Cilj je provedenog istraživanja bio ispitati kakvi su efekti kongruentnosti osobnih i organizacijskih vrijednosti usmjerenih zadacima i usmjerenih ljudima na odanost organizaciji i na njezine ...komponente. Istraživanje je provedeno na prigodnom uzorku od 217 sudionika, zaposlenih u nekoliko srednjih i većih hrvatskih organizacija, koji su ispunili Upitnik organizacijske odanosti te Skalu osobnih i organizacijskih vrijednosti. Prikupljeni su podaci analizirani nizom polinomnih regresijskih analiza. Dobiveni rezultati pokazuju da kada su osobne i organizacijske vrijednosti usmjerene zadacima usklaðene, tada je njihova viša razina povezana s većom afektivnom odanošću. Neusklaðenost osobnih i organizacijskih vrijednosti usmjerenih na zadatke, i to takva da su organizacijske vrijednosti više od osobnih, povezana je s višom normativnom odanošću. Dodatno, normativna se odanost snažnije povećava s povećanjem ove neusklaðenosti. Ukupna odanost organizaciji veća je kada su osobne i organizacijske vrijednosti usmjerene na zadatke usklaðene i više izražene, kada je neusklaðenost takva da su organizacijske vrijednosti usmjerene na zadatke više od osobnih vrijednosti te kada je ta neusklaðenost više izražena. Kada se radi o efektima (ne)usklaðenosti osobnih i organizacijskih vrijednosti usmjerenih na ljude, dobiveni rezultati pokazuju da se normativna i ukupna odanost povećavaju kada je neusklaðenost takva da su organizacijske vrijednosti usmjerene na ljude više od osobnih vrijednosti.
European chestnut (
Castanea sativa
) is threatened by the invasive fungus
Cryphonectria parasitica,
which causes chestnut blight. The virulence of the fungus can be reduced by a group of mycoviruses ...that can spread among vegetatively compatible strains through hyphal anastomosis. Hypovirulent isolates are used as biocontrol agents, but their efficiency can be diminished by restricted hyphal anastomosis if the variability of vegetative compatibility (vc) types in a population is high. Sexual reproduction could increase the vc type diversity and further complicate biocontrol in a region. Therefore, knowledge of genetic diversity of
C. parasitica
is important to assess the effectiveness of a biological control program. The present study was performed in the Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano (South Tyrol) in northern Italy, where chestnut cultivation provides an additional income to farmers. The genetic characterization of
C. parasitica
isolates from 35 chestnut stands and one forest population in different districts of South Tyrol was performed based on the analysis of vegetative incompatibility loci, the mating type locus, and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. In this study, a total of 23 different vc types were found all over South Tyrol with a Shannon diversity index of 1.86. EU-2, EU-1, and EU-13 were the most widespread vc types comprising 51%, 13%, and 9% of the fungal isolates, respectively. Both mating types were present in the region with a ratio close to 1:1. Three different haplotypes were identified based on ITS sequence analysis, which pointed to two introduction events of the fungus to the region and allowed placing
C. parasitica
from South Tyrol into a larger phylogeographic context.
1 (CHV-1) has been widely studied and used as a biocontrol agent because of its ability to infect the chestnut blight fungus,
, and to reduce its virulence. Knowledge about the hypovirus, its ...presence, and diversity is completely lacking in South Tyrol (northern Italy), which may obstruct biocontrol measures for chestnut blight based on CHV-1. This work aimed to study the occurrence of CHV-1 infecting
in South Tyrol and to perform a genetic characterization of the hypovirus. In South Tyrol, CHV-1 was found to occur in 29.2% of the fungal isolates investigated, varying in frequency between different regions and chestnut stands. Twenty-three haplotypes based on partial cDNA (complementary DNA) sequences of open reading frame (ORF)-A and 30 haplotypes based on partial cDNA sequences of ORF-B were identified among 47 and 56 hypovirulent fungal isolates, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis showed that all the haplotypes belonged to the Italian subtype of CHV-1 and that they were closely related to the populations of Italy, Switzerland, Croatia and Slovenia. Evidence of recombination was not found in the sequences and point mutations were the main source of diversity. Overall, this study indicated that the prevalence of CHV-1 in South Tyrol is low compared to many other central and western European populations and determined a need to actively impose biocontrol measures. Using sequence analysis, we identified some variants of interest of CHV-1 that should be studied in detail for their potential use in biocontrol.
Heat shock transcriptional factors (Hsfs) play a crucial role in plant responses to biotic and abiotic stress conditions and in plant growth and development. Apple (Malus domestica Borkh) is an ...economically important fruit tree whose genome has been fully sequenced. So far, no detailed characterization of the Hsf gene family is available for this crop plant.
A genome-wide analysis was carried out in Malus domestica to identify heat shock transcriptional factor (Hsf) genes, named MdHsfs. Twenty five MdHsfs were identified and classified in three main groups (class A, B and C) according to the structural characteristics and to the phylogenetic comparison with Arabidopsis thaliana and Populus trichocarpa. Chromosomal duplications were analyzed and segmental duplications were shown to have occurred more frequently in the expansion of Hsf genes in the apple genome. Furthermore, MdHsfs transcripts were detected in several apple organs, and expression changes were observed by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis in developing flowers and fruits as well as in leaves, harvested from trees grown in the field and exposed to the naturally increased temperatures.
The apple genome comprises 25 full length Hsf genes. The data obtained from this investigation contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of the Hsf gene family in apple, and provide the basis for further studies to dissect Hsf function during development as well as in response to environmental stimuli.
Cryphonectria parasitica, which causes chestnut blight, is one of the most important pathogens of forest trees. In Europe, mycovirus-mediated biocontrol is the most efficient method to control the ...disease but can be impeded by the lack of information about the population structure of the fungus within a region. In particular, sexual reproduction and the new introduction of the pathogen can complicate biocontrol strategies. For this reason, this study aimed to determine the population structure of C. parasitica, which causes chestnut blight, in the northern Italian region of South Tyrol, using eleven multilocus microsatellite markers. Fifty-one haplotypes were found across South Tyrol, belonging to three divergent clusters. Recombinant genotypes demonstrated that sexual reproduction occurs across the different clusters. The most dominant genotypes in the region were also the most dominant in neighboring areas, such as Switzerland, northern Italy and France. All of the clusters from South Tyrol were related to the Italian genotype pool and are thought to have been introduced from northern Italian and other European populations due to naturally occurring gene flow or human-mediated introduction. At least three separate introduction events of C. parasitica might have happened in South Tyrol that could be separated by time. This study demonstrated a high genetic diversity of C. parasitica in South Tyrol and helped to shed light on the sexual reproduction and introduction events in the local populations.
Recently,
Cadophora
luteo-olivacea
has been reported as a post-harvest pathogen of side rot of apple (
Malus
domestica
) in Latvia, and of pear (
Pyrus
communis
) in Italy and the Netherlands. In ...2018 and 2019, in South Tyrol (northern Italy) 11 fungal cultures, identified as
C.
luteo-olivacea
based on ITS (internal transcribed spacer region) sequence data, were obtained from apple fruit displaying post-harvest side rot symptoms. The fruit were sampled in packinghouses representing different apple growing areas of South Tyrol. For a more accurate taxonomic assignment, two additional molecular genetic loci,
β
-tubulin (TUB2) and translation elongation factor 1
α
(TEF-1
α
), of seven isolates were amplified and sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis based on multi-locus DNA sequence data confirmed that isolates from apple fruit with side rot symptoms indeed represented
C.
luteo-olivacea
. A pathogenicity test performed on apple fruit of ‘Golden Delicious’ confirmed the virulence of a representative isolate. So far,
C.
luteo-olivacea
represents a minor post-harvest pathogen of apple but considering the losses that this fungus can cause to other crops, the awareness about this potential apple disease should be raised.
Apple (
Malus
×
domestica
Borkh.) is the most widely grown permanent fruit crop of temperate climates. Although commercial apple growing is based on a small number of globally spread cultivars, its ...diversity is much larger and there are estimates about the existence of more than 10,000 documented varieties. The varietal diversity can be described and determined based on phenotypic characters of the external and internal traits of fruit, which, however, can be modulated by environmental factors. Consequently, molecular methods have become an important alternative means for the characterisation of apple cultivar diversity. In order to use multilocus microsatellite data for determination of unidentified or misidentified apple varieties, a database with molecular genetic fingerprints of well-determined reference cultivars needs to be available. The objective of the present work was to establish such a database that could be applied for the molecular genetic determination of a large number of historic and modern, diploid and triploid apple cultivars. Based on the analysis of more than 1600 accessions of apple trees sampled in 37 public and private cultivar collections in different European countries at 14 variable microsatellite loci, a database with 600 molecular genetic profiles was finally obtained. The key criterion for considering a molecular genetic profile as confirmed and for including it into the reference database was that at least two accessions of the same cultivar of different provenances generated an identical result, which was achieved for 98% of the apple cultivars present in the database. For the remaining genotypes, the cultivar assignment was supported by a parentage analysis or by comparison to molecular genetic profiles available in published works. The database is composed of 574 scion cultivars, 24 rootstock genotypes and two species of crab apples. Of the 574 scion cultivars, 61% were derived from historic or old cultivars, many of which were grown in Central Europe in the past. The remaining scion cultivars are currently grown or available in testing programmes and may gain importance in the future. In order to validate the genotyping data, parentage analysis was performed involving cultivars and rootstocks that arose after 1900, for which information about at least one parent cultivar was available from pomological and scientific literature and the molecular genetic profiles of the assumed parent(s) were also present in our database. This analysis revealed the presence of null alleles at locus COL, however, when excluding this locus, a mean genotyping error rate of only 0.28% per locus was revealed, which points to a high reliability of the dataset. The datasets with 14 and 13 loci (excluding locus COL) showed a high degree of discrimination power, with a combined non-exclusion probability of identity of 2.6 × 10
−20
and 3.4 × 10
−19
. Five of the microsatellite loci analysed in the present study overlapped with another published dataset and after the application of conversion values, it was possible to align the allele lengths and compare the molecular genetic profiles of 20 randomly derived cultivars, which were analysed in both studies. This comparison evidenced an exact correspondence of the microsatellite profiles contained in the two datasets, further pointing to the accuracy of our database. Apart from its application to characterise genetic resources or to manage germplasm collections, the here presented database could serve as an important tool for quality control or as a useful instrument in breeding programmes.
Post-harvest diseases are one of the main causes of economical losses in the apple fruit production sector. Therefore, this paper presents an application of a knowledge-based expert system to ...diagnose post-harvest diseases of apple. Specifically, we detail the process of domain knowledge elicitation for constructing a Bayesian network reasoning system. We describe the developed expert system, dubbed BN-DSSApple, and the diagnostic mechanism given the evidence provided by the user, as well as a likelihood evidence method, learned from the estimated consensus of users’ and expert’s interactions, to effectively transfer the performance of the model to different cohorts of users. Finally, we detail a novel technique for explaining the provided diagnosis, thus increasing the trust in the system. We evaluate BN-DSSApple with three different types of user studies, involving real diseased apples, where the ground truth of the target instances was established by microbiological and DNA analysis. The experiments demonstrate the performance differences in the knowledge-based reasoning mechanism due to heterogeneous users interacting with the system under various conditions and the capability of the likelihood-based method to improve the diagnostic performance in different environments.
The aim of this study was to examine the effects of congruence between personal and organizational values focused on tasks and people on organizational commitment. The study was carried out on a ...convenience
sample of 217 participants from several middle- and large-scale organisations who completed the Organisational commitment questionnaire and the Personal and organisational values scale. The data were analysed
using polynomial regression analysis. The results obtained show that affective commitment was higher when personal and organizational values focused on tasks were in congruence on higher levels. Normative commitment was higher when personal and organizational values focused on
tasks were incongruent in a way that organizational values were higher than personal. Additionally, greater incongruence between personal and organizational values focused on tasks was associated with a sharper increase of normative commitment. Overall commitment was higher when personal and organizational values focused on tasks were in congruence on higher levels, when these values were incongruent in a way that organizational values were higher than personal, and when this incongruence was more pronounced. Regarding the effects of congruence between personal and organizational values focused on people the results
obtained show that normative and affective commitment were higher when these values were incongruent in a way that organizational values were higher than personal.
El objetivo de esta investigación fue examinar los efectos que tiene la congruencia de valores personales y organizacionales enfocados en tareas y enfocados en personas sobre la lealtad a la organización y sus componentes. La investigación se llevó a cabo en la muestra de 217 participantes, empleados en varias organizaciones croatas medianas y grandes. Fue aplicado el Cuestionario de Lealtad a la Organización y la Escala de Valores Personales y Organizacionales. Los datos obtenidos fueron analizados a través de una serie de análisis de regresión polinomial. Los resultados obtenidos muestran lo siguiente: si los valores personales y organizacionales enfocados en tareas están en armonía, su nivel superior está relacionado con mayor lealtad afectiva. Si estos valores carecen de armonía, en el sentido de que los valores organizacionales están más altos que los personales, se nota una lealtad
normativa más alta. Además, la lealtad normativa aumenta mucho más con la disminución de la armonía. La lealtad total a la organización es mayor si los valores personales y organizacionales enfocados en tareas están en armonía y más acentuados, si la falta de armonía significa que los valores organizacionales enfocados en tareas son mayores que los personales y si esta falta de armonía está más acentuada. Cuando se trata de efectos de la (falta de) armonía de valores personales y organizacionales enfocados en personas, los resultados obtenidos muestran que la lealtad normativa y total aumenta si los valores organizacionales enfocados en personas están más altos que los valores personales.
Cilj je provedenog istraživanja bio ispitati kakvi su efekti kongruentnosti osobnih i organizacijskih vrijednosti usmjerenih zadacima
i usmjerenih ljudima na odanost organizaciji i na njezine komponente. Istraživanje je provedeno na prigodnom uzorku od 217 sudionika, zaposlenih u nekoliko srednjih i većih hrvatskih organizacija, koji su ispunili Upitnik organizacijske odanosti te Skalu osobnih i organizacijskih vrijednosti. Prikupljeni su podaci analizirani nizom polinomnih regresijskih analiza. Dobiveni rezultati pokazuju da kada su osobne i organizacijske vrijednosti usmjerene zadacima usklađene, tada je njihova viša razina povezana s većom afektivnom odanošću. Neusklađenost osobnih i organizacijskih vrijednosti usmjerenih na zadatke, i to takva da su organizacijske vrijednosti više od osobnih, povezana je s višom normativnom odanošću. Dodatno, normativna se odanost
snažnije povećava s povećanjem ove neusklađenosti. Ukupna odanost organizaciji veća je kada su osobne i organizacijske vrijednosti usmjerene na zadatke usklađene i više izražene, kada je neusklađenost takva da su organizacijske vrijednosti usmjerene na zadatke više od osobnih vrijednosti te kada je ta neusklađenost više izražena. Kada se radi o efektima (ne)usklađenosti osobnih i organizacijskih vrijednosti usmjerenih na ljude, dobiveni rezultati pokazuju da se normativna i ukupna odanost povećavaju kada je neusklađenost takva da su organizacijske vrijednosti usmjerene na ljude više od osobnih vrijednosti.
•Hybrid expert system to support the diagnosis of apple diseases.•Knowledge elicitation process to construct an ad-hoc Bayesian Network.•Adaptive reasoning mechanism combining expert and picture ...interactions.•Explanation technique based on normalized likelihood.
Post-harvest diseases of apple can cause considerable economic losses. Thus, we developed DSSApple, an interactive web-based decision support system, that helps users to diagnose post-harvest diseases of domesticated apple based on observed macroscopic symptoms on fruit. Specifically, DSSApple is designed as a two-stream hybrid diagnostic tool, that can be effectively used by both expert and non-expert users to diagnose diseased instances of apple. The image-based stream allows the user to interact simply by selecting pictures, representing the variety of symptoms of diseases at different stages of the infection and on different cultivars. Instead, the expert-based stream of the system incrementally collects user feedback about the target disease by asking questions related to the macroscopic characteristics of the observed symptoms on a target apple. The expert-based reasoning mechanism of DSSApple is developed by leveraging the framework of Bayesian Networks (BNs). We detail the process of building this knowledge base with the support of a domain expert. We further exploit the BN to process incomplete or conflicting user feedback within the inference mechanism as well as to provide human-understandable explanations on the suggested diagnoses. The proposed hybrid approach has been thoroughly evaluated in two studies, involving simulated (by photos) as well as real infected apples. Thus, the proposed hybrid version of DSSApple is able to outperform both the single streams and the user intuition in terms of diagnostic accuracy.
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