Fungal Disease and Fruit Quality in an Apple Orchard Converted from Integrated Production to Organic Production

Review of the Impact of Apple Fruit Ripening, Texture and Chemical Contents on Genetically Determined Susceptibility to Storage Rots

Fungal storage rots like blue mould, grey mould, bull's eye rot, bitter rot and brown rot destroy large amounts of the harvested apple crop around the world. Application of fungicides is nowadays severely restricted in many countries and production systems, and these problems are therefore likely to increase. Considerable variation among apple cultivars in resistance/susceptibility has been reported, suggesting that efficient defence mechanisms can be selected for and used in plant breeding. These are, however, likely to vary between pathogens, since some fungi are mainly wound-mediated while others attack through lenticels or by infecting blossoms. Since mature fruits are considerably more susceptible than immature fruits, mechanisms involving fruit-ripening processes are likely to play an important role. Significant associations have been detected between the susceptibility to rots in harvested fruit and various fruit maturation-related traits like ripening time, fruit firmness at harvest and rate of fruit softening during storage, as well as fruit biochemical contents like acidity, sugars and polyphenols. Some sources of resistance to blue mould have been described, but more research is needed on the development of spore inoculation methods that produce reproducible data and can be used for large screenings, especially for lenticel-infecting fungi.

Synergies and Trade-Offs for Sustainable Food Production in Sweden: An Integrated Approach

The production of food can have large impacts on sustainable development in relation to various socio-ecological dimensions, like climate change, the environment, animal welfare, livestock epidemiology, and the economy. To achieve a sustainable food production system in Sweden, an integrated approach that considers all five of these dimensions, and all parts of the food production chain, is necessary. This paper systematically reviewed the literature related to food production in Sweden, especially in association with resource distribution and recycling logistics, and identified potential sustainability interventions and assessed their effects according to the five dimensions. Participation of stakeholders across the food production chain contributed with the focus of the literature search and subsequent synthesis. In general, there were synergies between the sustainability interventions and their effect on climate change and the environment, while there often were trade-offs between effects on the economy and the other dimensions. Few interventions considered effects on animal welfare or livestock epidemiology and few studies dealt with resource distribution and recycling logistics. This indicates that there is a need for future research that considers this in particular, as well as research that considers the whole food production chain and all dimensions at once, and investigates effects across multiple scales.

Effect of different production systems on chemical profiles of dwarf French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L. cv. Top Crop) pods

The chemical composition of dwarf French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) cv. Top Crop was compared among five production systems: conventional, integrated, organic, and biodynamic production systems and the control. Determination of sugars and organic acids was performed with a HPLC system, and identification of individual phenolic compounds using HPLC-MS. The chemical composition of the beans was unaffected by the production systems; however, the content levels of individual compounds were changed. The pods from integrated production contained the lowest levels of glucose and sucrose and the highest levels of catechin, procyanidin dimers, and a vanillic acid derivative. The control treatment, as well as organic and biodynamic productions, positively affected the levels of sugar content and caused a lower content of catechin and trans-p-coumaroylaldaric acids. Beans from the conventional production system contained the lowest levels of fructose, glucose, ascorbic acid, and many phenolics from various groups.