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
Sigmund Hågvar Ronny Steen Daniel FløAbstract
Nine species of carabid beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae) were pitfall-trapped during two years in an alpine glacier foreland of southern Norway. A two-year (biennial) life cycle was documented for Nebria nivalis (Paykull, 1790), N. rufescens (Ström, 1768), and Patrobus septentrionis Dejean, 1828. This was based on the simultaneous hibernation of larvae and adults. In P. septentrionis, both larvae and adults showed a considerable activity beneath snow. A limited larval material of Amara alpina (Paykull, 1790) and A. quenseli (Schönherr, 1806) from the snow-free period indicated larval hibernation. A. quenseli was, however, not synchronized with respect to developmental stages, and its life cycle was difficult to interpret. Measurements of claw lengths in eight species showed a considerable wearing during adult life. The data indicated that some individuals might hibernate a second time and thus experience two egg-laying seasons. Wearing of mandible tooth was not suited as age indictor in Nebria nivalis and N. rufescens, since some individuals hatched with a small tooth. Supplied with literature data, a “niche profile” is presented for each species. The most important ecological factors that contributed to niche segregation were: preference for vegetation-free ground, occurrence along the successional and time gradient, humidity or temperature preference, nocturnal versus diurnal activity, flight ability, food habits, phenology, and the ability to be active under snow.
Abstract
Air pollution has become a global problem and affects nearly all of us. Most of the pollution is of anthropogenic origin and therefore we are obliged to improve this situation. In solving this problem basically our only partners are plants with their enormous biologically active surface area. Plants themselves are also victims of air pollution but because they are sedentary they developed very efficient defence mechanisms, which can also be exploited to improve the humanosphere. For their life processes plants require intensive gas exchange, during which air contaminants are accumulated on leaf surfaces or absorbed into the tissues. Some of the pollutants are included by plants in their own metabolism while others are sequestered. In some plant species, the processes of removing pollutants from the air is conducted in a very efficient way and therefore they are used in the environmental friendly biotechnology called phytoremediation. For urban areas, outdoor phytoremediation is recommended while indoor phytoremediation can be applied in our homes and workplaces. Because in near future purifying outdoor air to protect human health and well-being does not look the most promising, an important and increasing role will be played by indoor phytoremediation.
Abstract
Currently, sugar snap peas are harvested manually. In high-cost countries like Norway, such a labour-intensive practise implies particularly large costs for the farmer. Hence, automated alternatives are highly sought after. This project explored a concept for robotic autonomous identification and tracking of sugar snap pea pods. The approach was based on a combination of visible–near infrared reflection measurements and image analysis, along with visual servoing. A proof-of-concept harvesting platform was implemented by mounting a robotic arm with hand-mounted sensors on a mobile unit. The platform was tested under plastic greenhouse conditions on potted plants of the sugar snap pea variety Cascadia using LED-lights and a partial shade. The results showed that it was feasible to differentiate the pods from the surrounding foliage using the light reflection at the spectral range around 970 nm combined with elementary image segmentation and shape modelling methods. The proof-of-concept harvesting platform was tested on 48 representative agricultural environments comprising dense canopy, varying pod sizes, partial occlusions and different working distances. A set of 104 images were analysed during the teleoperation experiment. The true positive detection rate was 93 and 87% for images acquired at long distances and at close distances, respectively. The robot arm achieved a success rate of 54% for autonomous visual servoing to a pre-grasp pose around targeted pods on 22 untouched scenarios. This study shows the potential of developing a prototype robot for semi-automated sugar snap pea harvesting.
Authors
Kris Van Looy Johan Bouma Michael Herbst John Koestel Budiman Minasny Umakant Mishra Carsten Montzka Attila Nemes Yakov A. Pachepsky José Padarian Marcel G. Schaap Brigitta Tóth Anne Verhoef Jan Vanderborght Martine J. van der Ploeg Lutz Weihermüller Steffen Zacharias Yonggen Zhang Harry VereeckenAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Greeley Beck Emil Engelund Thybring Lisbeth Garbrecht Thygesen Callum Aidan Stephen HillAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Shota Masumoto Masaki Uchida Motoaki Tojo Maria-Luz Herrero Akira S. Mori Satoshi ImuraAbstract
In Arctic tundra, plant pathogens have substantial effects on the growth and survival of hosts, and impacts on the carbon balance at the scale of ecological systems. To understand these effects on carbon dynamics across different scales including plant organ, individual, population and ecosystem, we focused on two primary factors: host productivity reduction and carbon consumption by the pathogen. We measured the effect of the pathogen on photosynthetic and respiratory activity in the host. We also measured respiration and the amount of carbon in the pathogen. We constructed a model based on these two factors, and calculated pathogenic effects on the carbon balance at different organismal and ecological scales. We found that carbon was reduced in infected leaves by 118% compared with healthy leaves; the major factor causing this loss was pathogenic carbon consumption. The carbon balance at the population and ecosystem levels decreased by 35% and 20%, respectively, at an infection rate of 30%. This case study provides the first evidence that a host plant can lose more carbon through pathogenic carbon consumption than through a reduction in productivity. Such a pathogenic effect could greatly change ecosystem carbon cycling without decreasing annual productivity.
Authors
Nesrin Colak Anja K. Primetta Kaisu R. Riihinen Laura Jaakola Jiři Grúz Miroslav Strnad Hülya Torun Faik Ahmet AyazAbstract
Bilberries and their products are popular worldwide and represent a very interesting source of dietary antioxidants. Berries of eight different-colored and non-pigmented bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus L.) samples from Finland were evaluated in terms of antioxidant capacity and total phenolic compounds (range, 220.06 – 3715.21 mg/100 g dw) and total monomeric anthocyanin (range, 206.18 – 867.52 mg/100 g dw) contents. Delphinidin (range, 5915.93–18108.39 μg /g dw) was the major anthocyanin moiety, while sinapic acid was the major phenolic acid in the free form (range, 0.01 – 6.06 μg /g dw), and p-coumaric acid in the ester (range, 26.39 – 110.78 μg /g dw), glycoside (range, 15.83 – 57.73 μg /g dw) and ester-bound (range, 2.32 – 14.20 μg /g dw) forms. The white colored berry samples did not contain any anthocyanins, but the colored berries did contain them. Antioxidant capacity was much higher in colored (pink to blue/black) berry samples than in the white sample, and it was more related to the total phenolic concentration rather than to the anthocyanin concentration. This is the first time that these different-colored berry phenotypes of bilberry (V. myrtillus L.) have been analyzed within the same study.
Abstract
The absorption of anthropogenic CO 2 by the oceans is causing a reduction in the pH of the surface waters termed ocean acidification (OA). This could have substantial effects on marine coastal environments where fleshy (non-calcareous) macroalgae are dominant primary producers and ecosystem engineers. Few OA studies have focused on the early life stages of large macroalgae such as kelps. This study evaluated the effects of seawater pH on the ontogenic development of meiospores of the native kelp Macrocystis pyrifera and the invasive kelp Undaria pinnatifi da , in south-eastern New Zealand. Meiospores of both kelps were released into four seawater pH treatments (pH T 7.20, extreme OA predicted for 2300; pH T 7.65, OA predicted for 2100; pH T 8.01, ambient pH; and pH T 8.40, pre-industrial pH) and cultured for 15 d. Meiospore germination, germling growth rate, and gametophyte size and sex ratio were monitored and measured. Exposure to reduced pH T (7.20 and 7.65) had pos itive effects on germling growth rate and gametophyte size in both M. pyrifera and U. pinnatifida , whereas, higher pH T (8.01 and 8.40) reduced the gametophyte size in both kelps. Sex ratio of gametophytes of both kelps was biased toward females under all pH T treatm ents, except for U. pinnatifida at pH T 7.65. Germling growth rate under OA was significantly higher in M. pyrifera compared to U. pinnatifida but gametophyte development was equal for both kelps under all seawater pH T treatments, indicating that the microscopic stages of the native M. pyrifera and the invasive U. pinnatifida will respond similarly to OA.
Authors
Ryan Bright Edouard Davin Thomas O'Halloran Julia Pongratz Kaiguang Zhao Alessandro CescattiAbstract
Following a land cover and land management change (LCMC), local surface temperature responds to both a change in available energy and a change in the way energy is redistributed by various non-radiative mechanisms. However, the extent to which non-radiative mechanisms contribute to the local direct temperature response for different types of LCMC across the world remains uncertain. Here, we combine extensive records of remote sensing and in situ observation to show that non-radiative mechanisms dominate the local response in most regions for eight of nine common LCMC perturbations. We find that forest cover gains lead to an annual cooling in all regions south of the upper conterminous United States, northern Europe, and Siberia—reinforcing the attractiveness of re-/afforestation as a local mitigation and adaptation measure in these regions. Our results affirm the importance of accounting for non-radiative mechanisms when evaluating local land-based mitigation or adaptation policies.