1,264 results match your criteria: "Agricultural Institute of Slovenia; Maja.smodis.skerl@kis.si.[Affiliation]"

Comparing Hydrolysable and Condensed Tannins for Tannin Protein-Based Foams.

Polymers (Basel)

January 2025

Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padua, Viale dell'Università 16, 35020 Padua, Italy.

Tannin-based foams have gained attention as a potential bio-based alternative to conventional synthetic foams. Traditionally, namely condensed tannins (CT) have been used, leaving the potential of hydrolysable tannins (HT) largely unexplored. This study compared the performance of chestnut (HT) and quebracho (CT) in tannin-protein-based foams at different tannin ratios.

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Genomic Rewilding of Domestic Animals: The Role of Hybridization and Selection in Wolfdog Breeds.

Genes (Basel)

January 2025

Department of Animal Science and Food Processing, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic.

: The domestication of the grey wolf () and subsequent creation of modern dog breeds have significantly shaped the genetic landscape of domestic canines. This study investigates the genomic effects of hybridization and breeding management practices in two hybrid wolfdog breeds: the Czechoslovakian Wolfdog (CSW) and the Saarloos Wolfdog (SAW). : We analyzed the genomes of 46 CSWs and 20 SAWs, comparing them to 12 German Shepherds (GSHs) and 20 wolves (WLFs), which served as their ancestral populations approximately 70-90 years ago.

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Plant secondary metabolites against biotic stresses for sustainable crop protection.

Biotechnol Adv

January 2025

State Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Resources and Breeding/Key laboratory for Grain Crop Genetic Resources Evaluation and Utilization, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, PR China; Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. Electronic address:

Sustainable agriculture practices are indispensable for achieving a hunger-free world, especially as the global population continues to expand. Biotic stresses, such as pathogens, insects, and pests, severely threaten global food security and crop productivity. Traditional chemical pesticides, while effective, can lead to environmental degradation and increase pest resistance over time.

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It has been 15 years since the introduction of the NOVA food-processing classification. While it was designed to identify ultra-processed foods linked to noncommunicable diseases, the NOVA system has a holistic concept that fits with sustainable nutrition. However, NOVA's connection to other sustainable diet indicators has not been thoroughly explored.

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Biological invasions are a major threat to biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and nature's contributions to people worldwide. However, the effectiveness of invasive alien species (IAS) management measures and the progress toward achieving biodiversity targets remain uncertain due to limited and nonuniform data availability. Management success is usually assessed at a local level and documented in technical reports, often written in languages other than English, which makes such data notoriously difficult to collect at large geographic scales.

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Survival and cause-specific mortality rates are vital for evidence-based population forecasting and conservation, particularly for large carnivores, whose populations are often vulnerable to human-caused mortalities. It is therefore important to know the relationship between anthropogenic and natural mortality causes to evaluate whether they are additive or compensatory. Further, the relation between survival and environmental covariates could reveal whether specific landscape characteristics influence demographic performance.

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Canadian goldenrod L.), an invasive plant in Europe, is known for its allelopathic activity and is rich in bioactive compounds like flavonoids and phenolic acids, with significant pharmacological potential. This study presents the LC-MS phenolic profiles of leaf and flower extracts from , an invasive alien plant in the Istria region (Croatia).

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Abscission is a tightly regulated process in which plants shed unnecessary, infected, damaged, or aging organs, as well as ripe fruits, through predetermined abscission zones in response to developmental, hormonal, and environmental signals. Despite its importance, the underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. This study highlights the deleterious effects of abscission on chloroplast ultrastructure in the cells of the tomato flower pedicel abscission zone, revealing spatiotemporal differential gene expression and key transcriptional networks involved in chloroplast vesiculation during abscission.

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Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is poorly understood, with causes identified in only 25% of cases. Emerging evidence suggests links between trace elements (TEs) and POI. This study is the first to compare concentrations of manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), selenium (Se), molybdenum (Mo), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb) across urine, serum, and whole blood in women with POI compared to healthy controls (HC), aiming to explore their distribution and potential associations with POI.

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Studies on selenium (Se) and silicon (Si) foliar biostimulation of different plants have been shown to affect concentrations of phenolic compounds. However, their effects on olive ( L.) primary and secondary metabolites have not been fully investigated.

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Flash column chromatographic fractionation of tree of heaven () stem and trunk bark extracts, guided by thin-layer chromatography (TLC)- assay and TLC-heated electrospray high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (HESI-HRMS/MS), lead to the isolation of six known compounds: (9,11)-13-hydroxy-9,11-octadecadienoic acid (13-HODE, ), (10,12)-9-hydroxy-10,12-octadecadienoic acid (9-HODE, ), hexadecanedioic acid (thapsic acid, ), 16-hydroxyhexadecanoic acid (juniperic acid, ), 16-feruloyloxypalmitic acid (alpinagalanate, ), and canthin-6-one (). Their structures were elucidated by HESI-HRMS/MS and one- and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This is the first study identifying - in tree.

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Three-quarters of the planet's land surface has been altered by humans, with consequences for animal ecology, movements and related ecosystem functioning. Species often occupy wide geographical ranges with contrasting human disturbance and environmental conditions, yet, limited data availability across species' ranges has constrained our understanding of how human pressure and resource availability jointly shape intraspecific variation of animal space use. Leveraging a unique dataset of 758 annual GPS movement trajectories from 375 brown bears (Ursus arctos) across the species' range in Europe, we investigated the effects of human pressure (i.

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Pantothenate kinase 4 controls skeletal muscle substrate metabolism.

Nat Commun

January 2025

Department of Molecular Physiology of Exercise and Nutrition, German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE), Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany.

Article Synopsis
  • Metabolic flexibility in skeletal muscle is crucial for healthy glucose and lipid metabolism, and its dysfunction can lead to metabolic diseases.
  • Exercise improves metabolic flexibility and helps identify mechanisms that support metabolic health.
  • The study reveals that pantothenate kinase 4 (PanK4) is vital for muscle metabolism, as its deletion disrupts fatty acid oxidation and elevates harmful acetyl-CoA levels, which lead to glucose intolerance, while increasing PanK4 enhances glucose uptake and lowers acetyl-CoA.
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Article Synopsis
  • A team of over 180 researchers from more than 40 countries is addressing the issues related to "phantom agents," which are proposed pathogenic agents that are listed without concrete evidence of their existence.
  • These phantom agents, identified only through symptoms and lacking proper isolates or genetic data, create obstacles for trade and plant certification, making effective detection and risk assessment difficult.
  • The researchers recommend removing these agents from regulatory lists and updating standards in line with modern diagnostic methods to facilitate germplasm exchange and support global agriculture.
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Balancing increasing demand for wood products while also maintaining forest biodiversity is a paramount challenge. Europe's Biodiversity and Forest Strategies for 2030 attempt to address this challenge. Together, they call for strict protection of 10% of land area, including all primary and old growth forests, increasing use of ecological forestry, and less reliance on monocultural plantations.

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Effective population size () is one of the most important parameters in evolutionary biology, as it is linked to the long-term survival capability of species. Therefore, greatly interests conservation geneticists, but it is also very relevant to policymakers, managers, and conservation practitioners. Molecular methods to estimate rely on various assumptions, including no immigration, panmixia, random sampling, absence of spatial genetic structure, and/or mutation-drift equilibrium.

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Carbonaceous aerosols (CA), composed of black carbon (BC) and organic matter (OM), significantly impact the climate. Light absorption properties of CA, particularly of BC and brown carbon (BrC), are crucial due to their contribution to global and regional warming. We present the absorption properties of BC (b) and BrC (b) inferred using Aethalometer data from 44 European sites covering different environments (traffic (TR), urban (UB), suburban (SUB), regional background (RB) and mountain (M)).

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Background: Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) bloodstream infection (BSI) is a common healthcare-associated complication linked to antimicrobial resistance and high mortality. Ongoing clinical trials are exploring novel anti-virulence agents, yet studies on how bacterial virulence affects PA infection outcomes is conflicting and data from real-world clinical populations is limited.

Methods: We studied a multicentre cohort of 773 adult patients with PA BSI consecutively collected during 7-years from sites in Europe and Australia.

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Dairy cows with a lower nitrogen excretion intensity (N) excrete less nitrogen, ammonia (NH) and nitrous oxide (NO), a highly potent greenhouse gas (GHG), per kg of milk produced and therefore represent a lower environmental impact while maintaining food security. To date, the genomics background of N is unknown. Here we performed a genetic association study, overlap analysis and functional enrichment analysis for N in 875 genotyped dairy cows with 2,147 lactations from 200 herds.

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Pre-conception nutrition estimated from milk composition characterises the sex ratio of offspring in cattle.

Anim Reprod Sci

January 2025

University of Maribor, Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Pivola 10, Hoče 2311, Slovenia. Electronic address:

In livestock breeding, offspring of a particular sex are often favoured. Various biological mechanisms influence the offspring sex ratio (OSR). It has been hypothesised that maternal body condition/nutritional status influence OSR.

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Pikeperch (Sander Lucioperca) belongs to main predatory fish species in freshwater bodies throughout Europe playing the key role by reducing planktivorous fish abundance. Two size classes of the young-of-the-year (YOY) pikeperch are known in Europe and North America. Our long-term fish survey elucidates late-summer size distribution of YOY pikeperch in the Lipno Reservoir (Czechia) and recognizes two distinct subcohorts: smaller pelagic planktivores heavily outnumber larger demersal piscivores.

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Article Synopsis
  • Listeria monocytogenes can form tough biofilms in food processing areas, making it hard to eliminate despite existing control strategies.
  • Research on fungal proteins showed that they effectively disrupt biofilm formation without directly killing the bacteria at higher temperatures.
  • Fungal lectins specifically inhibited biofilm development at room temperature, suggesting potential use in preventing Listeria contamination on surfaces in food processing.
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  • The domestication process has been extensively studied, beginning with Belyaev's experiment on silver foxes, which showed that selecting for tameness disrupts systems controlling development, leading to typical domestication traits.
  • Additional hypotheses, like the thyroid rhythm and neural crest cell hypotheses, have been proposed, but the recent parasite-mediated domestication hypothesis (PMD) suggests that endoparasites may play a critical role in this process.
  • Research comparing parasite loads in wild boars and domestic pigs from Slovenia and Croatia found different parasite taxa in both populations, providing a basis to explore how parasite susceptibility may have contributed to domestication.
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Microbiota composition of an autochthonous Krškopolje pig breed reared in two different organic production systems.

Res Vet Sci

January 2025

University of Ljubljana, Veterinary Faculty, Clinic for Reproduction and Large Animals, Clinic for Ruminants and Pigs, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

It has been shown that different production systems (conventional vs. pasture-raised pigs) and co-rearing of pigs with other livestock influence the gut microbiota composition in pigs. In this study, two independent trials were conducted to investigate the 16S fecal microbiota of the autochthonous Krškopolje pig.

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