Submissions

Author Guidelines

Manuscripts should be written in a font size of 12 and with a line spacing of 1.5, and each page and line should be numbered. Use continuous line numbering throughout the manuscript. Manuscripts of articles and reviews should not exceed 20 pages (including tables and figures) in A4 format. Mini-reviews should be balanced and an excessive focus on the authors' work should be avoided. Mini-reviews should be no longer than 10 pages, contain no more than two figures or tables, and contain about 60 references. The manuscript of Research notes should not exceed 10 pages in A4 format. Letters to the Editor should not exceed 500 words.

The use of AI/Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, should be documented in the materials. Authors are responsible and accountable for the contents of the work and the absence of plagiarism.

The text should be divided as follows:

1) The title of the manuscript, the name(s) and e-mail address(es) of the author(s), the name(s) and address(es) of the institution(s) where the work originated, and, if necessary, the current address of the corresponding author.

2) Abstract not exceeding 170 words. It should include the main information and findings of the article and provide a summary of each of the main sections of the paper.

3) Key words (4–6). These should be provided and selected according to the CAB Thesaurus. Words from the title should not also be listed as key words.

4) Text consisting of the following sections: Introduction, Material and methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgements, References, and legends to figures and tables. The aims of the study should appear at the end of the Introduction. Research notes should consist of the same sections (Introduction, Material and methods, etc.) as articles but reviews need not follow the same format. Note that no formatting should be used (e.g. indenting, hyphenation, or underlining).

5) Tables containing numerical data should be kept to a minimum, should include only essential information, and should be cross-referenced in the text. Number the tables sequentially in Arabic numerals and place the tables within the text but prepare all tables on separate sheets also. Each table should feature a concise self-explanatory legend, and abbreviations should be defined directly below the tables. Decimal points should be marked using points (full stop, period), not commas. Tables should be created with the table tool of a word processor or with Microsoft Excel. When preparing tables with a word processor, please note that the tabulator key, not the space bar, should be used to line up the columns.

6) Figures should be consecutively numbered in Arabic numerals and placed within the text at the appropriate points with their legends.  Please, provide the graphs in Microsoft Excel, EPS or PDF format. Digital photos should be provided in JPG format with high resolution.

7) Equations should be typed in font size 11, preferably either Calibri or Cambria math.

Abbreviations and nomenclature

The International System of Units (SI) should be used. Accepted common names of active ingredients of chemical formulations should be used in preference to trade names. Papers should conform to internationally recognised codes of nomenclature. 

Scientific names of species written in italics should be included in the manuscript. The scientific name with attribution (e.g. Helianthus annuus L.) should be provided when a species is first mentioned in the main text (not the title or summary). If a scientific name is used repeatedly in the manuscript, the genus name should be abbreviated to its initial (e.g. H. annuus) after the first full mention, provided there is no possibility of confusion with another scientific name. If the scientific name starts a sentence, the full name should be used. The subspecies name should be written in italics, e.g. Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis.

Domestic plants and animals: The common name should preferably be used throughout the paper. The name of the crop cultivar (or accession id) or animal breed should be included in the manuscript. Hybrid species should be indicated with a multiplication sign (×), for example: Peppermint (Mentha × piperita).

Non-domestic plants and animals: Scientific names should be used throughout the paper. The English common name may also be given in the first mention in the text, e.g. annual meadow-grass Poa annua L.

Microbes: In the of absence of a pure culture, i.e. where the bacterium has not been isolated and grown in vitro, a provisional status Candidatus should be used. The word Candidatus, but not the following species name should be written in italics, e.g., ‘Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus’. The bacterial strains also need to be mentioned. Virus names are not written in italics, e.g. raspberry bushy dwarf virus (RBDV).

 References

References in the text

References in the text should consist of the name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication. Please note that the name(s) of the author(s) should be written in lowercase.

Examples:
Martin et al. (1997) did not find any clear association between milk coagulation properties and sensory properties of cheeses.
First, we can get consistent estimators in the pooled data under fairly general conditions, and pooling the data raises only minor statistical complications (Wooldridge 2000).
Soil compaction has become a problem of major proportions in agriculture today (Soane and Ouwerkerk 1994a) causing reduced yield, economic and environmental damage and poorer soil workability.
Potato A potyvirus (PVA) and potato Y potyvirus (PVY) belong to the large and agriculturally important family Potyviridae (Shukla et al. 1994).
Growth rate needs to be monitored because the feeding level before puberty can affect mammary development (Sejrsen et al. 1982, Harrison et al. 1983, Niezen et al. 1992, Mäntysaari et al. 1995) and hence the subsequent milk-producing ability of heifers (Little and Kay 1979, Foldager and Sejrsen 1991).
Prochloraz is the most common active ingredient among fungicides used in cereals in Finland (Savela and Hynninen 2004, Plant Production Inspection Centre 2005).

List of references

References should be listed in alphabetical order according to the name of the first author. When no author or agency responsible for a publication is mentioned, the reference should be listed under the title of the work. The name(s) of the author(s) should be written in lowercase. Journal titles are written out in full (i.e. cited in unabbreviated form). Please note that titles of books are written in italics. The following are examples of reference listings.

Order of references

Rinne, M. 2000.
Rinne, M., Hellämäki, M., Nousiainen, J., Aura, E. & Huhtanen, P. 1999b.
Rinne, M. & Huhtanen, P. 2000.
Rinne, M., Jaakkola, S. & Huhtanen, P. 1997.
Rinne, M., Jaakkola, S., Kaustell, K., Heikkilä, T. & Huhtanen, P. 1999a.
Rinne, M., Nykänen, A. & Ahvenjärvi, S. 1996.

Articles in a journal

Bereiter-Hahn, J. & Vöth, M. 1996. Distribution and dynamics of mitochondrial nucleoids in animal cells in culture. Experimental Biology Online 1: 4. Cited 24 June 1996. Updated 18 April 1996. http://science.springer.de/ebo/papers/1996/3-96c/ftc96_3.htm.
Heikkilä, T., Toivonen, V. & Mela, T. 1996. Effects of red clover-grass, grass, and annual ryegrass silages with two concentrate protein levels on milk production. Grassland Science in Europe 1: 447–450.
Hiilovaara-Teijo, M., Hannukkala, A., Griffith, M., Yu, X.-M. & Pihakaski-Maunsbach, K. 1999. Snow-mold-induced apoplastic proteins in winter rye leaves lack antifreeze activity. Plant Physiology 121: 665–674.
Rasmussen, M.D., Bjerring, M., Justesen, P. & Jepsen, L. 2002. Milk quality on Danish farms with automatic milking systems. Journal of Dairy Science 85: 2869–2878.

An article in a book

Rajala, A. & Peltonen-Sainio, P. 2000. Manipulating yield potential in cereals by growth regulators. In: Basra, A.S. (ed.). Growth regulators in crop production. Binghamton, New York, USA: Food Products Press. p. 27–70.

A book with one or more authors

ARC 1984. The nutrient requirements of ruminant livestock. Supplement No. 1. Technical review by an Agricultural Research Council working party, Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, Slough, UK. 45 p.
Møller, J., Thøgersen, R., Kjeldsen, A.M., Weisbjerg, M.R., Søegaard, K., Hvelplund, T. & Børsting, C.F. 2000. Fodermiddeltabel. Sammansætning og foderværdi af fodermidler til kvæg. Rapport 91. Århus: Landbrugets Rådgivningscenter. 52 p.
Varian, H. 1992. Microeconomic analysis. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 506 p.

Conference papers

Kuoppala, K., Ahvenjärvi, S., Rinne, M. & Vanhatalo, A. 2005. NDF digestion in dairy cows fed grass or red clover silages cut at two stages of growth. In: Park, R.S. & Stronge, M.D. (eds.). Silage production and utilisation. Proceedings of the 14th International Silage Conference, a satellite workshop of the 20th International Grassland Congress, in July in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers. p. 164.
Yli-Halla, M. 1994. Zinc adsorption and increase of plant zinc concentration upon zinc application in mineral soils of Finland. In: Transactions of the 15th World Congress of Soil Science. Acapulco, Mexico. 5b: 395–396.

Note: Use en dash (– longer than a hyphen) between page numbers in the reference list.

Checklist for Authors

All of the authors listed should be aware of the manuscript's submission.

Basic information

• Names of all the authors and their organizations appear and are identified using superscript numbers. Correspondence information must then be provided.
• Authors: First names in full (followed by other initials, if any) and surnames (“James T. Brown”, not: “J.T. Brown”) should be provided.
• Address: As complete as possible for each author.
• Use: Key words (separated by comma)
• Title: Capitalise only the first word of the title. Do not number headings.
• Only the first letter of the first word of any heading is capitalized unless the rules of English grammar dictate otherwise (“Material and methods” not: “Material and Methods”).
• Abstract: Should comprise only one paragraph. References to the literature are not permitted in abstract.
• Appendices: If only one appendix is present, it can be referred to in the text as “Appendix” with no number. Otherwise, appendices must be numbered.
• Footnotes are normally allowed only in tables and in exceptional circumstances in the text.

Markings

• Explain all the abbreviations when they first appear in the text.
• Use a dash (“–” longer than a hyphen) to denote a range of numbers in the text (i.e. between page numbers in the reference list) and as a minus symbol in subtraction (e.g. –25 °C). (Note: 5 – 2 is the same as five minus two; also, note the spaces before and after the dash).
• Use a hyphen (the shortest “-”) in hyphenation and compound words.
• Use the multiplication symbol “×” to denote multiplication rather than the letter “x“ or other symbols.
• Use a lowercase italic “p” to denote a p-value (level of significance). Verify this in the tables and figures also.
• In composite units, negative superscripts should be used instead of a stroke (i.e. “/”). Verify this in the tables and figures as well (e.g. use “3 mg kg^-1”, not “3 mg/kg”)
• Use no space between a number and its % symbol. (i.e. 30%).
• Use a space between a number and its °C symbol (i.e. 30 °C). Also, use the symbol “°” instead of the letter “o”.
• Always use decimal points, not commas.
• The 24-hour system should be used exclusively (i.e. “1700 h”, not “5 pm”).
• To denote Standard Deviation use SD not S.D. (Also, SE instead of S.E. and SEM instead of S.E.M.).
• Remove all bolding from the text.

References in the text

• Ensure that each reference cited in the text, tables, and legends is also listed in the reference list.
• When referring in the text to a publication by two authors, use “and” instead of an ampersand (i.e. the “&” symbol).
• For multi-author publications, use a comma “,” between references rather than a semi-colon (“;”). Do not bold references.
• For more than one reference in parentheses, use a comma (“,”) between references rather than a semi-colon (“;”).
• Do not use a comma (“,”) between the name of an author and the year of publication, as in (Samotus 1982)
• The Latin abbreviations “e.g.”, “i.e.” and “et al.” should not appear in italics.

Reference in the reference list

• Ensure that all references listed in the reference list are cited at least once in the text, tables or legends.
• List publications by two authors with an ampersand (“&”) instead of the word “and” between them (unlike references in the text). For more authors use “&” before the last author's surname.
• Do not use a comma (“,”) before the year of publication.
• If an author uses more than one first-name initial, use no space between them (e.g. “Black B.L.”, not “Black B. L.”)
• Do not translate the titles of non-English publications by yourself; rather, use the original foreign title as it appears in the original publication. Then add the language of publication in parentheses at the end of the reference information as follows: (in Finnish).
• Use the entire name of a journal, not its abbreviation.
• When alphabetizing names of authors, treat the letter “ä” as the letter “a” and the letter “ö” as the letter “o”.
• Treat particles such as “de”, “la”, “van”, “van de” and “von” as part of the author's surname (Note that the first letter is lowercase). Alphabetise according to the particle regardless of nationality.
• If several publications have the same first author, whether alone or with coauthors, list publications written by a single author before those with coauthors. List multiauthor publications in alphabetical order by the second author’s surname, regardless of the number of authors.
• Do not use parentheses around the year in the reference list.
• Do not use a comma (“,”) between the name of a journal and its volume number (e.g. Journal of Food Science 46, not Journal of Food Science, 46).
• Do not use issue numbers at all in the reference list, use only volume numbers.
• When referring to the electronic articles, give the full URL of the cited article.  When referring to internet material other than articles such as legislation, the date when the reference was accessed should also be given. You need not to include DOI numbers. An example “American Chemical Society 2007. http://www.cas.org/expertise/regsyst.html. Accessed 13 June 2009”. 
• Dates should be written according to the following format: day (in numbers, with no endings such as “th”), month (written in full as “January”), and year (unabbreviated as “2003”, not “03”).
• Always list page numbers or the total number of pages in the publication. For page abbreviations, use a single, lowercase “p.” with a full stop (or period) at the end of the reference information, after listing the total number of pages in the publication (e.g. “571 p.”). If you list a specific range of pages, then place the single “p.” before the range of pages (e.g. “p. 253−275”).

Language

• The manuscript should be revised by a native English speaker, preferably one familiar with the subject.
• In scientific writing, only two tenses are normally used: the simple present and the simple past. The use of “perfect tenses” (e.g. present perfect) and others (e.g. present continuous) should be minimised.

Tables and Figures

• Explain all abbreviations and superscripts used in the Tables or Figures directly below them. Ensure that all the footnote symbols appear in the Figure or Table in question.
• Explain all graphic symbols (e.g. squares, triangles, etc.) within the figure, not in the caption.
• All Figures and Tables should be comprehensible without reference to the main text.
• Tables and Figures (in separate series) are numbered consecutively according to the order of citation in the text.
• Tables and Figures must, upon their first appearance in the text, be referred to in numerical order.
• When listed in parentheses, figures, drawings, and photographs must always be referred to as “Fig.”, followed by a number, and tables as “Table” followed by a number.  When “Figure” or “Table” appears as part of a sentence, spell it out in full, as follows: “Figure 3 shows the nutritional content of wheat”.
• Figures should be prepared exclusively using black-and-white or grayscale settings. Use (grayscale) solid (not pattern) fillings.
• Label the axes in graphs.
• Use the same font for all figures and tables within them. Calibri is highly recommended.
• Only tables prepared with Microsoft software (Excel or Word -programs) are accepted.
• Tables prepared with Microsoft Word should be prepared with tabulators.
• When using the Table tool of your Microsoft Word program, do not insert line breaks (¶) or preceding/trailing spaces inside cells (i.e. a cell should contain only one line of text). New table rows should be created by adding new rows of table cells (even if some cells are left empty), rather than by hitting enter and creating new lines within existing cells. CR symbols (¶) cannot be present in any table cell. The number of cells in a table should equal the number of rows multiplied by the number of columns.
• Tables and Figures should be saved using the format(s) in which they were created using the “Save As” option in the “File” menu of the program, rather than converted after exporting to another format (e.g. doc, docx, or pdf).