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.
2017
Authors
Anna Kårlund Kati Hanhineva Marko Lehtonen Gordon J. McDougall Derek Stewart Reijo O. KarjalainenAbstract
BACKGROUND: The non-edible parts of horticultural crops, such as leaves, contain substantial amounts of valuable bioactive compounds which are currently only little exploited. For example, strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) leaves may be a promising bioresource for diverse health-related applications. However, product standardization sets a real challenge, especially when the leaf material comes from varying cultivars. The first step towards better quality control of berry fruit leaf-based ingredients and supplements is to understand metabolites present and their stability in d ifferent plant cultivars, so this study surveyed the distribution of potentially bioactive strawberry leaf metabolites in six different strawberry cultivars. Non-targeted metabolite profiling analysis using LC/qTOF-ESI-MS with data processing via principal component analysis and k-means clustering analysis was utilized to examine differences and commonalities between the leaf metabolite profiles. RESULTS: Quercetin and kaempferol derivatives were the dominant flavonol groups in strawberry leaves. Previously described and novel caffeic and chlorogenic acid derivatives were among the major phenolic acids. In addition, ellagitannins were one of the distinguishing compound classes in strawberry leaves. In general, strawberry leaves also contained high levels of octadecatrienoic acid derivatives, precursors of valuable odour compounds. CONCLUSION: The specific bioactive compounds found in the leaves of different strawberry cultivars offer the potential for the selection of optimized leaf materials for added-value food and non-food applications.
Abstract
We investigate a set of long-term river runoff time series at daily resolution from Brazil, monitored by the Agencia Nacional de Aguas. A total of 150 time series was obtained, with an average length of 65 years. Both long-term trends and human influence (water management, e.g. for power production) on the dynamical behaviour are analyzed. We use Horizontal Visibility Graphs (HVGs) to determine the individual temporal networks for the time series, and extract their degree and their distance (shortest path length) distributions. Statistical and information-theoretic properties of these distributions are calculated: robust estimators of skewness and kurtosis, the maximum degree occurring in the time series, the Shannon entropy, permutation complexity and Fisher Information. For the latter, we also compare the information measures obtained from the degree distributions to those using the original time series directly, to investigate the impact of graph construction on the dynamical properties as reflected in these measures. Focus is on one hand on universal properties of the HVG, common to all runoff series, and on site-specific aspects on the other. Results demonstrate that the assumption of power law behaviour for the degree distribtion does not generally hold, and that management has a significant impact on this distribution. We also show that a specific pretreatment of the time series conventional in hydrology, the elimination of seasonality by a separate z-transformation for each calendar day, is highly detrimental to the nonlinear behaviour. It changes long-term correlations and the overall dynamics towards more random behaviour. Analysis based on the transformed data easily leads to spurious results, and bear a high risk of misinterpretation.
Authors
Heli Fitzgerald Anna Palmé Mora Aronsson Dag Terje Filip Endresen Jens Weibull Åsmund Asdal Hjörtur Þorbjörnsson Morten Ramussen Birgitte Lund Elina KiviharjuAbstract
The Nordic Crop Wild Relative (CWR) checklist is a result from a joint Nordic project, "Ecosystem services: Genetic resources and crop wild relatives" (2015-2016) funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Genetic Resources Center (NordGen). A Crop Wild Relative (CWR) is a wild species that is closely related to a cultivated crop. This close relationship means that properties in a CWR can be transferred to the crop by traditional crossings. As modern cultivars may lack the desired variation, diversity found in CWRs can be central for adaptation to new demands on the crops.
Abstract
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Authors
Isabella Børja Douglas L. Godbold Jan Světlík Nina Elisabeth Nagy Roman Gebauer Josef Urban Daniel Volařík Holger Lange Paal Krokene Petr Čermák Toril Drabløs EldhusetAbstract
Global warming will most likely lead to increased drought stress in forest trees. We wanted to describe the adaptive responses of fine roots and fungal hyphae, at different soil depths, in a Norway spruce stand to long-term drought stress induced by precipitation exclusion over two growing seasons. We used soil cores, minirhizotrons and nylon meshes to estimate growth, biomass and distribution of fine roots and fungal hyphae at different soil depths. In control plots fine roots proliferated in upper soil layers, whereas in drought plots there was no fine root growth in upper soil layers and roots mostly occupied deeper soil layers. Fungal hyphae followed the same pattern as fine roots, with the highest biomass in deeper soil layers in drought plots. We conclude that both fine roots and fungal hyphae respond to long-term drought stress by growing into deeper soil layers.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Ievina SturiteAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Mette ThomsenAbstract
No abstract has been registered
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Abstract
This study describes the first Norwegian microbial source tracking (MST) approach for water quality control and pollution removal from catchment run-off in a nature-based treatment system (NBTS) with a constructed wetland. The applied MST tools combined microbial analyses and molecular tests to detect and define the source(s) and dominant origin(s) of faecal water contamination. Faecal indicator bacteria Escherichia coli and host-specific Bacteroidales 16 s rRNA gene markers have been employed. The study revealed that the newly developed contribution profiling of faecal origin derived from the Bacteroidales DNA could quantitatively distinguish between human and non-human pollution origins. Further, the outcomes of the MST test have been compared with the results of both physicochemical analyses and tests of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs). A strong positive correlation was discovered between the human marker and PPCPs. Gabapentin was the most frequently detected compound and it showed the uppermost positive correlation with the human marker. The study demonstrated that the NBTS performs satisfactorily with the removal of E. coli but not PPCPs. Interestingly, the presence of PPCPs in the water samples was not correlated with high concentrations of E. coli. Neither has the latter an apparent correlation with the human marker.