scholarly journals Non-Chemical Soil Fumigation for Sustainable Strawberry Production in Southern Italy

Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 1678
Author(s):  
Daniela Giovannini ◽  
Federica Brandi ◽  
Anna Paola Lanteri ◽  
Luca Lazzeri ◽  
Maria Luigia Maltoni ◽  
...  

In intensive strawberry production, monoculture is a common practice worldwide; however, prolonged replanting can cause plant disorders and jeopardize profitable cultivation of this highly valuable crop. To mitigate replanting problems, the strawberry industry is still highly dependent on chemical fumigation. Given the increasing regulatory restrictions and concerns about human and environmental risks from fumigants use, there is a growing interest in the adoption of effective, non-chemical alternatives. Two non-chemical soil fumigation practices, i.e., anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) and bio-fumigation with biocide plants (BIOFUM), were tested against chemical fumigation by chloropicrin + 1,3-dichloropropene mixture (STANDARD) and untreated (UNTREAT) control in a 2-year trial established in a commercial strawberry farm in Southern Italy (40°25’ N, 16°42′ E). Overall, the alternative practices provided consistently better results than UNTREAT; whereas, compared to STANDARD, their performance was significantly different in the two years: in 2018/19 season the alternative practices registered a 20% (ASD) and 39% (BIOFUM) marketable yield loss compared to STANDARD, while in the 2019/20 season yield differences were not significant. Although both practices appear promising as eco-friendly alternatives to chemical fumigation, in this short-term trial ASD performed better than BIOFUM both in terms of yield and fruit size, resulting in a more advanced stage for practical adoption.

Horticulturae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Christopher Menzel

Five strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa Duch.) cultivars were grown in Queensland, Australia to determine whether higher temperatures affect production. Transplants were planted on 29 April and data collected on growth, marketable yield, fruit weight and the incidence of small fruit less than 12 g until 28 October. Additional data were collected on fruit soluble solids content (SSC) and titratable acidity (TA) from 16 September to 28 October. Minimum temperatures were 2 °C to 4 °C higher than the long-term averages from 1965 to 1990. Changes in marketable yield followed a dose-logistic pattern (p < 0.001, R2s = 0.99). There was a strong negative relationship between fruit weight (marketable) and the average daily mean temperature in the four or seven weeks before harvest from 29 July to 28 October (p < 0.001, R2s = 0.90). There were no significant relationships between SSC and TA, and temperatures in the eight days before harvest from 16 September to 28 October (p > 0.05). The plants continued to produce a marketable crop towards the end of the season, but the fruit were small and more expensive to harvest. Higher temperatures in the future are likely to affect the economics of strawberry production in subtropical locations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 164
Author(s):  
Chuyao Luo ◽  
Xutao Li ◽  
Yongliang Wen ◽  
Yunming Ye ◽  
Xiaofeng Zhang

The task of precipitation nowcasting is significant in the operational weather forecast. The radar echo map extrapolation plays a vital role in this task. Recently, deep learning techniques such as Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (ConvRNN) models have been designed to solve the task. These models, albeit performing much better than conventional optical flow based approaches, suffer from a common problem of underestimating the high echo value parts. The drawback is fatal to precipitation nowcasting, as the parts often lead to heavy rains that may cause natural disasters. In this paper, we propose a novel interaction dual attention long short-term memory (IDA-LSTM) model to address the drawback. In the method, an interaction framework is developed for the ConvRNN unit to fully exploit the short-term context information by constructing a serial of coupled convolutions on the input and hidden states. Moreover, a dual attention mechanism on channels and positions is developed to recall the forgotten information in the long term. Comprehensive experiments have been conducted on CIKM AnalytiCup 2017 data sets, and the results show the effectiveness of the IDA-LSTM in addressing the underestimation drawback. The extrapolation performance of IDA-LSTM is superior to that of the state-of-the-art methods.


Author(s):  
Nino Antulov-Fantulin ◽  
Tian Guo ◽  
Fabrizio Lillo

AbstractWe study the problem of the intraday short-term volume forecasting in cryptocurrency multi-markets. The predictions are built by using transaction and order book data from different markets where the exchange takes place. Methodologically, we propose a temporal mixture ensemble, capable of adaptively exploiting, for the forecasting, different sources of data and providing a volume point estimate, as well as its uncertainty. We provide evidence of the clear outperformance of our model with respect to econometric models. Moreover our model performs slightly better than Gradient Boosting Machine while having a much clearer interpretability of the results. Finally, we show that the above results are robust also when restricting the prediction analysis to each volume quartile.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 115-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilija Dubljanin-Raspopović ◽  
Ljiljana Marković-Denić ◽  
Dragana Matanović ◽  
Mirko Grajić ◽  
Nevena Krstić ◽  
...  

HortScience ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Lexie McClymont ◽  
Ian Goodwin ◽  
Desmond Whitfield ◽  
Mark O’Connell ◽  
Susanna Turpin

Vegetative growth, orchard productivity, fruit quality and marketable yield were evaluated for rootstock (D6, BP1 and Quince A), tree density (741–4444 trees/ha), and training system (Open Tatura trellis, two-dimensional vertical and three-dimensional traditional) effects on young trees of the blush pear cultivar ‘ANP-0131’. ‘ANP-0131’ is a vigorous scion and vegetative growth, precocity, and yield were influenced by the selected rootstocks. Tree density and training system treatments exerted a substantial effect on canopy radiation interception while increasing tree density improved yield. Increasing tree density from 2222 (high density) to 4444 (ultra-high density) trees/ha did not improve cumulative yield. Crop load affected fruit size, such that “marketable” yield (yield of fruit weighing between 150 and 260 g) was greatest for trees on D6 rootstock and trained to Open Tatura trellis at high and ultra-high densities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 358-362
Author(s):  
D. P. Sharma ◽  
Niranjan Singh

Pruning of fruit trees is an important aspect for the improvement of fruit quality and to minimize the pests and disease attack. Pruning was performed in the month of December in seven year old unpruned trees of Punica granatum cv. Knadhdri Kabuli having many interfering branching and a heavy infestation of bacterial blight orchard. The pruning treatments viz., T1: Retention of 15cm fruiting shoot length, T2: Retention of 30cm fruiting shoot length, T3: Retention of 45cm fruiting shoot length, T4: Retention of 60cm fruiting shoot length and T5: control (No heading back and no thinning) plant. The results of the present investigation revealed that among different pruning treatment, the best results in terms of shoot extension (56.34 cm), fruit size (Diameter 9.66 cm and Length 9.65 cm, fruit weight (278.50 g), marketable yield (10.25 kg) and fruit qualities were in fruits from T1 and T2 where retention of 15cm fruiting shoot length respectively and retention of 30cm fruiting shoot length were maintained. However, maximum fruit set (54.73%) was recorded in control, and it decreased with increasing pruning intensity. The pruning treatments also proved beneficial in controlling bacterial blight on fruit (12.86%) and leaf surface (26.60%) to some extent.


1990 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven H. Frierman ◽  
Robert S. Weinberg ◽  
Allen Jackson

The purpose of this investigation was twofold: to determine if individuals who were assigned specific, difficult goals perform better than those assigned “do your best” goals, and to examine the importance of goal proximity (longterm vs. short-term) on bowling performance. Subjects were 72 students enrolled in two beginning bowling courses at a 4-year university. They were matched according to baseline bowling averages and then randomly assigned to one of four goal-setting conditions. A 4 × 5 (Goal Condition × Trials) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor revealed a significant goal condition main effect, with the long-term goal group improving more than the do-your-best group. No other performance comparisons reached significance. Questionnaire data revealed that subjects in all three numerical goal conditions rated their level of confidence significantly higher than the do-your-best goal group in Week 1, but the long-term goal group displayed a significantly higher level of confidence than the other three goal groups in Week 4. All other questions indicated that all groups tried hard and were committed to and accepted their goals.


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