Comparison of flagellin and an oil-emulsion adjuvant in inactivated Newcastle disease vaccine in stimulation of immunogenic parameters

The present study was designed to investigate the potential application of native (N) and recombinant (truncated modified [tmFliC] and full-length [flFliC]) flagellin proteins along with inactivated Newcastle disease virus (NDV). Fifty six SPF chickens were immunized twice with PBS (control), inactivated NDV (Ag), inactivated NDV/flFliC (AgF), inactivated NDV/tmFliC (AgT), inactivated NDV/N (AgN), commercial vaccine containing Montanide (Vac) and Vac/N (VacN), with a two-week interval. Blood was collected weekly and spleens were harvested after chickens were sacrificed. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrotic factor-α (TNF-α) gene expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells were analyzed by Real-Time PCR. Antibody response was assessed by haemagglutination inhibition (HI). Cellular activity was quantified by MTT assay. Results showed that the most IL-6 and TNF-α gene expression was observed in AgF group (P < 0.01). The lowest gene expression among vaccinated groups was observed in Ag group for IL-6 and Ag and Vac group for TNF-α. The highest HI titer was observed in Vac, VacN, AgF and AgT groups. The AgF group showed the highest cellular activity (P < 0.01). In conclusion, flagellin-adjuvanted groups showed a pro-inflammatory effect and acted similarly to or better than the Vac group. Hence, flagellin can be proposed as a potential adjuvant for ND vaccine.     

牛奶子锈病及其重寄生菌

2002年在四川省宝兴县蜂桶寨国家自然保护区和天全县喇叭河自然保护区牛奶子上发现了牛奶子锈病,经鉴定,该锈病为牛奶子春孢锈菌Aecidiumelaeagni-umbellatae Diet.其病株率100%、病叶率26%,叶片枯斑、脱落和削弱树势.在牛奶子锈病菌上采集到自然重寄生菌,经鉴定为Tuberculina sp.,该重寄生菌为国内外首次发现.重寄生菌寄生于牛奶子锈菌春孢子器出口处,阻碍春孢子的释放,具有潜在的生防应用价值.笔者对牛奶子锈病的症状特点、病原形态特征及牛奶子锈病菌的重寄生现象与重寄生菌的形态特征等进行了研究.     

The routes to fruit: Governance of urban food trees in Canada

Interest in planting urban food trees (UFTs) in public spaces is growing in popularity as a form of urban greening and a potential food source. Currently there is minimal research on the governance and policy aspects of integrating food trees into cities. To fill this gap, we investigated the characteristics of UFT site governance and how it compares to current urban forest governance. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with relevant municipal officials in Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Victoria about their perspectives and involvement with UFT sites in their city. A scan of policy documents was completed to supplement the interviews. The interviews were analyzed using a deductive coding framework based on the Policy Arrangement Approach. We found that key actors at the UFT sites were local organizations and site champions, with minimal municipal engagement. Most site resources provided by municipalities were in-kind. There are also basic knowledge gaps about how to care for UFTs. Currently municipal by-laws prohibit the harvesting and removal of plant material, and are at odds with the purpose of UFT sites, with few municipalities fully integrating UFTs in policies. The primary discussion around UFTs centre concerns for public health and safety, management, and use of public space with limited discussions of benefits. This research demonstrates the value of co-governance models to support UFTs, while a shift in focus from risks to benefits could encourage additional resources and policy integration. Further, including UFTs into policy would also support foraging and food tree maintenance in public spaces, and more fully reflect the plurality of urban forest engagement.     

Mechanisation of organic fertiliser spreading,choice of fertiliser and crop residue management as solutions for maize environmental impact mitigation

The environmental impact of crop production is mainly related to fossil fuels consumption and to fertilisers application. Emissions arising from the spreading of organic and mineral fertilisers are important contributors for impact categories such as eutrophication and acidification. The choice of the fertilisers and of the spreading techniques as well as the crop residues management can deeply affect the environmental impact related to crop cultivation.In this study, seven scenarios describing fertilising schemes characterised by different organic and mineral fertilisers and by different mechanisation were compared. The aim is to evaluate, using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, how the environmental performances of grain maize production were affected by these different fertilisers schemes. The study was carried out considering a cradle to farm gate perspective and 1 t grain maize was selected as functional unit. Inventory data were collected on a farm located in Po Valley (Northern Italy) during year 2013 and were processed using the composite method recommended by the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD). The compared scenarios involved organic and mineral fertiliser distribution and were: pig slurry incorporation after >3 days after spreading (BS), fast pig slurry incorporation within 2 h from spreading (AS1), direct soil injection of pig slurry (AS2), pig slurry incorporation (after >3 days) with straw collection (AS3), digestate spreading instead of pig slurry (after >3 days) (AS4), only mineral fertilisers (i.e. urea and superphosphate) distribution (AS5) and only mineral fertilisers (i.e. calcium ammonium nitrate and superphosphate) distribution (AS6).The results were not univocal, since climate and soil conditions as well as physical and chemical fertiliser characteristics differently affected the environmental load, especially for particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification and terrestrial eutrophication impact categories. AS1 and AS2 showed the most beneficial results for these impact categories (between ↙67% and ↙73% respect to worst scenario). AS6, on the opposite, showed the highest environmental impact for those impact categories mainly affected by energy and fossil fuel consumption (climate change, ozone depletion, human toxicity with carcinogenic effect, particulate matter, freshwater eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity and mineral, fossil and renewable resources depletion), categories on which AS3 and AS4 were the best solutions. AS3 was the most impacting for terrestrial acidification and eutrophicationA sensitivity analysis was carried out varying grain maize yield (mostly affected: marine eutrophication) and ammonia volatilisation losses due to organic fertilisers (mainly affected: terrestrial acidification and eutrophication).The achieved results can be useful for the development of ⬓spreading rules⬽ that drive the application of organic fertilisers in agricultural areas where there is an intense livestock activity.     

The effect of orifice shape and the injection pressure on enhancement of the atomization process for pressure-swirl atomizers

The following paper presents results of studies on the atomization process of water in pressure-swirl atomizers with different shapes of orifice using a laser diffraction technique. The effect of the shape of the orifice and the injection pressure on the droplet size distributions and mean droplet diameters was analyzed. The results obtained showed that droplet size decreases with an increasing injection pressure and droplet size distributions are expanded. The smallest droplet diameters were obtained by atomization in profiled and conical shaped orifice atomizers, however the largest droplet diameters were achieved for plain orifice atomizers. The analysis of the interfacial surface produced by the atomizers has shown that the greater enhancement of the atomization process had occurred using profiled and conical shaped orifice atomizers compared with plain orifice atomizers. The correlation for the Sauter mean diameter as a function of the Reynolds number and the ratio of orifice length to diameter has been proposed. The paper is related to agricultural water management. The data obtained are important from the point of view of the design of atomizers, agricultural treatments and crop protection.     

Evaluation of WARM for different establishment techniques in Jiangsu (China)

WARM is a model for rice simulation accounting for key biotic and a-biotic factors affecting quantitative and qualitative (e.g., amylose content, chalkiness) aspects of production. Although the model is used in different international contexts for yield forecasts (e.g., the EC monitoring and forecasting system) and climate change studies, it was never explicitly evaluated for transplanting, the most widespread rice establishment method especially in tropical and sub-tropical Asia. In this study, WARM was tested for its ability to reproduce nursery growth and transplanting shock, using data on direct sown and transplanted (both manual and mechanical) rice collected in 24 dedicated field experiments performed at eight sites in Jiangsu in 2011, 2012 and 2013. The agreement between measured and simulated aboveground biomass data was satisfactory for both direct sowing and transplanting: average R² of the linear regression between observed and simulated values was 0.97 for mechanical transplanting and direct sowing, and 0.99 for manual transplanting. RRMSE values ranged from 5.26% to 30.89%, with Nash and Sutcliffe modelling efficiency always higher than 0.78; no notable differences in the performance achieved for calibration and validation datasets were observed. The new transplanting algorithm – derived by extending the Oryza2000 one – allowed WARM to reproduce rice growth and development for direct sown and transplanted datasets (i) with comparable accuracy and (ii) using the same values for the parameters describing morphological and physiological plant traits. This demonstrates the reliability of the proposed transplanting simulation approach and the suitability of the WARM model for simulating rice biomass production even for production contexts where rice is mainly transplanted.     

Responses of soil nematode community structure to soil carbon changes due to different tillage and cover crop management practices over a nine-year period in Kanto,Japan

The response of the soil food web structure to soil quality changes during long-term anthropogenic disturbance due to farming practices has not been well studied. We evaluated the effects of three tillage systems: moldboard plow/rotary harrow (MP), rotary cultivator (RC), and no-tillage (NT), three winter cover-crop types (fallow, FL; rye, RY; and hairy vetch, HV), and two nitrogen fertilization rates (0 and 100 kg N ha⁻¹ for upland rice, and 0 and 20 kg N ha⁻¹ for soybean production) on changes in nematode community structure. Sixty-nine taxa were counted, total nematode abundance (ALL), bacterial feeders (BAC), predators (PRD), omnivores (OMN), and obligatory root feeders (ORF) were more abundant in NT than in MP and RC, but fungal feeders and facultative root feeders (FFR) were more abundant in RC than in NT and MP. Cover crop also influenced nematode community structure; rye and hairy vetch were always higher in ALL, BAC, FFR, ORF, and OMN than fallow. Seasonal changes in nematode community structure were also significant; in particular, as soil carbon increased, nematode abundance also increased. The relationship between nematode indices and soil carbon was significant only in NT, but not in MP and RC. In NT, with increasing soil carbon, enrichment index and structure index (SI) were positive and significant and channel index was negative. Bulk density was significantly negatively correlated with FFR and ORF. Seasonal difference in nematode community between summer and autumn was larger in an upland rice rotation than in a soybean rotation. Over the nine-year experiment, SI increased not only in NT but also in MP and RC, suggesting that repeated similar tillage inversions in agroecosystems may develop nematode community structures adapted to specific soil environmental conditions. Because NT showed the highest values of both SI and soil carbon, the increase of soil carbon in NT is expected to have a great impact on developing a more diverse nematode community structure.     

Effects of dietary supplementation of emulsifier and carbohydrase on the growth performance,serum cholesterol and breast meat fatty acids profile of broiler chickens

A total of 540 2‐day‐old male Ross 308 broilers were used in a 35‐day experiment and were randomly divided into five treatments: (i) NC (low energy); (ii) PC (high energy diet); (iii) P1 (NC + 0.1% carbohydrases); (iv) P2 (NC + 0.05% emulsifier); and (v) P3 (NC + 0.1% carbohydrases + 0.05% emulsifier). From days 0 to 21, body weight gain in PC and P3 treatments increased (P < 0.05) compared with NC treatment. The chicks fed PC, P1, P2 and P3 improved (P < 0.05) feed conversion ratio compared with the NC treatment throughout the whole experiment. Abdominal fat weight was heavier (P < 0.05) in PC, P2 and P3 treatments than in NC and P1 treatments. On day 35, serum total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration were higher (P < 0.05) and high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol was lower (P < 0.05) in NC and P2 treatments than in PC, P1 and P3 treatments. The concentration of oleic acid, linoleic acid and total unsaturated fatty acids were highest (P < 0.05) in PC than in the other treatments. In conclusion, the results indicate that low energy density diet had lower growth performance, while the inclusion of emulsifier and carbohydrases in low energy diets can partially improve growth performance.     

钙依赖蛋白激酶基因表达载体的构建及其对拟南芥的遗传转化

将钙依赖蛋白激酶(CDPK)基因插入到植物表达载体pBI121上,构建成特异性表达载体pBI121-CDPK,并采用农杆菌介导法将其转化进入拟南芥Arabidopsis thaliana Columbia生态型品种中,获得了卡那霉素筛选的抗性植株,通过PCR扩增验证,拟南芥基因组中含有此抗性基因.     

Identification and distribution of fungal pathogens associated with seedling blight of rice in the southern United States

Surveys were conducted in the five southern rice-producing states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas in the United States during the 2018 and 2019 cropping seasons to determine the distribution and pathogenicity of fungal pathogens associated with seedling blight in rice. A total of 349 pathogenic fungal isolates were collected and identified as belonging to four genera: Rhizoctonia solani, Fusarium spp., Sclerotium rolfsii and Marasmius graminum based on morphological characteristics, molecular analysis and Koch's postulates. R. solani (252 out of 349 pathogenic isolates) was the most prevalent fungus isolated from diseased samples. Of the 252 pathogenic R. solani isolates, 245 were further classified as anastomosis group 11 (AG-11) and 7 as AG-4. Isolates of R. solani AG-4 and M. graminum were the most aggressive, with the highest stand loss (63% to 100%) and median disease rating (DR; 5.0), followed by isolates of R. solani AG-11 (stand loss = 4% to 100% and DR = 0.6 to 5.0), Fusarium spp. (stand loss = 26% to 48% and DR = 2.0 to 5.0) and S. rolfsii (stand loss = 33% to 48% and DR = 2.0 to 3.0) in causing seedling blight in rice. R. solani (62% to 83% of total pathogenic isolates) and Fusarium spp. (10% to 24% of total pathogenic isolates) were predominant in all the five states surveyed. S. rolfsii and M. graminum were present only in Louisiana and Texas. The results of this first systematic survey of rice seedling diseases in the southern United States will help develop effective fungicide seed treatment strategies for control of stand loss caused by seedling blight, one of the major factors limiting rice production.