Food Safety Considerations for CGIAR Research

ABSTRACT

In view of the CGIAR's identification of food safety as an area requiring priority attention to safeguard the economic interests of smallholder farmers and the poor, this paper aims to provide a general overview of the level of research and development attention accorded by the scientific and development community to this theme. This baseline survey of work undertaken exposes the nature of the problem; the food safety situation of the poor; food safety concerns in technology and policy research in the CGIAR; the role of capacity-building; and, subsequently, attempts to provide pointers to the CGIAR research community along which it could proceed. It is clear that within the CGIAR System, there has been no set strategy to provide guidance on the topic, and that work done to date has been largely of an ad hoc nature. The formulation of a strategic framework to guide the incorporation of food safety considerations in CGIAR research is now essential and would prevent duplication, capture synergies from the currently isolated activities and promote greater efficiency.     

Application of Soil and Plant Analysis for Applied Research and Development in West Asia–North Africa: An International Center's Perspective

Abstract

The networks of 15 international research centers around the globe that are sponsored by the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) seeks to alleviate poverty in the developing world through enhanced production, while maintaining biodiversity and the sustainability of natural resources. The mandate of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) is to focus on improving semi‐arid cropping systems in the drought‐prone West Asia and North Africa region. Since its inception in 1997, ICARDA's soil laboratory played a pivotal role in backstopping the institution's on‐station and on‐farm research in Syria and its collaborative research with the region's national programs. This article gives an overview of the evolution of soil and plant analysis in serving the center's mission. A major effort was the regional soil test calibration program, which set the basis for rational use of fertilizers and the identification of related nutrient constraints. Such analyses were extensively employed in all the long‐term dryland cropping system trials and later in irrigated agriculture and the interface between plant nutrition and crop breeding. Major emphasis was given to improving and upgrading analytical services in the region's laboratories. Despite advances made in analytical methodology, the challenge is to apply to solving real problems in the service of humanity.     

Serving a Diverse and Ever-Changing Agricultural Sciences Department: Family,Youth and Community Sciences in Perspective

Family, Youth and Community Sciences (FYCS) is an agricultural science department traditionally served by a science librarian. The unique set of information requirements that have grown with the scope of the department makes it a challenge to meet the diverse needs. No longer primarily covering the rural household, the department now encompasses theoretical, methodological, empirical, and practical issues associated with urban life, social trends, and complicated life-long financial planning. The information needs of this department far exceed the standard knowledge base of the traditional science librarian and require a strong foundation in social science, business, education, and health sciences information sources. This creates a restriction in information access for the many and varied members of FYCS departments. In order to relieve the restriction, science librarians must familiarize themselves with a variety of resources from statistical databases, government and international sources, and social science databases. This article covers the changes in the FYCS department, the expansion of information needs, the resources of vital importance to research and students, and the challenges to the science librarian in meeting their needs. The article concludes that the science librarian should understand the growing interdisciplinary nature of this science field and recognize the steps that must be taken to increase access to information.     

The Present and Future of the Hungarian Agricultural Special Library and Information Services

The historical evolution of the Hungarian special library systems and the development of scientific and technical information services related to agriculuture is described. Also discussed are the relationships between economic circumstances and library service, international and national influences on progress in information technology, and the role of international relations in the Hungarian agricultural library system.     

Students’ Preferences in Selecting Information Resources Used to Find Scholarly Information: A Comparative Study Between Undergraduate and Graduate Students

This study compares undergraduate and graduate students’ preferences for information sources. It found that the largest percentage of undergraduates ranked Google Scholar, a scholarly database, as their 1st or 2nd choice for an information source, followed by Google, library scholarly databases, the library catalog, and library staff. The largest percentage of graduate students ranked library scholarly databases as their 1st or 2nd preference, followed by Google Scholar, the library catalog, Google, and library staff. There seems to be a connection between attendance in a library instruction session and the choice of library scholarly online databases.     

Bibliometric Profile of an Agbioscience Research Enhancement Grant Program

This study is a bibliometric analysis of journal articles generated from an intramural grant program in the agbiosciences. Using citation analysis and bibliometric mapping, the study analyzes 515 journal articles published from 1999 to 2017. Results show the growth of journal article output, identify the major research fields and topics, describe national and international authorial and institutional collaborations, and quantify the performance and impact of the article output. The grant program’s journal article output presents a multi-disciplinary range of scholarly publications that reflect the disciplines of The Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, which houses the grant program.     

浅谈大连海洋大学读者培训工作

读者培训工作可以让读者清楚地了解和更好地使用图书馆资源。电子资源培训是提高读者信息意识、使读者迅速、准确地获取信息能力的保障。论述了大连海洋大学图书馆开展读者培训工作的意义和读者培训的主要类型。     

《农业工程学报》研究简报的特点与写作要求

针对目前科技学术期刊研究简报使用的现状和存在的问题,提出应当正确认识和评价研究简报这种文体类型及其所报道的科研成果。综合分析了研究简报的文体特点、作用和编排要求,总结了研究简报的特点和写作规范,提倡学术期刊应充分利用研究简报这种文体为快速及时的报道新成果服务。     

The contribution of international vegetable breeding to private seed companies in India

Crop breeding research by international agricultural research centers usually serves public sector crop breeding, but does it still have a role when research and development have shifted to the private sector? This paper explores this question for vegetables in India using data from 27 private companies and 9 public organizations. We focus on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and chili pepper (Capsicum annuum L.)—two of India’s most important vegetables, and the role of international germplasm received from the World Vegetable Center. Results show that as the role of the private sector in vegetable breeding increased, and with it the share of hybrids in the market, the role of international agricultural research shifted from the provision of ready-made varieties to the provision of specific resistance traits. Still, international germplasm continued to be used in varietal development with 11.6 t (14 % of the total market) of hybrid tomato seed and 15.0 t (13 %) of hybrid chili pepper seed sold in 2014 containing international germplasm in its pedigree. We estimate that over half a million farmers use such seed. We conclude that for tomato and chili pepper, international breeding needs to focus on pre-breeding research, capacity strengthening of smaller seed companies, and the delivery of open-pollinated varieties for marginal environments.     

国外农业数据库网络资源检索途径

介绍了与农业相关的国际组织信息资源的现状,主要包括联合国粮农组织的信息资源、国际农业研究咨询组织及其所属的农业研究中心的信息资源、国际上与农业相关的其他信息网站,国外的相关数据库及专利数据库,这些信息资源提供了大量的研究成果,方便了解国外农业科学研究进展,对我国农业科学研究将起到推动作用。     

Disseminating Equine Research and Teaching Videos Through the Institutional Repository: A Collaboration

Institutional repositories manage and disseminate a University's scholarly output and provide a multitude of benefits to the organization and society. Rutgers University Libraries is actively expanding its repository to include materials with scholarly merit that are currently siloed in academic departments or otherwise unpreserved and unavailable to the public. This article describes a collaboration between Rutgers Libraries faculty and Rutgers teaching faculty which is enabling discovery of a significant collection of video data relating to equine behavioral responses. The article describes the research, the repository tools, and the process of developing and customizing metadata to bring this collection to light.     

基于文献计量分析的近30年国内外土壤科学发展过程解析

借助Web of Science和CNKI数据库,利用文献计量学方法定量分析了近30年来国内外发表的土壤科学文献,研究了土壤科学不同时期(1986—1995、1996—2005、2006—2013年)的发展与演变过程,对比了国内外土壤科学发展的异同点。早期的国际土壤科学是以土壤肥力主导的农田土壤学研究,逐渐转向以生态环境为核心的问题导向研究,强调土壤生物驱动的土壤过程研究;而我国土壤科学研究更注重区域特色,以地力提升、土壤侵蚀与水土保持、土壤污染与修复等问题导向更加明确,发展过程中学科间的交叉与融合不断增强。本论文期望以文献计量学的分析方法客观评价土壤科学发展的脉络,把握学科发展前沿,提升土壤科学研究的创新能力,从而推动我国土壤科学的发展。     

搜索引擎—网络信息检索的好帮手

本文首先分析了网络信息资源的特点,提出搜索引擎是网络信息检索的主要工具,简要介绍了搜索引擎的工作特点和优势所在,并且详细讲解了基本的搜索引擎检索步骤与技巧。     

The Central Agricultural Library and the National Information System on Food Economy in Poland

The Central Agricultural Library (CAL) functions as Poland's main center of source material processing, information dissemination, and material distribution. Users are primarily researchers affiliated with univsersities and research institutes. The Information System on Food Economy (SIGZ) covers: (a) agricultural supply and food industry with means of production and services, the "supply aggregate," (b) production of primary agricultural products (raw materials), the "farming aggregate," and (c) food processing and distribution, the "processing and distribution aggregate."     

Technical Intelligence in a Dot.com Milieu: A Dialog/Dialog DataStar Perspective

ABSTRACT

Technical intelligence in an Internet-oriented environment requires an awareness of the role of information in a research and development/technically-driven organization. This paper will describe an integrated system of intellectual property analysis using the Dialog/Dialog DataStar family of products. Boolean-based systems such as Dialog/Dialog DataStar permit access to the building blocks of research and intellectual property–scientific and patent prior art precedence–through a standardized search language and, unlike Web-based search engines, offer iterative search capability. This paper will examine scientific and intellectual property searching on both systems and discuss the merits of each system for scientific researchers and information professionals.     

Development of best practices for ex situ conservation of radish germplasm in the context of the crop genebank knowledge base

Information about crop-specific best practices for ex situ conservation of plant genetic resources has been difficult to find until recently. The CGIAR, together with national and regional partners, started to fill that gap by publishing best practices on the crop genebank knowledge base (CGKB -http://cropgenebank.sgrp.cgiar.org/), a website specifically developed and officially launched in 2010 to provide easy access to knowledge about all aspects of ex situ conservation of specific crops to genebank managers and ex situ conservation researchers. A collaborative study, undertaken by Bioversity International with eight national and international genebanks, utilized the framework provided by the CGKB to develop and publish radish conservation best practices. This paper focuses on two aspects of this study: (1) Differences in procedures and practices in radish conservation currently applied in five key genebank activities, namely, acquisition of germplasm, viability testing and monitoring, seed drying, seed storage, and regeneration. While in a few cases genebanks agreed on a specific best practice to recommend, in others it was not desirable to identify one practice as superior to another, therefore a range of existing practices is described as a variety of equivalent options. The results highlight the importance of proactive genebank management aimed at meeting the standards within the specific context in which a genebank operates. (2) The framework and template provided by the CGKB in guiding the development of genebank best practices, and the CGKB as an excellent resource to widely and freely share best practices with the global community to support the effective management of crop genebanks.     

浅析高校图书馆个性化信息服务

对高校个性化信息服务的应用现状进行了研究的基础上,对高校个性化信息服务过程中存在的问题进行了深入研究,提出了改进和优化网络环境下信息组织个性化信息服务的若干对策,为信息组织满足用户个性化的信息需求提供了借鉴。