The Environmental Pollution book series includes current, comprehensive texts on critical national and global environmental issues useful to scientists in academia, industry and government from diverse disciplines. These include water, air, and soil pollution, organic and inorganic pollution, risk assessment, human and environmental health, environmental biotechnology, global ecology, mathematics and computing as related to environmental pollution, environmental modelling, environmental chemistry and physics, biology, toxicology, conservation and biodiversity, agricultural sciences, pesticides, environmental engineering, bioremediation/biorestoration, and environmental economics. Environmental problems and solutions are complex and interrelated. Complex problems often require complex solutions. The linkage of many disciplines can result in new approaches to old and new environmental problems as well as pollution prevention. This knowledge will assist in understanding, maintaining and improving the biosphere in which we live. Proposals for this book series can be sent the Series Editor: Jack Trevors at jtrevors@uoguelph.ca or the Publishing Editor Sherestha Saini at Sherestha.Saini@springer.com
Abstract Food waste is a global systemic issue that poses major threats in economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Recent policy efforts have primarily targeted households, as they are responsible for most food wasted. However, for these policies to be effective, they must account for household heterogeneity, recognizing that certain socioeconomic characteristics may influence differently depending on their level of waste. This study investigates the heterogeneous impact of socioeconomic characteristics on Spanish household food waste over the period 2018–2022, analysing households from minimal to substantial waste ratios. A quantile regression approach is applied to estimate the effects across the entire distribution of food waste, rather than focusing only on average effects. Results indicate that household characteristics influence food waste in a significant different way depending on their waste level. Moreover, product-level heterogeneity is also addressed, highlighting perishable products (fish and vegetables) as critical targets. Our findings point to the need for designing highly precise interventions, focusing on specific products and socioeconomic groups that contribute most to food waste.
Nutrition. Foods and food supply, Agricultural industries
María R. Conesa, Juan Vera, Wenceslao Conejero
et al.
Time-domain reflectometry (TDR) is an electromagnetic technique that measures the dielectric permittivity (K) which is a surrogate property influenced by water content. Advances in nanoelectronics have enabled the development of a TDR probe (TDR-305 N) to monitor changes in K, bulk electrical conductivity (ECbulk) and temperature (T) in a porous medium, such as a tree trunk. The main objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the TDR-305 N sensors for real-time monitoring changes in water content in the trunk of nectarine trees. Throughout the summer of 2022, irrigation was automatically managed with threshold values of soil water content (θv-soil) measured with capacitance probes. Different management allowed depletion (MAD) values were set to trigger irrigation: 50 % in July (moderate water deficit), 100 % in August (severe water deficit), and recovery to well-irrigated conditions in September. Discrete measurements of midday stem water potential (Ψs,md) and leaf gas exchange were made frequently. The results showed a progressive reduction of the measured physiological parameters, as well as of K and ECbulk and θv-soil decreased. Notably, Ψs,md reached a critically low value of -2.03 MPa, coinciding with pronounced and severe stomatal closure. Both K and Ψs,md, were able to explain the variations of θv-soil by more than 75 %. Daily, a positive relationship of K and ECbulk was observed, although ECbulk exhibited a stronger dependence on Ttrunk compared to K. Furthermore, K did not return to its initial values prior to the onset of water stress, possibly influenced by xylem cavitation and a reduction in leaf area during its senescence stage. The findings suggest that trunk permittivity measurements obtained using TDR-305 N sensors could be a reliable indicator for monitoring tree water status. However, further research is needed to determine the threshold values of trunk water content under non-limiting soil water conditions for accurate irrigation scheduling.
Andrew N. French, Charles A. Sanchez, Troy Wirth
et al.
A satellite-based vegetation index model that tracks daily crop growth and evapotranspiration (ETc) is developed, tested, and validated over irrigated farms in Yuma irrigation districts of Arizona and California. Model inputs are remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images, crop type maps, and local weather. The utility and novelty of the model is a more accurate assessment of ETc than currently provided by the US Bureau of Reclamation’s evapotranspiration modeling system. The model analyzes NDVI time series data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites using the Google Earth Engine, constructs FAO-56 style crop growth stages from NDVI, and then estimates daily ETc using pre-defined crop coefficients (Kc) and grass reference evapotranspiration (ETos). Four crops were selected to test and evaluate model performance: short-season broccoli, mid-season cotton and wheat, and perennial alfalfa. Comparison of model results showed that Reclamation reports overestimate alfalfa and wheat ETc by 21–25%, cotton ETc by 6%, and underestimate broccoli ETc by 21%. Variability resolved by the model ranged 6–18% of median total ETc. Comparison of model results with those obtained from 13 eddy covariance sites showed validation discrepancies ranging 1–14%: average total actual ETc differences were 12, − 14, 78, and 87 mm/season, respectively, for alfalfa, broccoli, cotton, and wheat. The wide availability of Sentinel-2 data, collected every 5 days or less, and the rapid processing via Google Earth Engine make the vegetation index model implementation fast and practical. Its accuracy and ability to resolve ETc for every field would benefit the Reclamation water accounting system and provide valuable consumptive water use data for any Colorado River stakeholder.
When performing dense crops target detection and counting tasks in high-resolution images of large scene, several algorithms such as the standard Non-Maximum Suppression (NMS) and its improved CIoU-NMS and soft-NMS are commonly used to improve the de-duplication performance of the prediction frame in objects detection, which has a high mean average precision (mAP) but the error boundaries may be large. In this research, an improved NMS-based max intersection over portion (MIoP-NMS) algorithm is proposed to address this problem and implemented in the YOLOv4 network framework for single-stage target detection. Using banana tree target detection statistics with different sparsity levels as an experimental case, the mAP obtained by applying the method in the paper reaches about 85%, with a mean counting error of about 1.3%. In comparison with several commonly NMS methods, their mAP values are comparable. However, compared to the 10%∼25% mean count error when using these commonly used methods, the mean count error of the method proposed in the paper is reduced by about 8.7%∼23.7%. The method in the paper estimates the number of banana trees in dense occluded banana forests with about 98.7% accuracy, which is simple and effective, and has significant advantages for accurate detection and counting of dense crops targets in high-resolution images in large scenes.
The full utilization of agricultural waste and its recycle into a new chain of value are of primary importance for the development of a sustainable and profitable agricultural industry. Chestnut sh...
Because of growing demand for meat and declining availability of agricultural land, there is an urgent need to find alternative protein sources. Edible insects can be produced with less environmental impact than livestock. Insect meal can replace scarce fishmeal as feed ingredient, in particular in the fast growing aquaculture industry. Edible insects can alleviate waste disposal problems by growing them on organic by-products. About 2000 insect species are eaten worldwide, mostly in tropical countries. They have adequate protein quantity and quality and high content of unsaturated fatty acids and minerals like iron and zinc. Promotion of insects as food and feed will require the insects to be farmed. In tropical countries this is done small-scale, but in particular for use of insects as feed, production is needed in large automated industrial facilities. Food safety problems relate to contamination with pathogens, requiring hygienic farming. Proper labelling may be required for people allergic to seafood and house dust mites as cross reactivity may occur. Western consumers are hard to convince to eat insects, even when aware of environmental, nutritional and food safety benefits and their excellent taste. Emotional and psychological impediments to acceptance have to be addressed. The way forward of edible insects to become a new sector in agriculture and the food and feed industry is discussed. In particular, legislation lags behind developments and needs to be addressed urgently.
While the aging of agricultural labor force and its impact on agricultural production have been attracting extensive attention, little is known about the relationship between aging of agricultural labor force and technical efficiency in the garlic production. Based on the survey data of garlic growers in Lanling County, Shandong Province, the Data envelopment analysis (DEA) model is used to measure the production technical efficiency of garlic growers in 84 villages in Lanling County, Shandong Province, with the aging of the labor force. The distribution characteristics and changing trends of garlic production technology efficiency are analyzed in terms of family characteristics and garlic planting characteristics, and regression analysis is performed on the differences of the results. The study found the following: (1) Garlic growers in Lanling County, Shandong Province, accounted for a high proportion of laborers over 60 years old, and their physical health status was weaker than that of young laborers, which reduced the technical efficiency of garlic planting and production. (2) The number of garlic varieties grown by garlic growers and the number of garlic planted in acres have a significant negative impact on the technical efficiency of garlic planting by farmers. (3) There is a significant positive correlation between the annual household income of farmers and the production technology efficiency of garlic growers; when the number of garlic training is not more than three times, it has a positive impact on the production technology efficiency of garlic planting by farmers, and more than three times are related to garlic production technology. The efficiency is negatively correlated.
Abstract The quality of agricultural products is of high importance in terms of consumer interest, determining market acceptance, and thus, directly affects storage and post-harvest processing operations. Quality measurement of fruits, vegetables and food products is at the center of attention by the food industry. Non-destructive measurements of quality parameters have been conducted on many agricultural products and have proved to be rapid and accurate in estimating the quality factors involved. While, non-destructive methods are very useful for quality testing, the recent interest by consumers, researchers, and the food industry in the application of new portable and/or handheld non-destructive devices for quality assessment of agricultural products has added a new dimension to the issue. Because these devices are small-sized, low-cost, low-weight, and easy to use, they can be utilized by farmers, quality inspectors, and even consumers. Thus, researchers have focused on developing portable non-destructive devices for a variety of food items. This review, examines the latest reports on the design and development of dedicated non-destructive portable and/or handheld devices for quality monitoring of agricultural products.
The moving of manufacturing industry from developed countries to Dongguan, China, promoted the semi-urbanization and rural industrialization in this area. It is urgent to acquire the impact of the enhanced anthropogenic pressure on the evolution of groundwater chemistry in this area. The objectives, in this study, were to understand the evolution of groundwater chemistry in Dongguan area based on the comparison of hydrochemical data variations and land use changes during the urbanization, to distinguish the impact of natural processes and anthropogenic activities on the groundwater chemistry by using principal components analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and to discuss the origins of trace elements in groundwater. Eighteen physico-chemical parameters were investigated at 73 groundwater sites during July 2006. By analyzing the hydrochemical data, it shows that lateral flow from rivers and agricultural irrigation are the mechanisms controlling the groundwater chemistry in the river network area where the cation exchange of Na(+) in sediments taken up by the exchanger Ca(2+) occurs. Seawater intrusion is the mechanism controlling the groundwater chemistry in the coast area where the cation exchange of Ca(2+) in sediments taken up by the exchanger Na(+) occurs. The ion exchange reaction for fissured aquifer is weak in the study area. In addition, the comparison of hydrochemical data between in 2006 and in 1980 shows that anthropogenic activities such as excessive application of agricultural fertilizers, inappropriate emissions of domestic sewage and excessive emissions of SO2 are responsible for the occurrences of groundwater with NO3(-), SO4(2-) and Mg(2+) types. Four principal components (PCs) were extracted from PCA, which explain 80.86% of the total parameters in water chemistry: PC1, the seawater intrusion and As contamination; PC2, the water-rock interaction, surface water recharge and acidic precipitation; PC3, heavy metal pollution from industry; and PC4, agricultural pollution and sewage intrusion. Four clusters were generated from HCA: cluster 1 is mainly influenced by the industrialization; cluster 2 is mainly affected by the water-rock interaction and the irrigation and lateral flow of river water; cluster 3 is mainly influenced by the seawater intrusion; and cluster 4 is mainly influenced by the sewage intrusion and agricultural pollution. The results show that both natural processes such as seawater intrusion, water-rock interaction and lateral flow of river water and anthropogenic activities such as industrialization, sewage intrusion and agricultural pollution are the two major factors for the evolution of groundwater chemistry in Dongguan area.
Visiting farms and ranches to experience agriculture and celebrate harvests is an age-old tradition. In the U.S. and many other countries, this tradition is the basis of an emerging industry known as “agritourism.” Although agritourism appears to be growing in many parts of the U.S., confusion about agritourism limits the ability of researchers and agricultural interests to fully understand this sector’s economic importance and to support its performance over time. A universal understanding of agritourism is needed for clear communication, reliable and consistent measurement, informed policies, and programs that support farms and ranches and their communities. To that end, the authors present a conceptual framework that incorporates core and peripheral tiers, as well as five categories of activities, including direct sales, education, hospitality, outdoor recreation, and entertainment. The goal of this viewpoint is to stimulate commentary and debate that furthers our collective understanding of agritourism as it becomes an increasingly important industry in the U.S. COMMENTS AND FEEDBACK on this proposed framework are welcome at JAFSCD's Facebook page !