day of sampling was observed. Regarding to season of production, any seasonal effect on the moulds and yeasts has been observed, but the moulds detected belonged to different species in relation to season. Regarding to storage length, the yeasts and moulds did not showed significant variations during a shelf-life. In relation to vegetable species, the lettuce resulted always less contaminated with respect to other salads, and the rocket presented 1-2 Log cfu/g of increasing in the level of moulds. Regarding to fungi species, the yeasts were significantly predominant respect to moulds. Finally, the toxigenic moulds Aspergillus flavus and Penicillium italicum were found in all the types of salad in the summer, and their growth during the storage at low temperature represented a potential hazard for the mycotoxins and allergenic conidia production in these commodities
Postharvest Control of Strawberry Fruit Soft Rot by Laminaria Digitata Extracts
Full text linkThe aim of this work was to assess the potential suppression of extracts of Laminaria digitata for controlling postharvest soft rot of strawberries by Rhizopus stolonifer. The antifungal activity of raw extract and fractionated by hexane, ethanol and water was in vitro measured at a concentration range. The activity of the raw extract was in vivo assessed at the same concentration range in comparison to fungicide Fenhexamid. Observations by scanning electron microscopy of R. stolonifer were performed. The peroxidase activity in L. digitata-treated inoculated strawberries was assessed. A significant inhibition of mycelia growth (until 80% after 5 days of incubation) and suppression of sporangia germination (up to 95% after 24 hours) were found applying 30 g L-1 raw extract. Only extracts fractionated by hexane and ethanol were suppressive against mycelia (until 71% and 67% respectively) and sporangia (up to 82% and 69% respectively). Fruit decay inhibition on the R. stolonifer/strawberries pathosystem increased up to 75% after 3 days of incubation in preventive treatment after application of increasing doses of the extracts. Efficacy of the treatments was related to dose of extract in all the trials. The increased peroxidase activity (up to 7.04 ΔOD420 g−1 min−1) observed in fruit tissue after one- day from application of 30 g L-1 raw extract suggests that suppression could also be due to activation of systemic acquired resistance in artificially infected strawberry fruit
RETRACTED: Soil Microbiome Manipulation Gives New Insights in Plant Disease-Suppressive Soils from the Perspective of a Circular Economy: A Critical Review
No full textThis review pays attention to the newest insights on the soil microbiome in plant disease-suppressive soil (DSS) for sustainable plant health management from the perspective of a circular economy that provides beneficial microbiota by recycling agro-wastes into the soil. In order to increase suppression of soil-borne plant pathogens, the main goal of this paper is to critically discuss and compare the potential use of reshaped soil microbiomes by assembling different agricultural practices such as crop selection; land use and conservative agriculture; crop rotation, diversification, intercropping and cover cropping; compost and chitosan application; and soil pre-fumigation combined with organic amendments and bio-organic fertilizers. This review is seen mostly as a comprehensive understanding of the main findings regarding DSS, starting from the oldest concepts to the newest challenges, based on the assumption that sustainability for soil quality and plant health is increasingly viable and supported by microbiome-assisted strategies based on the next-generation sequencing (NGS) methods that characterize in depth the soil bacterial and fungal communities. This approach, together with the virtuous reuse of agro-wastes to produce in situ green composts and organic bio-fertilizers, is the best way to design new sustainable cropping systems in a circular economy system. The current knowledge on soil-borne pathogens and soil microbiota is summarized. How microbiota determine soil suppression and what NGS strategies are available to understand soil microbiomes in DSS are presented. Disturbance of soil microbiota based on combined agricultural practices is deeply considered. Sustainable soil microbiome management by recycling in situ agro-wastes is presented. Afterwards, how the resulting new insights can drive the progress in sustainable microbiome-based disease management is discussed
The Market of the Minimally Processed Fresh Produce Needs of Safer Strategies for Improving Shelf Life and Quality: A Critical Overview of the Traditional Technologies
Full text linkThe market of minimally processed fresh produce have grown rapidly in the last years as a result of consumer attitudes change due to their increasing use in prepared mixed salad for fresh, healthy and convenient food. Handling and mechanical operations of cutting and peeling induce release of on-site cellular contents which promote the growth of harmful microbes. Chlorine has been widely adopted in disinfection washing due to its low cost and high efficacy against a broad spectrum of microorganisms. Continuous replenishment of chlorine into high organic wash water can promote the formation of suspected carcinogenic compounds. Although advanced methods and chemicals can be proposed to achieve significant reduction of microorganism count without the production of harmful compounds, nor compromising the quality of fresh produce, fewer amount of them have gained widespread acceptance by the food industry. The aim of this paper was to give an upgraded level of critical understanding of the traditional technologies to address future researches in order to resolve certain novel issues that nowadays limit the shelf-life and quality of minimally processed fruit and vegetable for a modern food industry
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