•Main factors affecting quality in wine and table grapes are reviewed.•Genetic related features of main compositional traits are presented.•Environmental factors as light, temperature and water ...supply are addressed.•Yield/quality relationship and main summer pruning practices are discussed.•Outlooks for improving quality are given.
Over decades, the concept of grape quality has evolved emphasizing its multidisciplinary nature and that the same “desired quality” might correspond to even strikingly different compositional patterns. The review takes a long journey throughout the multiple factors impinging on grape quality, not excluding also sections devoted to table grapes. It starts with a through survey on the genetic factors influencing grape quality focusing on diversity in different compositional traits (sugar, organic acid, pH, phenolics and aromas) relating to cultivars and clones. Then, most recent knowledge about the effects of soil characteristics, nutrients, light, temperature and water availability, as standalone factors or in interaction, on grape quality are summarized. The more applied section of the review introduces the very much debated yield-quality relationship that, over years, is being interpreted with more flexibility and with greater consensus for an “optimal yield range” that within a given context can anyway reach the desired quality. The impact of the main summer pruning operations (leaf removal, shoot and cluster thinning, shoot trimming) is reviewed and special care taken to highlight most recent contributions with adjusted summer pruning developed to either adapt to climate change issues or to induce specific composition patterns. Review ends with a quick survey on methods nowadays available for fast, non-destructive grape composition assessment.
This paper offers a fresh perspective on national culture and entrepreneurship research. It explores the role of Culturally-endorsed implicit Leadership Theories (CLTs) – i.e., the cultural ...expectations about outstanding, ideal leadership – on individual entrepreneurship. Developing arguments based on culture-entrepreneurship fit, we predict that charismatic and self-protective CLTs positively affect entrepreneurship. They provide a context that enables entrepreneurs to be co-operative in order to initiate change but also to be self-protective and competitive so as to safeguard their venture and avoid being exploited. We further theorize that CLTs are more proximal drivers of cross-country differences in entrepreneurship as compared with distal cultural values. We find support for our propositions in a multi-level study of 42 countries. Cultural values (of uncertainty avoidance and collectivism) influence entrepreneurship mainly indirectly, via charismatic and self-protective CLTs. We do not find a similar indirect effect for cultural practices.
•We introduce culturally shared leadership ideals to comparative entrepreneurship.•We conduct a multi-level study on over 500,000 individuals residing in 42 countries.•Cultures endorsing charismatic and self-protective leadership ideals have higher rates of entrepreneurship.•Cultural leadership ideals influence entrepreneurship more proximally than cultural values.•Cultural leadership ideals mediate the effect of cultural values on individual entrepreneurship but not of cultural practices.
Helen Hardacre provides new insights into the spiritual and
cultural dimensions of abortion debates around the world in this
careful examination of mizuko kuyo -a Japanese religious
ritual for ...aborted fetuses. Popularized during the 1970s, when
religious entrepreneurs published frightening accounts of fetal
wrath and spirit attacks, mizuko kuyo offers ritual
atonement for women who, sometimes decades previously, chose to
have abortions. As she explores the complex issues that surround
this practice, Hardacre takes into account the history of Japanese
attitudes toward abortion, the development of abortion rituals, the
marketing of religion, and the nature of power relations in
intercourse, contraception, and abortion. Although abortion in
Japan is accepted and legal and was commonly used as birth control
in the early postwar period, entrepreneurs used images from fetal
photography to mount a surprisingly successful tabloid campaign to
promote mizuko kuyo . Enthusiastically adopted by some
religionists as an economic strategy, it was soundly rejected by
others on doctrinal, humanistic, and feminist grounds. In four
field studies in different parts of the country, Helen Hardacre
observed contemporary examples of mizuko kuyo as it is
practiced in Buddhism, Shinto, and the new religions. She also
analyzed historical texts and contemporary personal accounts of
abortion by women and their male partners and conducted interviews
with practitioners to explore how a commercialized ritual form like
mizuko kuyo can be marketed through popular culture and
manipulated by the same forces at work in the selling of any
commodity. Her conclusions reflect upon the deep current of
misogyny and sexism running through these rites and through
feto-centric discourse in general.
Fusarium head blight (FHB) is an economically devastating disease of small grain cereal crops. It is caused by species of fungi in the genus Fusarium, of which Fusarium graminearum, Fusarium ...culmorum, and Fusarium avenaceum predominate. The disease is responsible for worldwide losses in excess of a billion dollars annually, and the majority of these losses occur in wheat (Triticum spp.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) production. Losses are manifested as reduction in yield and grain quality and the presence of mycotoxins in grain, the most common of which is deoxynivalenol (DON). Due to the devastating nature of the disease, it is essential for growers to have in place strategies to mitigate losses due to FHB and DON. These strategies include a combination of cultural practices, planting resistant or tolerant cultivars, chemical control, biological control, use of forecasting systems, and harvesting strategies. This review examines these techniques individually and emphasizes the integration of two or more of them to optimize the effectiveness of managing FHB and DON during the growing season.
•Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a devastating disease of small grain cereal crops.•FHB is favored by warm temperatures and wetness before and during flowering.•FHB-causing Fusarium spp. produce mycotoxins in grain, mainly deoxynivalenol (DON).•Strategies for management of FHB and DON during the growing season are discussed.•Integrating two or more practices to manage FHB and DON is recommended.
In this article, we propose a unified research framework for studying the impact of social and digital inequalities on four types of cultural practices: offline art-related practices, offline ...everyday cultural practices, online art-related practices, and online everyday cultural practices. In contrast to the research traditions that study them separately, we argue that the subject of further research should be the interplay between cultural practices in offline and online domains and that the impact of social and digital inequalities on cultural participation should be studied jointly. Based on empirical evidence from a large-scale research project carried out in nine European countries, we demonstrate the benefits of sidestepping what we see as a strange disconnect between the research traditions studying cultural practices and inequalities in the offline and online spheres separately. The results of our research show that only the inclusion of online and everyday cultural practices in the analysis does justice to the complexity of contemporary cultural participation and its relation to what we refer to as socio-digital inequalities.
Worldwide sucking pests predominantly impact the cultivation of tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze), an economically significant crop. Sucking pests consume the plant sap by puncturing the vascular ...tissue of the host plant. Their trophic activity results in the curling of the tea leaves, followed by a dark brown or silver appearance with black spots. Sometimes, the symptom is confined to dry, dark, and dead leaves. All these symptoms have significantly reduced tea production over the past few decades. Sucking pests like mosquito bugs, thrips, jassids, aphids, and mites are primarily responsible for these damages in tea plants. It is crucial to use all the available eco-friendly resources to effectively implement integrated pest management strategies that reduce the sucking pest population in the tea plant ecosystem and produce pesticide-free tea. This review gives a comprehensive idea of sucking pests in tea plantations, their habits, age-old traditional methods used to control such pests, widely used synthetic pesticide treatments for instant pest control, pesticide tolerance management, and lastly, emerging sustainable methods to minimize the level of pesticide residue in this foliage crop. All these practices will help to decrease the adversities caused by pesticides to the environment.
•Major sucking pests of tea plants have developed pesticide resistance over time.•Symptomatic responses in tea are discussed against all the major sucking pests.•Biological control is effective in combination with integrated pest management.•Application of entomopathogenic bacteria, fungi and viruses are contemporary methods.•A critical understanding of methods is helpful in finding a better control strategy.
Most malaria risk reduction strategies are firmly embedded in biomedical practices and public health perspectives. National and international programmes to ‘control’ malaria are particularly ...characterised by the promotion of public health interventions which converge on the disease vector, the malaria mosquito, notably through the use of indoor household spraying with insecticides, and the deployment of insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs). With convincing evidence for the effectiveness of ITNs in reducing the incidence of malaria, control programmes have emphasised the notion of ‘scaling-up’ bednet coverage. Much previous research on people’s ‘compliance’ with bednet programmes has tended to focus on the quantification of bednet usage and on deriving explanations for ‘non-compliance’ based on household or individual indicators such as wealth, age, gender or educational level, or on climatic factors such as season and temperature. However, malaria risk behaviours are also rooted in wider aspects of local livelihoods, and socio-cultural beliefs and practices which interplay with the use and, crucially, non-use, of bednets. This paper draws on empirical data derived from in-depth, one-to-one semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participatory methods (mapping and diagramming) with participants in two villages in rural Tanzania to explore the nature of these practices and vulnerabilities, and their potential impact on malaria exposure risk. Participants included farmers and pastoralists, both men and women, as well as village ‘officials’. By eliciting local understandings of malaria-related behaviours we explore how malaria risks are played out in people’s everyday lives, and the circumstances and decision-making which underpin non-usage of bednets. Our findings reveal the importance of shifting sleeping patterns in response to livelihood needs and socio-cultural practices and events. These arrangements militate against the consistent and sustained use of the bednet which are called for by public health policies. In particular we demonstrate the importance of the spatial and temporal dimensions of farming practices and the role of conflict over access to shared land; the impact of livelihood activities on malaria risks for school-aged children; risk behaviours during ‘special’ socio-cultural events such as funeral ceremonies; and routine, outdoor activities around dawn and dusk and the gendered nature of these practices.
► Malaria risk behaviours are rooted in livelihood needs and socio-cultural beliefs which interplay with bednet usage ► Shifting sleeping patterns militate against consistent and sustained bednet usage called for by public health policies ► More informed and nuanced policies which consider social and cultural norms are needed in relation to malaria prevention
One of the most striking developments across the social sciences in the past decade has been the growth of research methods using visual materials. It is often suggested that this growth is somehow ...related to the increasing importance of visual images in contemporary social and cultural practice. However, the form of the relationship between ‘visual research methods’ and ‘contemporary visual culture’ has not yet been interrogated. This paper conducts such an interrogation, exploring the relation between ‘visual research methods’ – as they are constituted in quite particular ways by a growing number of handbooks, reviews, conference and journals – and contemporary visual culture – as characterized by discussions of ‘convergence culture’. The paper adopts a performative approach to ‘visual research methods’. It suggests that when they are used, ‘visual research methods’ create neither a ‘social’ articulated through culturally mediated images, nor a ‘research participant’ competency in using such images. Instead, the paper argues that the intersection of visual culture and ‘visual research methods’ should be located in their shared way of using images, since in both, images tend to be deployed much more as communicational tools than as representational texts. The paper concludes by placing this argument in the context of recent discussions about the production of sociological knowledge in the wider social field.
Soil fertility management techniques (SFMT) among arable crop farmers in southwest, Nigeria was examined. Multiphase techniques were employed in selecting three hundred and fifty (350) arable crop ...farmers. Data were harvested using a structured interview schedule and analysis was done using descriptive statistics and Person-Product-Moment-Correlation (PPMC). Results indicated that the farmers were majorly married males, mostly aged 50 years using an average of 2.3 ha, cropping mainly cassava (90.0%), maize (82.6%), and yam (70.9%). The respondents used cultural methods, synthetic fertilizers, and organic manure in that order as SFMT. The level of utilization of SFMT was predominantly cultural methods of ridging across the slope with a weighted mean score (WMS) of 2.72, mulching (WMS=2.60), and rotational cropping (WMS=2.26); synthetic fertilizers: NPK (WMS=1.99) and urea (WMS=1.96); organic manure: poultry manure (WMS=0.95) and animal dung (WMS=0.67). PPMC analysis showed that age (r=0.22*) and farm size (r=0.16*) were significantly related to the utilization of SFMT. In conclusion, the respondents were small-scale farmers who utilized majorly cultural methods of SFMT and were mainly influenced by crop type as a function of age and farm size.
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