A methodological tool for sustainability and feasibility assessment of indoor vertical farming with artificial lighting in Africa.

African agriculture is bound to face challenges for its future food systems development and economic transformation. Indoor vertical farms with artificial lighting represent an opportunity that has been gaining relevance worldwide, thanks to their potential to enable high productivity rates, food quality and safety, year-round production, and more sustainable use of water and mineral nutrients. The present study assesses the potential for vertical farming technology integration within the African continent, targeting the countries where a more sustainable approach could be achieved. A deep analysis of each territory's major opportunities and challenges was built through an updated database of 147 development indicators from 54 African states. Countries such as South Africa, Seychelles, Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Cape Verde, and Nigeria showed the best prospective for indoor vertical farming implementation. Moreover, Seychelles, South Africa, and Egypt resulted to be the countries where vertical indoor farming could be more sustainable.

Assessment of greenhouse emissions of the green bean through the static enclosure technique.

Urban green installations are extensively promoted to increase sustainable and accessible food production and simultaneously improve the environmental performance and liveability of city buildings. In addition to the multiple benefits of plant retrofitting, these installations may lead to a consistent increase in biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) in the urban environment, especially indoors. Accordingly, health concerns could limit the implementation of building-integrated agriculture. In a building-integrated rooftop greenhouse (i-RTG), throughout the whole hydroponic cycle, green bean emissions were dynamically collected in a static enclosure. Four representative BVOCs, α-pinene (monoterpene), ß-caryophyllene (sesquiterpene), linalool (oxygenated monoterpene) and cis-3-hexenol (LOX derivate), were investigated in the samples collected from two equivalent sections of a static enclosure, one empty and one occupied by the i-RTG plants, to estimate the volatile emission factor (EF). Throughout the season, extremely variable BVOC levels between 0.04 and 5.36 ppb were found with occasional but not significant (P > 0.05) variations between the two sections. The highest emission rates were observed during plant vegetative development, with EFs equivalent to 78.97, 75.85 and 51.34 ng g-1 h-1 for cis-3-hexenol, α-pinene, and linalool, respectively; at plant maturity, all volatiles were either close to the LLOQ (lowest limit of quantitation) or not detected. Consistent with previous studies significant relationships (r ≥ 0.92; P < 0.05) were individuated within volatiles and temperature and relative humidity of the sections. However, correlations were all negative and were mainly attributed to the relevant effect of the enclosure on the final sampling conditions. Overall, levels found were at least 15 folds lower than the given Risk and LCI values of the EU-LCI protocol for indoor environments, suggesting low BVOC exposure in the i-RTG. Statistical outcomes demonstrated the applicability of the static enclosure technique for fast BVOC emissions survey inside green retrofitted spaces. However, providing high sampling performance over entire BVOCs collection is recommended to reduce sampling error and incorrect estimation of the emissions.

Assessment of the interlaboratory variability and robustness of JAK2V617F mutation assays: A study involving a consortium of 19 Italian laboratories.

To date, a plenty of techniques for the detection of JAK2V617F is used over different laboratories, with substantial differences in specificity and sensitivity. Therefore, to provide reliable and comparable results, the standardization of molecular techniques is mandatory.A network of 19 centers was established to 1) evaluate the inter- and intra-laboratory variability in JAK2V617F quantification, 2) identify the most robust assay for the standardization of the molecular test and 3) allow consistent interpretation of individual patient analysis results. The study was conceived in 3 different rounds, in which all centers had to blindly test DNA samples with different JAK2V617F allele burden (AB) using both quantitative and qualitative assays.The positivity of samples with an AB < 1% was not detected by qualitative assays. Conversely, laboratories performing the quantitative approach were able to determine the expected JAK2V617F AB. Quantitative results were reliable across all mutation loads with moderate variability at low AB (0.1 and 1%; CV = 0.46 and 0.77, respectively). Remarkably, all laboratories clearly distinguished between the 0.1 and 1% mutated samples.In conclusion, a qualitative approach is not sensitive enough to detect the JAK2V617F mutation, especially at low AB. On the contrary, the ipsogen JAK2 MutaQuant CE-IVD kit resulted in a high, efficient and sensitive quantification detection of all mutation loads. This study sets the basis for the standardization of molecular techniques for JAK2V617F determination, which will require the employment of approved operating procedures and the use of certificated standards, such as the recent WHO 1st International Reference Panel for Genomic JAK2V617F.