Isolation and Molecular Characterization of the Romaine Lettuce Phylloplane Mycobiome

Romaine lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is an important staple of American agriculture. Unlike many vegetables, romaine lettuce is typically consumed raw. Phylloplane microbes occur naturally on plant leaves; consumption of uncooked leaves includes consumption of phylloplane microbes. Despite this fact, the microbes that naturally occur on produce such as romaine lettuce are for the most part uncharacterized. In this study, we conducted culture-based studies of the fungal romaine lettuce phylloplane community from organic and conventionally grown samples. In addition to an enumeration of all such microbes, we define and provide a discussion of the genera that form the “core” romaine lettuce mycobiome, which represent 85.5% of all obtained isolates: Alternaria, Aureobasidium, Cladosporium, Filobasidium, Naganishia, Papiliotrema, Rhodotorula, Sampaiozyma, Sporobolomyces, Symmetrospora and Vishniacozyma. We highlight the need for additional mycological expertise in that 23% of species in these core genera appear to be new to science and resolve some taxonomic issues we encountered during our work with new combinations for Aureobasidiumbupleuri and Curvibasidium nothofagi. Finally, our work lays the ground for future studies that seek to understand the effect these communities may have on preventing or facilitating establishment of exogenous microbes, such as food spoilage microbes and plant or human pathogens.

Unpacking the Agricultural Black Box: The Rise and Fall of American Farm Productivity Growth

Has the golden age of U.S. agricultural productivity growth ended? We analyze the detailed patterns of productivity growth spanning a century of profound changes in American agriculture. We document a substantial slowing of U.S. farm productivity growth, following a late mid-century surge—20 years after the surge and slowdown in U.S. industrial productivity growth. We posit and empirically probe three related explanations for this farm productivity surge-slowdown: the time path of agricultural R&D-driven knowledge stocks; a big wave of technological progress associated with great clusters of inventions; and dynamic aspects of the structural transformation of agriculture, largely completed by 1980.

The Trial Begins in Mwanza

“The Judge entered the court wearing a red robe and with a white wig on his head.” Major players, not already described, are examined at this point, especially Judge Harold Platt and the two assessors, one an American agriculture expert who has lived in Tanzania for six months, the other, a Tanzanian who has recently returned to Tanzania from graduate school in America as part of the famous Airlift to America, which was supported by the Kennedy family before Jack Kennedy became president and which was the vehicle by which Barack Obama’s father came to America for college. Defense attorneys Byron Georgiadis and Carroll Brewster have worked diligently before the trial to ensure that Dr. McHugh will be allowed to remain in court prior to his testimony.

PERFORMANCE FIELD EVALUATION OF DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEMS UNDER CONDITIONS OF THE DESERT REGION IN WESTERN IRAQ

A field experiment was carried out at Al-Saqlawiya township Al-Anbar governorate at north in latitude 33°24´57" and east longitude 43°41´23", during period from 15/10/2018 to 15/1/2019 in order to evaluate the performance of 5 units of surface drip irrigation system, components and periods of use, by the steps recommended by the American Agriculture Engineers Association, at 50 kPa operational pressure. Results showed that there was a disparity in values of emitters actual discharge, uniformity coefficient, emission uniformity and variation percent of discharge. Although the similarity of most measurement conditions such as land area, design, management and the operational pressure except of the periods of using these systems which ranged 2-5 years. The decrease percent of actual discharge values 8.06%, 8.74%, and 19.04% when comparing the actual discharge for the system 1 with the values of systems 2,3 and 4, respectively. While the increase percent of the actual discharge value reached 29.74% when comparing of system 1 with system 5. Uniformity coefficient of system decreased were 5.32%, 19.95%, 3.81% and 7.21%, respectively, and 10.73%,37.25%,7.51% and 14.36% for the decrease percent of emission uniformity comparing the system 1 with the systems 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively, as for the increase percent for the variation emitters discharge, it were 7.70%, 118.73%, 7.70%, respectively. Non- compliance of users of these systems with regular maintenance of the end of agriculture seasons, poor storage conditions, not maintained at high temperature or cold conditions and increase use periods, all had caused the expansion of emitters' holes, which affected negatively in some values of the followed evaluation standard.

Crop Insurance and the New Deal Roots of Agricultural Financialization in the United States

A range of private and public institutions emerged in the United States in the years before and after the Great Depression to help farmers confront the inherent uncertainty of agricultural production and marketing. This included a government-owned and operated insurance enterprise offering “all-risk” coverage to American farmers beginning in 1938. Crop insurance, initially developed as a social insurance program, was beset by pervasive problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. As managers and policy makers responded to those problems from the 1940s on, they reshaped federal crop insurance in ways that increasingly made the scheme a lever of financialization, a means of disciplining individual farmers to think of farming in abstract terms of risk management. Crop insurance became intertwined with important changes in the economic context of agriculture by the 1960s, including the emergence of the “technological treadmill,” permanently embedding financialized risk management into the political economy of American agriculture.