This article describes an approach for a system, which helps to increase energy efficiency in households by providing more transparency of energy consumption on single device level. The main idea is to analyze energy consumption using a smart meter and break it down into its individual characteristic components using an algorithm. Having such data, an online energy efficiency coach can provide households with personalized advice on saving energy on a single-device level with minimal time effort and great social experience. In order to develop such an algorithm, a simulation environment was created, which allows generating a huge number of virtual households based on real measurements of single devices. This article describes the simulation environment, how data is measured and collected and how the platform is set up. Smart home; energy transparency; smart meter; web interface; energy saving; social integration
Soybean is an important source of plant protein used in human diets. Cadmium (Cd) from agricultural soil is a toxic metal for plants, including soybean. Furthermore, the cadmium is taken up to seeds of soybean and becomes a risk for animals and human by feed and food chain. A method to avoid this risk is represented by the selection and breeding soybean lines/cultivars with genetic potential to minimized cadmium accumulation. This work reports an approach assisted by DNA-markers for selection of soybean cultivars with low Cd-accumulation. In this study, we screened the alleles of Cda1 gene, in 22 soybean cultivars, using three DNA markers (SSR-Sack149, Gm-dCAPS-HMA1 and Cda1-KASP). The results showed that 11 genotypes carried the allele for low cadmium accumulation, 8 genotypes had the allele for high cadmium accumulation and three genotypes were heterozygous/heterogenous. All three markers classified the soybean genotypes in the same manner but KASP marker is more efficient in marker-assisted selection/breeding for Cda1. This study offers valuable information to breeders and other researches regarding the selection of soybean germplasm with low cadmium accumulation in the pursuit of reducing the Cd-accumulation and assuring the food safety worldwide.
Maize is one of the most important crops cultivated around the world and can be easily grown in various climate conditions, under conventional and organic system. Maize cultivation has many advantages, such as: high yield, strong stability, great potential for increasing yield, strong disaster resistance, wide application range, and high economic benefits. It plays an important role in food production, and it is also due to the growth of animal husbandry and the food processing industry. This article is an overview of global maize market and maize market and production in Romanian economy, related to trade indicators, with a special target on organic production and analysis on territorial profile of organic maize cultivation.
The demand for soybeans in Europe motivates breeders, researchers, and growers to find suitable cultivars to adapt and extend the soybean crop to improper climate areas. Weed control is a crucial aspect of crop technology in organic agriculture, but particularly for soybean crops. In laboratory conditions, the cumulative stress index for seedlings was determined to identify the susceptible cultivars. A field experiment with 14 soybean accessions and 2 sowing dates was conducted under organic farming conditions over the course of three years, from 2020 to 2022. Plant population density was found to be significantly (p < 0.01 and p < 0.1) negatively correlated to the degree of resistance to low temperature as well as infestation degree with weeds (for p < 0.05 and p < 0.1), with the exception of early sowing in 2021. Yield was significantly (p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.1) correlated with plant population density, with the exception of optimal sowing in 2022. Early sowing variants emerged with vigor in the first two years, breeding lines and registered varieties showed low input, and organic agriculture systems showed low yields in the drought years of 2020 and 2022. Although early sowing even in the first two years proved to be a practice that increased the cultivars’ performance, in 2022, due to the long period of chilling stress in the field, this option had negative effects on yield due to the high weed frequency. Therefore, the early sowing strategy for the soybean crop in this particular case of non-irrigated conditions in a temperate continental area proved to be a risky practice.
"One of the most important sources of weed infestation in agricultural crops is related to manure applied as biological fertilizer, when livestock growers don`t process it and don`t store it in order to be weeds - free. In manure there are lot of weed seeds from animal fodder, livestock bedding and also from animal excrements. On the pasture, when grazing fresh food, animals eat also the inflorescences with weed seeds. Ones of these seeds could pass through the digestive tract of animals while keeping their ability to germinate. The aim of this study was to record the weed species that can cross over the digestive tract without losing their germination, to note which weed species are more adapted to do this, which animal species are able to perform the endozoochory process and under what environmental conditions. Trials were conducted under laboratory conditions. The content of excrements taken from four animals species (cattle, goats, sheep, horses), from four distinct South – East areas in period 2019-2020, were mixed with sterilized soil and put to germinate under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. Following the assessments, weed seeds were found to be able to cross over the digestive tract of animals maintaining their germination. The highest frequency was in cattle and the lowest was in horses. There was at Pasărea where the largest number of weeds was found and animals grazed on untillaged land (hences, fallow lands). The dominant weed species were Setaria sp., Chenopodium sp., Amaranthus retroflexus and Polygonum aviculare."
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