545 results match your criteria: "Harper-Adams University[Affiliation]"

Cats are popular companion animals globally. While the general academic definition of responsible cat ownership is agreed upon, committing to responsible cat ownership is multifaceted, often reflecting regional priorities and values. Utilising a virtual private network (VPN), an English-language online search for 'responsible cat ownership' was applied from major cities in 10 different nations, accounting for five different geographic regions and nine different geographic sub-regions.

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In the marine environment, natural reef habitats are amongst the most threatened by human activities. Although reef-based ecotourism can benefit local economies, dive tourism can damage sensitive habitats. One solution to managing conflicts between the economic value of diving and its ecological threats is the deployment of artificial reefs near popular dive sites.

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Potential of Entomopathogenic Nematodes to Control the Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle .

Insects

July 2023

Agriculture and Environment Department, Harper Adams University, Newport, Shropshire TF10 8NB, UK.

Cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB) is an important pest of oilseed rape that was controlled by neonicotinoid seed treatments until they were banned for this use in 2013. Since then, CSFB has been a difficult pest to control, partly due to widespread resistance to pyrethroid insecticides. Alternate solutions are necessary.

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Applying sunflower oil to rapeseed plants reduces water loss.

J Sci Food Agric

December 2023

Drought Mitigation Group, Agriculture and Environment Department, Harper Adams University, Newport, Shropshire, UK.

Background: Hydrophobic polymers are used as antitranspirants to block stomata and reduce water loss from plants and thus drought stress, although the use of current commercial products is limited because they are expensive. Plant oils may be much cheaper hydrophobic polymers if they have similar efficacy to commercial antitranspirant products. Two experiments with pot-grown rapeseed plants were conducted to compare sunflower oil with the commercially-available antitranspirant di-1-p-menthene (DPM) for efficacy in reducing water loss, and to test for a linear response to increasing oil concentration.

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Are single global warming potential impact assessments adequate for carbon footprints of agri-food systems?

Environ Res Lett

August 2023

Net Zero and Resilient Farming, Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton, Devon EX20 2SB, United Kingdom.

The vast majority of agri-food climate-based sustainability analyses use global warming potential (GWP) as an impact assessment, usually in isolation; however, in recent years, discussions have criticised the 'across-the-board' application of GWP in Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), particularly of food systems which generate large amounts of methane (CH) and considered whether reporting additional and/or alternative metrics may be more applicable to certain circumstances or research questions (e.g. Global Temperature Change Potential (GTP)).

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Article Synopsis
  • Durum wheat is a key crop for pasta and is valued for its resilience in warm, dry climates, making it significant for both agriculture and research.
  • Researchers created a detailed transcriptomics dataset from the endosperms of the durum wheat variety Kronos to study grain development and storage reserves, analyzing samples from various stages of growth.
  • The study identified nearly 30,000 differentially expressed genes and revealed important insights into the processes of endosperm development, particularly in starch metabolism, offering a valuable resource for future research.
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Despite the high proportion of maize grain in animal diets, the contribution made by maize phytochemicals is neglected. Tocols and their contribution to the vitamin E content of animal diets are one example, exacerbated by sparse information on the tocol bioaccessibility of commercial hybrids. In this study, the contents of individual and total tocols and their bioaccessibility were determined in the grain samples of 103 commercial hybrids using a standardized INFOGEST digestion procedure.

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Decoding attraction: Improving vine weevil monitoring by exploiting key sensory cues.

Pest Manag Sci

November 2023

Centre for Crop and Environmental Science, Agriculture and Environment Department, Harper Adams University, Newport, UK.

Background: Monitoring is an integral component of integrated pest management (IPM) programmes used to inform crop management decisions. Vine weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus F. (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), continues to cause economically significant losses in horticultural crops due to an inability to reliably detect the presence of this species before crop damage occurs.

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The Environmental Profile of Ecuadorian Export Banana: A Life Cycle Assessment.

Foods

October 2022

Facultad de Ingeniería en Mecánica y Ciencias de la Producción, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL, Campus Gustavo Galindo, Km. 30.5 Vía Perimetral, Guayaquil P.O. Box 09-01-5863, Ecuador.

Ecuador is one of the largest banana exporters in the world. This sector generates wealth and employment in the country. Life cycle method tools support finding critical points and improvement measures in systems.

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Background: Plant diversification, especially sowing crops with the addition of companion plants has been demonstrated as a suitable practice to increase insect pest control in multiple cropping systems. Since the ban on use of neonicotinoid seed treatments in oilseed rape (OSR), the harvested area has reduced significantly in Europe, mainly because of the damage caused by cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala). Several companion plants such as legumes and other species of Brassicaceae have been reported as potential companions for OSR but robust evaluation of their efficiency to reduce cabbage stem flea beetle damage in replicated trials is lacking.

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Unlabelled: Field size and shape constrain spatial and temporal management of agriculture with implications for farm profitability, field biodiversity and environmental performance. Large, conventional equipment struggles to farm small, irregularly shaped fields efficiently. The study hypothesized that autonomous crop machines would make it possible to farm small, non-rectangular fields profitably, thereby preserving field biodiversity and other environmental benefits.

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Background: The non-typhoidal salmonellosis (NTS) is a pathogenic bacterial zoonosis with substantial but often under-appreciated public health impacts. The NTS is prevalent in poultry and humans in Nigeria, yet its economic and social burden have not been determined through any empirical study. To bridge the gap, we evaluated the impact of NTS in social and economic terms.

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This study explores dissatisfaction and neutrality metrics from 12 years of a national-level undergraduate student survey. The notion of dissatisfaction is much less prevalent in the narratives surrounding student survey outcomes, and the underpinning metrics are seldom considered. This is despite an increasingly vociferous debate about 'value for money' of higher education and the positioning of students as consumers in a marketised sector.

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The aims of the present study were to first, determine the xylan fractions of 10 different wheat cultivar samples and their response to treatment by the same commercial xylanase enzyme preparation. Second, use information obtained to select 5 of the wheats for use within a feeding experiment to determine whether the rate of xylan release can be used to predict the feeding value of the wheats when diets have been supplemented with xylanase. Treatment of 10 different wheat varieties by the same enzyme resulted in varying levels of hydrolysis.

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Diverse specialised metabolites contributed to the success of vascular plants in colonising most terrestrial habitats. Understanding how distinct aspects of chemical diversity arise through heterogeneous environmental pressures can help us understand the effects of abiotic and biotic stress on plant evolution and community assembly. We examined highland and lowland willow species within a phylogenetic framework to test for trends in their chemical α-diversity (richness) and β-diversity (variation among species sympatric in elevation).

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Tipburn is a physiological disorder of lettuce (Lactuca sativa) and other leafy crops that causes external and internal leaf discolouration and results in serious quality issues for the fresh produce industry. Tipburn occurrence is difficult to predict and no completely effective control methods exist. This is compounded by poor knowledge of the underlying physiological and molecular basis of the condition, which appears to be associated with deficiency of calcium and other nutrients.

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Background And Aims: The intake of selenium, an essential element for animals and humans, in ruminants is largely determined by selenium concentration in ingested forages, which take up selenium mainly from soil. Ruminant excreta is a common source of organic fertilizer, which provides both nutrients and organic matter. This study aims to unentangle the unclear effect of applying different types of ruminant excreta in soils of different organic matter contents on selenium uptake by forage.

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In civil society we expect that policy and management decisions will be made using the best available evidence. Yet, it is widely known that there are many barriers that limit the extent to which that occurs. One way to overcome these barriers is via robust, comprehensive, transparent and repeatable evidence syntheses (such as systematic reviews) that attempt to minimize various forms of bias to present a summary of existing knowledge for decision-making purposes.

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The polysaccharide in solution at critical concentration, Cc (g/L), is assimilated to a nano hydrogel (nHG) made of a single polysaccharide chain. Taking as reference the characteristic temperature of 20 ± 2 °C at which kappa-carrageenan (κ-Car) nHG swelling is greater with a Cc = 0.55 ± 0.

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Livestock health is a key concern for all food system stakeholders and has considerable impacts upon sustainable food production. Improving productivity means that a set quantity of milk or meat may be produced at a lower economic cost, using fewer resources and with reduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe); however, diseases that reduce yield, growth or fertility have the opposite effect. The purpose of this narrative review was to assess the breadth of economic and environmental sustainability information relating to cattle health within the literature and to discuss related knowledge gaps within the literature.

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SVEPM 2022, the annual conference of the Society for Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine: A joyful hybrid meeting after two years online.

Prev Vet Med

June 2023

The Society for Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, UK; Royal GD, Deventer, the Netherlands; Department of Population Health Sciences, Unit Farm Animal Health, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

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Background And Aims: The mechanisms of sugar sensing in grasses remain elusive, especially those using C4 photosynthesis even though a large proportion of the world's agricultural crops utilize this pathway. We addressed this gap by comparing the expression of genes encoding components of sugar sensors in C3 and C4 grasses, with a focus on source tissues of C4 grasses. Given C4 plants evolved into a two-cell carbon fixation system, it was hypothesized this may have also changed how sugars were sensed.

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The Impact of Visitors on Non-Primate Species in Zoos: A Quantitative Review.

Animals (Basel)

March 2023

School of Animal, Rural & Environmental Sciences, Brackenhurst Campus, Nottingham Trent University, Southwell NG25 0QF, UK.

Visitors are a prominent feature in the lives of zoo animals, and their presence can cause a range of impacts on zoo animals (typically classed as positive, negative or neutral impacts), commonly referred to as the 'visitor effect'. This paper quantitatively collates the literature on the visitor effect in non-primate species, investigates the types of measures used to assess impacts of visitors on animals and considers whether impacts vary across non-primate species in zoos. In total, there were 105 papers which had investigated the impact of zoo visitors on 252 non-primate species/species groups.

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Sustainable land management encompasses a range of activity that balance land use requirements with wider conservation and ecosystem impact considerations. Perennial invasive alien plants (IAPs), such as Japanese knotweed, cause severe ecological and socio-economic impacts, and methods to control their spread also come at a cost. Synthetic herbicides are generally viewed as less sustainable and more ecologically damaging than alternative approaches.

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