Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2024
Authors
Paal Krokene Beatrix Alsanius Jorunn Børve Daniel Flø Bjørn Arild Hatteland Erik J. Joner Lawrence Richard Kirkendall Christer Magnusson Mogens Nicolaisen Line Nybakken Johan Stenberg Selamawit Tekle Gobena Kristine Bakke Westergaard Sandra A. I. WrightAbstract
Background: The Norwegian Environment Agency (Miljødirektoratet) and the Norwegian Food Safety Authority (Mattilsynet) tasked the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment (Vitenskapskomiteen for mat og miljø, VKM) to provide a scientific opinion identifying which growing media associated with import of live plants pose the greatest risk of introducing non-native species to Norway. VKM was also asked to assess how effective various risk-reducing measures are to prevent such introductions. In this report, we focus on the introduction of plant pests. Trade in plants for planting is a large and complex international business where live plants are grown in some areas and shipped to other areas where they are intended to be planted or replanted. Traded plants are usually shipped with associated growing media. Long-lived plants, like trees and bushes, may be imported to the EU (e.g., from Asia) and traded through different countries for several years of on-growth before being shipped to Norway. Long production cycles, partly in outdoor nurseries, suggest that the import of live plants with soil or other growing media into Norway comes with a high probability of introducing plant pests. Such pests could cause severe harm to Norwegian plant health and impact both agriculture and natural ecosystems. In this scientific opinion, we describe the most used growing media and assess the risks associated with these. We further evaluate what types of plants and which exporting countries are considered to pose the highest risks for introducing plant pests. Finally, we describe different risk reduction options and assess the effectiveness of current Norwegian regulations as a tool to reduce risks. Altogether, this assessment provides a comprehensive overview of the potential risks involved in importing soil and other growing media associated with plants for planting and of possible strategies for mitigating these risks. Key findings: Growing media constituents: The most used organic growing media constituents are peat, wood fiber, and compost, but a great array of other constituents is also used. In this report, we have focused on organic constituents, as these are frequently colonized by living organisms when sourced and may support pest species by acting as a food source or as a sheltering environment that provides water, oxygen, and other crucial factors for pest survival. Growing media as a plant pest carrier: Even though most growing media constituents initially are sterile or free from any plant pests, the processes of mixing, potting, plant cultivation, transport, and storage can easily allow contamination by and propagation of pests underway from a primary source to a customer in Norway. Many organisms can colonize and survive in growing media under conditions primarily designed to keep plants alive. Growing media thus poses a risk of introducing plant pests to Norway when such media are imported together with live plants. Identified pest species: Organisms that can arrive with the import of live plants and associated growing media will include organisms that are not plant pests, known plant pests, regulated pests, and species that may be problematic even though they are not currently listed as quarantine pests. By screening two international databases (CABI, 2022; EPPO, 2024b) and performing a structured literature search, we identified a total of 651 pest species, most of which are not present in Norway, that may be associated with plants imported from Europe with soil or other growing media (154 species from CABI, 87 from EPPO, and 410 from the literature search). Due to time limitations, only 89 species were assessed for their association with soil and growing media. This evaluation included 20 species from CABI, 24 from EPPO, and 45 from the literature search, as detailed in Appendix 5. Climate suitability analyses were carried out .........
Authors
Karin Juul Hesselsøe Olle Markusson Maria Viking Anne Friederike Borchert Trygve S. Aamlid Atle Revheim Hansen Lars Henrik Nielsen Markus Rehnström Janne Lehto Bjarni HannessonAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Veronica Ski-Berg Lina Ingeborgrud Ellen-Marie Forsberg Nhat Strøm-Andersen Anne-Grete Haugen Hege SørlieAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Longer growing season has replaced two-cut with three-cut system even at higher latitudes and has an impact of persistency and use of seed mixtures. This on-going study is searching for the most appropriate seed mixtures that persist over time in a three-cut system. Six grassland seed mixtures were established at Tjøtta, 65°N coast, 11 m a.s.l in 2016, with two (2017) or three annual cuts (2018-2023) using organic fertiliser, in total 170 kg N ha–1 year–1. Four seed mixtures contained timothy (P. pratense), 30–45% whereas two seed mixtures were based on perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne). Other grass species as well as red (Trifolium pratense) and white (T. repens) clover constituted the remaining proportion of the mixtures. The species proportion in each seed mixture was determined in spring cut in 2019 and 2022. Results for seven production years show differences for dry matter yield (DMY), DMY stability and species persistence in space and time in favour of Lolium-containing mixtures with greater DMY in all production years and with lower interannual coefficient of variation (CV%) than timothy-based seed mixtures, indicating potential species adaptability to Nordic maritime climate. Decrease of timothy proportion in the mixtures suggest negative effects of three-cut system.
Authors
Marie-Christin Wimmler Nadezhda Nadezhdina Hannah Bowen Susana Alvarado-Barrientos Teresa David Gabriela Fontenla-Razzetto Britt Kniesel Holger Lange Roman Mathias Link Yang Liu Jorge López-Portillo Clara Pinto Junbin Zhao Alejandra G. VovidesAbstract
1. Sap flow measurements are fundamental to understanding water use in trees and could aid in predicting climate change effects on forest function. Deriving knowledge from such measurements requires empirical calibrations and upscaling methods to translate thermometric recordings to tree water use. Here, we developed a user-friendly open-source application, the Sap Flow Analyzer (SFA), which estimates sap flow rates and tree water use from the heat field deformation (HFD) instruments. 2. The SFA incorporates four key features to ensure maximum accuracy and reproducibility of sap flow estimates: diagnosis diagrams to assess data patterns visually, regression models implemented to increase accuracy when estimating K (the main HFD parameter), three approaches to upscale sap flow rates to whole-tree water use and visualization of the input parameters' uncertainty. Thirteen participants were given three raw datasets and assigned data processing tasks using the SFA user guide, from estimating sapwood depth to scaling sap flow rates to whole-tree water use to assess the reproducibility and applicability of the SFA. 3. Participants' results were reasonably consistent and independent of their background in using the SFA, R, or HFD method. The results showed lower variability for high flow rates (SD: mean 1% vs. 10%). K estimates and sapwood depth differentiation were the primary sources of variability, which in turn was mainly caused by the user's chosen scaling method. 4. The SFA provides an easy way to visualize and process sap flow and tree water use data from HFD measurements. It is the first free and open software tool for HFD users. The ability to trace analysis steps ensures reproducibility, increasing transparency and consistency in data processing. Developing tools such as the SFA and masked trials are essential for more precise workflows and improved quality and comparability of HFD sap flow datasets.
Authors
Erico Kutchartt José Ramón González-Olabarria Antoni Trasobares Núria Aquilué Juan Guerra-Hernández Leónia Nunes Ana Catarina Sequeira Brigite Botequim Marius Hauglin Palaiologos Palaiologou Adrian Cardil Martino Rogai Vassil Vassilev Francois Pimont Olivier Martin-Ducup Francesco PirottiAbstract
Canopy base height (CBH) and canopy bulk density (CBD) are forest canopy fuel parameters that are key for modeling the behavior of crown wildfires. In this work, we map them at a pan-European scale for the year 2020, producing a new dataset consisting of two raster layers containing both variables at an approximate resolution of 100 m. Spatial data from Earth observation missions and derived down-stream products were retrieved and processed using artificial intelligence to first estimate a map of aboveground biomass (AGB). Allometric models were then used to estimate the spatial distribution of CBH using the canopy height values as explanatory variables and CBD using AGB values. Ad-hoc allometric models were defined for this study. Data provided by FIRE-RES project partners and acquired through field inventories was used for validating the final products using an independent dataset of 804 ground-truth sample plots. The CBH and CBD raster maps have, respectively, the following accuracy regarding specific metrics reported from the modeling procedures: (i) coefficient of correlation (R) of 0.445 and 0.330 (p-value < 0.001); (ii) root mean square of error (RMSE) of 3.9 m and 0.099 kg m−3; and (iii) a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 61% and 76%. Regarding CBD, the accuracy metrics improved in closed canopies (canopy cover > 80%) to R = 0.457, RMSE = 0.085, and MAPE = 59%. In short, we believe that the degree of accuracy is reasonable in the resulting maps, producing CBH and CBD datasets at the pan-European scale to support fire mitigation and crown fire simulations.
Authors
Emil Sandström Tove Ortman Christine A Watson Jan Bengtsson Clara Gustafsson Göran BergkvistAbstract
One of the major challenges facing agricultural and food systems today is the loss of agrobiodiversity. Considering the current impasse of preventing the worldwide loss of crop diversity, this paper highlights the possibility for a radical reorientation of current legal seed frameworks that could provide more space for alternative seed systems to evolve which centre on norms that support on-farm agrobiodiversity. Understanding the underlying norms that shape seed commons are important, since norms both delimit and contribute to what ultimately will constitute the seeds and who will ultimately have access to the seeds and thus to the extent to which agrobiodiversity is upheld and supported. This paper applies a commoning approach to explore the underpinning norms of a Swedish seed commons initiative and discusses the potential for furthering agrobiodiversity in the context of wider legal and authoritative discourses on seed enclosure. The paper shows how the seed commoning system is shaped and protected by a particular set of farming norms, which allows for sharing seeds among those who adhere to the norms but excludes those who will not. The paper further illustrates how farmers have been able to navigate fragile legal and economic pathways to collectively organize around landrace seeds, which function as an epistemic farming community, that maintain landraces from the past and shape new landraces for the present, adapted to diverse agro-ecological environments for low-input agriculture. The paper reveals how the ascribed norms to the seed commons in combination with the current seed laws set a certain limit to the extent to which agrobiodiversity is upheld and supported and discusses why prescriptions of “getting institutions right” for seed governance are difficult at best, when considering the shifting socio-nature of seeds. To further increase agrobiodiversity, the paper suggests future seed laws are redirected to the sustenance of a proliferation of protected seed commoning systems that can supply locally adapted plant material for diverse groups of farmers and farming systems.
Authors
Fernanda Leiva Florent Abdelghafour Muath K Alsheikh Nina Elisabeth Nagy Jahn Davik Aakash ChawadeAbstract
Common scab (CS) is a major bacterial disease causing lesions on potato tubers, degrading their appearance and reducing their market value. To accurately grade scab-infected potato tubers, this study introduces “ScabyNet”, an image processing approach combining color-morphology analysis with deep learning techniques. ScabyNet estimates tuber quality traits and accurately detects and quantifies CS severity levels from color images. It is presented as a standalone application with a graphical user interface comprising two main modules. One module identifies and separates tubers on images and estimates quality-related morphological features. In addition, it enables the extraction of tubers as standard tiles for the deep-learning module. The deep-learning module detects and quantifies the scab infection into five severity classes related to the relative infected area. The analysis was performed on a dataset of 7154 images of individual tiles collected from field and glasshouse experiments. Combining the two modules yields essential parameters for quality and disease inspection. The first module simplifies imaging by replacing the region proposal step of instance segmentation networks. Furthermore, the approach is an operational tool for an affordable phenotyping system that selects scab-resistant genotypes while maintaining their market standards.
Authors
Pia Heltoft Thomsen Karin Juul Hesselsøe Hannesson Bjarni Karin Normann Per Rasmussen Michelle DaCosta Eric Watkins Andrew Hollman Anne Friederike Borchert Trygve S. Aamlid Tatsiana Espevig Trond Olav Pettersen Jørgen HornslienAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) is a commercially important forest tree species in many Eurasian countries. Its wood has been commonly utilized for production of construction timber. In Sweden, a breeding program was launched in 1950s to improve Scots pine trees to better suit industrial requirements. The emphasis was mainly put on improving stem volume, vitality, stem straightness and branching characteristics whilst wood quality was neglected. However, since some of the important wood quality traits are negatively correlated with the prioritized volume production, the continuation of such an approach could in a long run lead to irreversible deterioration of wood quality. In our study, we focused on wood quality traits that are relevant for construction timber – wood density, stiffness, strength, grain angle and sawn-board shape stability (crook, bow and twist). We linked wood quality traits nondestructively assessed on standing trees with those measured on sawn boards. We estimated narrow-sense heritabilities, genetic correlations and correlated responses to selection with the aim of identifying reliable techniques for wood quality assessment on standing trees and proposing suitable strategies for incorporating wood quality traits into the breeding program. We have concluded that standing-tree drilling resistance, acoustic velocity and grain angle are good predictors of wood density, wood stiffness & strength, and sawn-board twisting, respectively. Taking into account the long-term development on wood market, we are proposing an inclusion of wood density in the breeding program, in the way that it will be retained at the current levels rather than increased, which would also positively affect wood stiffness and strength. Furthermore, we are suggesting to consider grain angle as a breeding trait although more research is needed to unravel its underlying biological mechanism.