THE TRANSITION FROM THE TRADITIONAL TO AN ECO-FRIENDLY ORGANIC SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURE IN THE CONDITIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE — CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing humanity worldwide. Areas of South-East Europe and Mediterranean basin are expected to be among the most vulnerable countries to climate change. As a result of climate change, new species and crops have been introduced and may be introduced in the coming years. In addition, FAO considers that Organic Agriculture is an effective mitigation strategy to climate change and can build robust soils that adapt better to weather extremes associated with climate change. This review provides an overview of the growth performance of new innovative crops, including chia, camelina, quinoa, teff and nigella and retrovative crops such as flax and emmer wheat, based on experimental investigations conducted under Mediterranean conditions and organic cropping system. Several studies, performed under organic system, have proved that innovative crops can also be grown for alternative uses. Quinoa and chia could be successfully used in animal feed. Moreover, quinoa could be exploited as a medicinal plant due to saponins extracted from seed coats. Nigella and camelina seeds contain oils which can have several uses in pharmaceutical and food industries. Flax seed oil is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and can be accepted in the diets designed for specific health benefits. According to the literature, it is observed that innovative crops cultivated under organic system present better quality and similar yields as with those cultivated under conventional system, and in some cases, even higher. Taking all these into account, organic agriculture could also be characterized as innovative and not only as traditional.

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Prospects of organic agriculture development on the territory of Vinnitsia region in the conditions of climate change

Balanced nature using ◽

10.33730/2310-4678.1.2021.231895 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 127-136

Author(s):

M. Franchuk ◽

H. Khaietskyi ◽

V. Shevchuk

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Organic Farming ◽

Agricultural Land ◽

Transition Period ◽

Public Awareness ◽

Organic Production ◽

Mineral Fertilizers ◽

Land Resources ◽

Organic System

The article considers the concept of organic farming, the state and prospects of its development in the trends of climate change. The main problems of organic production on the territory of Ukraine are investigated. It was revealed that for the introduction of organic farming it is necessary to improve the regulatory framework, improve the level of public awareness, take into account the difficulties in growing organic products. The stages of transition of the agrarian enterprise from traditional to organic system of managing are considered. The ecological and toxicological condition of arable lands of Vinnytsia region was also analyzed. The main requirements for the quality of land intended for organic farming, the main among which is the absence of pollution by pesticides, heavy metals, radionuclides and others. It is established that the lands of Vinnytsia region can be divided into two groups of suitability for organic production: suitable and unsuitable. The negative tendency to reduce the application of organic and mineral fertilizers, as well as the active growth of sunflower sown areas due to changes in climatic and agrometeorological conditions of the region, more and more farms use heat-loving crops, displacing traditional grain and technical, which increases the load on agricultural land. There are several features of the implementation of agronomic techniques in the transition period to organic farming in the context of climate change for the territory of Vinnytsia region. It was found that the territory of Vinnytsia region has all the ecological prerequisites for the introduction and conduct of organic farming. However, due to the irrational use of land resources of the region, there is a phenomenon of their degradation: reduced fertility, deteriorating quality, complete withdrawal from economic use. The introduction of organic farming in Vinnytsia will preserve and significantly improve the quality of land resources.

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The CLImate relevant processing of Mineral Dust by volatile Organic compounds (CLIMDO) project

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14410 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Paola Formenti ◽

Mathieu Cazaunau ◽

Francesco Battaglia ◽

Jean-François Doussin ◽

Aline Gratien ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Volatile Organic Compounds ◽

Organic Compounds ◽

Mineral Dust ◽

Global Climate ◽

Radiative Properties ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Organic System ◽

Dust Aerosols ◽

Volatile Organic

As emphasized by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), aerosols contribute the largest uncertainty to global radiative forcing budget estimates. The uncertainty stems largely from the lack of information related to global aerosol distributions, composition, and aging effects in the atmosphere, all of which affect aerosol radiative properties.Of the two major categories of aerosols, natural and anthropogenic, natural aerosols remain the largest source of the uncertainty. This limits our capacity to measure and attribute total climate forcings. Without a firm understanding of total climate forcing, our ability to predict its evolution over time diminishes and limits the development of adaptation strategies for future climate change.Aerosolized mineral dust is the largest single component of the global aerosol mass budget, making up nearly half of annual particle emissions to the atmosphere. Mineral dust aerosols influence the global climate through both direct interactions with radiation (scattering and absorption in the visible and IR regions) as well as indirect interactions with radiation (by serving as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) or ice nuclei (IN)). One potentially important aspect of dust aerosols is that they are able to uptake and heterogeneously react with gases. Henceforth, mineral dust may also play a significant but mostly unknown role in secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation in the atmosphere.While the combination of the complex reaction pathways and processing mechanisms inherent to the dust/organic system is hampering our understanding of dust and organic aerosols on global climate, and despite a great number of progresses on climate-relevant properties of mineral dust and SOA in these past ten years, studies of the heterogeneous chemistry occurring between dust and organic species are sparse.The CLImate relevant processing of Mineral Dust by volatile Organic compounds (CLIMDO) project tackles this under-explored science question by proposing the first comprehensive process-driven project addressing the reactivity of complex and realistic mineral dust/organic systems to better understand how dust and VOCs influence the global climate system.CLIMDO will investigate the heterogeneous interaction of mineral dust with two of the most common organic SOA precursors: glyoxal and methylglyoxal from ubiquitous anthropogenic and biogenic sources, thought combination of innovative laboratory experiments in a well-controlled and characterized environment (the atmospheric simulation chamber CESAM) and advanced flow reactors and optical cells), the development of novel modelling schemes of both the reaction mechanisms and the resulting optical properties of mineral dust, and new simulations of the global direct radiative effect and SOA distribution using the LMDzOR-INCA.This presentation describes the strategy and workplan of the CLIMDO project, including dissemination of results and open data, to inform the science community and foster and cluster new collaborations.

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Averting robo-bees: why free-flying robotic bees are a bad idea

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20190063 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (6) ◽

pp. 723-729

Author(s):

Roslyn Gleadow ◽

Jim Hanan ◽

Alan Dorin

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Computer Simulation ◽

Food Security ◽

European Countries ◽

Plant Interactions ◽

Plant Insect Interactions ◽

Native Habitat ◽

Insect Pollinators ◽

Insect Interactions

Food security and the sustainability of native ecosystems depends on plant-insect interactions in countless ways. Recently reported rapid and immense declines in insect numbers due to climate change, the use of pesticides and herbicides, the introduction of agricultural monocultures, and the destruction of insect native habitat, are all potential contributors to this grave situation. Some researchers are working towards a future where natural insect pollinators might be replaced with free-flying robotic bees, an ecologically problematic proposal. We argue instead that creating environments that are friendly to bees and exploring the use of other species for pollination and bio-control, particularly in non-European countries, are more ecologically sound approaches. The computer simulation of insect-plant interactions is a far more measured application of technology that may assist in managing, or averting, ‘Insect Armageddon' from both practical and ethical viewpoints.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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