Agricultural and Food Science

Trade-offs between carbon conservation and profitability in crop cultivation: unlocking potential through diversifying crop allocations regionally

2024-11-25T08:09:02+02:00

Adjusting crop rotation is a key agricultural strategy to boost variable profit, enhance soil fertility, adapt to climate change, and mitigate farming risks. The aim of this paper is to assess the opportunities for simultaneously enhancing carbon balance and variable profit of crop cultivation through altering the allocation of crop use in a regional scale. Using a numerical optimization model for mineral soils in southern Finland, results show that careful diversifying of crop cultivation can enhance both carbon balance and profit compared to the current allocation. Including the lifecycle carbon footprint of nitrogen fertilizers further increases potential gains. Variable profit can rise by 75–207 € ha^-1 year^-1, while carbon balance improves by 70–336 kg C ha^-1 year^-1, depending on the weighting of economic and climate outcomes. Changes can be made without significantly increasing fixed costs of cultivation. Optimal strategies include reducing spring crops and fodder grass while increasing nitrogen-fixing grasses and high-profit crops like clover grass, green manure, potato, and sugar beet. Sensitivity analysis highlighted the importance of higher yields for enhanced outcomes, emphasizing the need to enhance forage grass, clover grass, and green manure yields for carbon balance and forage grass, potato, sugar beet, and spring crop yields for increased variable profit. Investments in infrastructure, marketing, and innovative food products are essential to promote local crop diversity and incentivize farmers to utilize and test new crops on a farm.

Effects of Spray Drying and Lactic Acid Fermentation on the Technological Characteristics of Yellow and Green Pea (Pisum sativum L.) Protein Products

2024-11-11T11:51:20+02:00

This research evaluates a pH-shifting and drying process for producing powdered protein products from yellow and green peas (Pisum sativum L.), aiming to enhance their technological characteristics. In the precipitation stage, lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus lantarum and Lactobacillus lactis) served as a generally recognized safe precipitant agent. The fine fraction (<150 µm) from yellow and green peas milling acted as an encapsulant/adjuvant agent in the drying stage. Results showed high process productivity (0.41–0.51 kg protein product/kg pea flour) and low specific water consumption (52.58–62.39 kg water/kg protein product) with this approach. Variations in processing parameters affected protein content, yield, and specific water consumption. Significant differences were observed in wetting time, water activity, flowability (Carr index), cohesiveness (Hausner index), density, particle size, and colour of the protein products, depending on the processing alternatives. This flexibility allows tailoring the properties of the powdered protein product for various food technology applications.

Spatial dynamics of T-2 and HT-2 toxins in Swedish oats

2024-08-19T16:03:15+03:00

The contents of T-2 and HT-2 toxins (T2+HT2) were analysed in 677 samples of oats delivered to silos in Sweden during the years 2020─2022. The spatial and temporal variation patterns in the prevalence of elevated T2+HT2 contents were explored and the covariation with temperature means or precipitation sums computed for windows of 15 days and T2+HT2 levels in the previous year were tested. There was a statistically significant spatial variation structure (Moran’s I; p< 0.05) in two of the years, and high T2+HT2 content was positively related to high content the previous year (p< 0.001). There were positive correlations between T2+HT2 content and warm weather in July and negative correlations with precipitation in May and July in two of the years. This is the first time a pronounced regional variability for T2+HT2 is presented. The results can be valuable when searching for safe regions to produce grains intended for food for infants. In a sampling campaign in 11 fields, it was found that T2+HT2-levels can vary substantially within fields.

Yield and protein composition in seeds of four buckwheat (Fagopyrum sp.) cultivars cropped in Sweden

2024-11-26T10:02:53+02:00

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum sp.) is increasingly favoured for its nutritional composition and overall health benefits in Sweden. However, buckwheat cultivation in Sweden is low. This project evaluated the cultivation of four cultivars of common buckwheat in Scandinavian cropping conditions over two years, employing standard sowing methods and harvesting techniques. The results showed that a seeding rate of 200 seeds per m² was sufficient to achieve a yield comparable with other studies. There were no significant differences in germination rate and number of plants per m² between buckwheat cultivars, while significant differences were observed in maturation time and yield. The average yield of buckwheat (common or Tartary) varied from 724 kg ha^-1 (“Darja”) to 3 276 kg ha^-1 (“Panda”) in 2021, and from 2 587 kg ha^-1 (“Kora”) to 3 133 kg ha^-1 (“Tartary buckwheat”) in 2022. All buckwheat cultivars had a protein content in the seeds of approximately 110 g kg^-1 of dry matter and were composed of a well-balanced amino acid profile. Our results indicate that the Swedish geographic latitude and meteorological conditions were suitable for achieving high buckwheat yields for some cultivars.