Assessing the environmental sustainability of glucose from wheat as a fermentation feedstock.

In recent years, the need to substitute fossil fuels with renewable biomass has been a key driver in the development of the biorefinery concept. One of the possible routes towards the development of bioproducts under this scheme is through a sugar intermediate. Sugars, such as glucose, can be produced through starch crops, for instance wheat. While there are many environmental assessment studies that consider sugar as a platform for biofuel production, the main focus is on the end product of the value chain (typically bioethanol), but not on sugars as the basic feedstock. Taking the bottom-up perspective as a roadmap, the assessment of technological, economic and environmental barriers in the biorefinery scheme must take into account the sustainability of sugar production with the aim of improving its current framework or finding novel technologies. This study investigates the environmental sustainability of wheat cultivation and grain processing in different European countries by applying the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology with a cradle to gate approach. Moreover, 1 kg of glucose at the factory gate has been considered as a functional unit for reporting the environmental results. The chosen impact categories are climate change (CC), particular matter (PM), human toxicity (HT), freshwater eutrophication (FE), terrestrial eutrophication (TE), acidification (AC) and abiotic depletion (AD). Mass and economic allocations are evaluated as the processing of grain wheat generates different valuable by-products, namely wheat bran, gluten meal and gluten feed. The results show that agricultural activities play an important role in the environmental impacts, predominantly due to the production of agrochemicals and field emissions derived from fertilisation. In addition, the choice of allocation has a greater environmental influence (both positive or negative) on the by-products than the main product under investigation.

Prediction of global wheat cultivation distribution under climate change and socioeconomic development.

Socioeconomic and climate change are both essential factors affecting the global cultivation distributions of crops. However, the role of socioeconomic factors in the prediction of future crop cultivation distribution under climate change has been rarely explored. Motivated by revealing the future global wheat cultivation distribution that coupling socioeconomic factors and climate change, the MaxEnt-SPAM approach was proposed by the present study. Furthermore, the spatial and temporal patterns of global wheat cultivation in the near-term (2011-2040), the mid-term (2041-2070), and long-term (2071-2100) under the scenarios of RCP2.6-SSP1, RCP4.5-SSP2, and RCP8.5-SSP3 were predicted. It indicated that the predictive accuracy of the proposed approach could be over 80 %, with a significant positive correlation (p < 0.01) between the predicted global wheat cultivation and multiple known datasets. Socioeconomic development significantly altered the potential distribution of global wheat cultivation driven by climate change. Socioeconomic development seems to benefit wheat cultivation in the Southern Hemisphere especially central and east Africa, while the Northern Hemisphere may have witnessed a decline in future cultivation areas. It was noteworthy that heightened profitability stimulated interest in expanding wheat cultivation efforts within pivotal countries/regions positioned in the Southern Hemisphere. In the long-term period, the potential wheat cultivation area was reduced by 7 % under the RCP2.6-SSP1 scenario, while it expanded by 8 % and 2 % under the RCP4.5-SSP2 and RCP8.5-SSP3 scenarios, respectively. A global decline in wheat production of 16 %, 3 %, and 3 % was observed in the long-term under the RCP2.6-SSP1, RCP4.5-SSP2, and RCP8.5-SSP3 scenarios respectively. The present study emphasized the importance of integrating socioeconomic factors into crop distribution predictions under climate change. Our findings indicated significant temporal adjustments in the future global distribution of wheat cultivation and offered a comprehensive perspective on how socioeconomic factors interacted with climate change to influence global wheat cultivation.

A systematic literature review of life cycle assessments in the durum wheat sector.

It is recognised today that the global food system does not always deliver good nutrition for all human beings, and, additionally, dramatically contributes to climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. In particular, the cereal sector threatens biodiversity and ecosystem functions, due to environmentally harmful farming activities, that critically alter climate conditions, along with energy, land, and water resources. According to this paper's authors' opinion, this supports the rationale of conducting a systematic literature review of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) in the durum wheat (DW) sector, to highlight environmental hotspots and improvement potentials in the phases of cultivation and processing into finished products like pasta and bread. Methodological aspects were also discussed in this paper, to provide useful insights on how to best perform LCA in such agri-food supply chains. Given the findings from the papers reviewed, the authors could document that the cultivation phase is the primary environmental hotspot of DW-derived food products and suggested several mitigation and improvements solution including, organic farming practices, diversified cropping systems, reduction of N fertilisers and pesticides application, and irrigation optimisation strategies. Furthermore, the review highlighted that there exist two main gaps in the literature, mainly related to the scarce attention on the organic farming sector and DW landraces, and the lack of nutritional-property accounting in LCAs. Finally, although specific, the review may be of interest to researchers, LCA practitioners, farmers and producers, policy- and decision-makers, and other stakeholders, and could support the promotion of environmental sustainability in the DW sector.

Evaluation of an intelligent artificial climate chamber for high-throughput crop phenotyping in wheat.

BACKGROUND: The superposition of COVID-19 and climate change has brought great challenges to global food security. As a major economic crop in the world, studying its phenotype to cultivate high-quality wheat varieties is an important way to increase grain yield. However, most of the existing phenotyping platforms have the disadvantages of high construction and maintenance costs, immobile and limited in use by climatic factors, while the traditional climate chambers lack phenotypic data acquisition, which makes crop phenotyping research and development difficult. Crop breeding progress is slow. At present, there is an urgent need to develop a low-cost, easy-to-promote, climate- and site-independent facility that combines the functions of crop cultivation and phenotype acquisition. We propose a movable cabin-type intelligent artificial climate chamber, and build an environmental control system, a crop phenotype monitoring system, and a crop phenotype acquisition system. RESULT: We selected two wheat varieties with different early vigor to carry out the cultivation experiments and phenotype acquisition of wheat under different nitrogen fertilizer application rates in an intelligent artificial climate chamber. With the help of the crop phenotype acquisition system, images of wheat at the trefoil stage, pre-tillering stage, late tillering stage and jointing stage were collected, and then the phenotypic information including wheat leaf area, plant height, and canopy temperature were extracted by the crop type acquisition system. We compared systematic and manual measurements of crop phenotypes for wheat phenotypes. The results of the analysis showed that the systematic measurements of leaf area, plant height and canopy temperature of wheat in four growth periods were highly correlated with the artificial measurements. The correlation coefficient (r) is positive, and the determination coefficient (R2) is greater than 0.7156. The root mean square error (RSME) is less than 2.42. Among them, the crop phenotype-based collection system has the smallest measurement error for the phenotypic characteristics of wheat trefoil stage. The canopy temperature RSME is only 0.261. The systematic measurement values of wheat phenotypic characteristics were significantly positively correlated with the artificial measurement values, the fitting degree was good, and the errors were all within the acceptable range. The experiment showed that the phenotypic data obtained with the intelligent artificial climate chamber has high accuracy. We verified the feasibility of wheat cultivation and phenotype acquisition based on intelligent artificial climate chamber. CONCLUSION: It is feasible to study wheat cultivation and canopy phenotype with the help of intelligent artificial climate chamber. Based on a variety of environmental monitoring sensors and environmental regulation equipment, the growth environment factors of crops can be adjusted. Based on high-precision mechanical transmission and multi-dimensional imaging sensors, crop images can be collected to extract crop phenotype information. Its use is not limited by environmental and climatic factors. Therefore, the intelligent artificial climate chamber is expected to be a powerful tool for breeders to develop excellent germplasm varieties.

Wheat Cultivation and Nutrient Control for the 180-day CELSS Integrated Experiment.

This research aimed to select the well-adapted wheat cultivar and to explore an optimum nutrient control pattern for wheat cultivation in the 180-day integrated experiment of controlled ecological life support system (CELSS). In the experiment, six wheat cultivars from different areas of China were preselected and cultivated in four separate recirculating hydroponic systems (HySy), nutrients in which could be controlled and recycled according the values of pH, electrical conductivity (EC) and dissolved oxygen (DO). Wheat covered an area of 111.3 m2 and had been planted in 17 batches with a 15-day time interval to realize stable regeneration of oxygen, water and food during the 180-day duration in the closed cabin. The results indicated that different cultivars displayed different adaptabilities to the controlled environment. Wt04 had a stronger adaptability with the highest yield (12.82 g DM m-2 d-1) and edible radiation use efficiency (RUE) (0.28 g DM mol-1) whereas Wt06 adapted this environment poorly because of its excessive vegetative growth. For the morphological characters, wheat plants tended to dwarf in the CELSS environment compared with the field. An innovative controlling pattern was established for nutrient supplement. Through the real-time monitoring of pH, EC and DO of the nutrient solution and the periodical detection of the contents of nutrient elements, the nutrient solution could be controlled and recycled continuously without being renewed under a suitable state for wheat plants growth during the 180-day integrated experiment.

Life cycle assessment of autochthonous varieties of wheat and artisanal bread production in Galicia, Spain.

For millennia, bread and wheat have been one of the most important sources of nutrients in many civilizations. Today, mechanization and evolution in agriculture and food processing have intensified yields and modified the biological and nutritional aspects of multiple crops and foods. The Galician bread is a reference value of food heritage in Spain, which is made from common wheat grain and is a mixture of indigenous Galician wheat and conventional Spanish wheat. In the pursuit of product excellence, it is interesting to identify the environmental profile as support criteria in decision-making, not only to analyse product environmental sustainability, but also as a marketing element to improve consumer awareness. The paper has a twofold perspective to analyse the environmental burdens of wheat cultivation and the bread sector, using life cycle assessment approach: 1) the comparison of the different types of agricultural systems, i.e. the cultivation of Galician wheat following a strategy of monoculture and crop rotation, certified Galician seed production and its comparison with conventional wheat cultivation and 2) the environmental profile of Galician bread. The functional units chosen were 1 kg of wheat grain transported to the milling facility and 1 kg of Galician bread. The results show that wheat cultivation presents the main environmental impacts of bread production, mainly due to the use of agrochemicals and field emissions. The best cultivation scenario corresponds to a crop rotation system, since chemical fertilisation is not applied. In comparative terms with many staple foods produced in Europe, Galician bread has a low environmental impact. The overall environmental results of bread production draw attention to the dependence of bread and flour manufacturers on the agricultural sector, highlighting the need to share responsibilities across the supply chain. In addition, this study contributes to the stakeholder debate on environmental impacts related to food heritage.

Modelos de ajuda à decisão para a definição da época de semeadura e do padrão tecnológico da cultura do trigo / Decision support models for the definition of the crop sowing period and the technological pattern of wheat cultivation

O objetivo do trabalho foi analisar a capacidade de modelos de ajuda à decisão baseados na programação matemática para subsidiar a escolha da época de semeadura e do padrão tecnológico (alto, médio e baixo rendimento) para a cultura do trigo em função das perdas que podem ser provocadas por geada, giberela, granizo e excesso de chuva na colheita. Os resultados econômicos da cultura foram definidos a partir dos dados de um grupo de 27 unidades de produção da região de Ijuí. Os níveis e as probabilidades das perdas foram estimados por meio de uma revisão da literatura especializada, tendo sido também levada em consideração a experiência dos agricultores e de técnicos da região. Foi concluído que o modelo de maximização da margem bruta sob a restrição de atingir certo resultado econômico a uma probabilidade pré-fixada foi o que proporcionou mais subsídios para a tomada de decisão.

The present work is aimed at analyzing the efficiency of decision support models which are based on mathematical programming to help with the choice of the adequate period for sowing, as well as, the technological pattern (high, medium and low yield) to the cultivation of wheat in relation to the losses which can be caused by frost, giberella, hail and excessive rain during the harvest season. The economical results were defined from data gathered in a group of 27 production units in Ijuí and surroundings. The levels and probabilities of the losses were estimated through review of specialized literature, also considering the experience of farmers and technicians of the region. It was suggested that the model which provided more support for the decision taking was the maximization model of gross margin restricted to reaching a determined economical result in a pre-established probability.