Influence of harvesting strategy on nutrient supply and production of dairy cows consuming diets based on grass and red clover silage

The main objective of this thesis was to elucidate the effects of regrowth grass silage and red clover silage on nutrient supply and milk production of dairy cows as compared with primary growth grass silages. In the first experiment (publication I), two primary growth and four regrowth grass silages were harvested at two stages of growth. These six silages were fed to 24 lactating dairy cows with two levels of concentrate allowance. Silage intake and energy corrected milk yield (ECM) responses, and the range in these response variables between the diets, were smaller when regrowth silages rather than primary growth silages were fed. Milk production of dairy cows reflected the intake of metabolizable energy (ME), and no differences in the ME utilization were found between the diets based on silages harvested from primary growth and regrowth. The ECM response to increased concentrate allowance was, on average, greater when regrowth rather than primary growth silages were fed. In the second experiment (publication II), two silages from primary growth and two from regrowth used in I were fed to rumen cannulated lactating dairy cows. Cows consumed less feed dry matter (DM), energy and protein, and produced less milk, when fed diets based on regrowth silages rather than primary growth silages. Lower milk production responses of regrowth grass silage diets were mainly due to the lower silage DM intake, and could not be accounted for by differences in energy or protein utilization. Regrowth grass silage intake was not limited due to neutral detergent fibre (NDF) digestion or rumen fill or passage kinetics. However, lower intake may be at least partly attributable to plant diseases such as leaf spot infections, dead deteriorating material or abundance of weeds, which are all higher in regrowth compared with primary growth, and increase with advancing regrowth. In the third experiment (publications III and IV), red clover silages and grass silages harvested at two stages of growth, and a mixed diet of red clover and grass silages, were fed to five rumen cannulated lactating dairy cows. In spite of the lower average ME intake for red clover diets, the ECM production remained unchanged suggesting more efficient utilisation of ME for red clover diets compared with grass diets. Intake of N, and omasal canal flows of total non-ammonia N (NAN), microbial and non-microbial NAN were higher for red clover than for grass silage diets, but were not affected by forage maturity. Delaying the harvest tended to decrease DM intake of grass silage and increase that of red clover silage. The digestion rate of potentially digestible NDF was faster for red clover diets than for grass silage diets. Delaying the harvest decreased the digestion rate for grass but increased it for red clover silage diets. The low intake of early-cut red clover silage could not be explained by silage digestibility, fermentation quality, or rumen fill but was most likely related to the nutritionally suboptimal diet composition because inclusion of moderate quality grass silage in mixed diet increased silage DM intake. Despite the higher total amino acid supply of cows fed red clover versus grass silage diets, further milk production responses on red clover diets were possibly compromised by an inadequate supply of methionine as evidenced by lower methionine concentration in the amino acid profile of omasal digesta and plasma. Increasing the maturity of ensiled red clover does not seem to affect silage DM intake as consistently as that of grasses. The efficiency of N utilization for milk protein synthesis was lower for red clover diets than for grass diets. It was negatively related to diet crude protein concentration similarly to grass silage diets.

Storage and retrieval of individual genomes

A repetitive sequence collection is one where portions of a base sequence of length n are repeated many times with small variations, forming a collection of total length N. Examples of such collections are version control data and genome sequences of individuals, where the differences can be expressed by lists of basic edit operations. Flexible and efficient data analysis on a such typically huge collection is plausible using suffix trees. However, suffix tree occupies O(N log N) bits, which very soon inhibits in-memory analyses. Recent advances in full-text self-indexing reduce the space of suffix tree to O(N log σ) bits, where σ is the alphabet size. In practice, the space reduction is more than 10-fold, for example on suffix tree of Human Genome. However, this reduction factor remains constant when more sequences are added to the collection. We develop a new family of self-indexes suited for the repetitive sequence collection setting. Their expected space requirement depends only on the length n of the base sequence and the number s of variations in its repeated copies. That is, the space reduction factor is no longer constant, but depends on N / n. We believe the structures developed in this work will provide a fundamental basis for storage and retrieval of individual genomes as they become available due to rapid progress in the sequencing technologies.

Content of zinc, iron and their absorption inhibitors in Nicaraguan common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.).

Protein-energy malnutrition and mineral deficiencies are two of the three forms of nutritional deficiencies that affect most developing countries due to inadequate access to food and diets based on a sole crop. Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the staple crop of Nicaragua and it has the potential to improve the nutritional status of the poorest group of the nation. Its high content of both protein and nonhaem iron provides many nutrients, but inhibitors also may prevent absorption of iron and zinc by the human consumer. A proper production chain must be followed to ensure the best grain quality for the consumer. To achieve food security, both production and high nutritional content must be maintained. Four nationally important accessions of common bean, with different harvesting dates, were selected to be submitted to two treatments: to evaluate the impact of storage conditions on the end quality of the grain. The duration of the study was six months with sampling every six weeks, and the two treatments were controlled one stored at 40°C and 75 RH %, and the other was stored in in-situ conditions. Proximate and mineral composition was evaluated as well as tannin, phytate and bioavailability. Significant differences among different accessions were found, being the most significant in protein, Fe and Zn content, tannins and phytate. Protein values ranged from 21-23%. Iron content was 61-81 mg/kg but only 3-4% was bioavailable. Zinc content was 21-25 mg/kg and 10-12% was bioavailable. The concentration of phytate ranged from 8.6-9.6 mg/g while tannin values ranged within 37.7-43.8 mg/g. Storage at high temperatures was demonstrated to have an impact on certain nutritional compounds and proved detrimental to final grain quality. Soluble sugar content and tannin content decreased after six months in both storage conditions, IDF decreased in the in-situ and SDF in the stress. The iron content and bioavailability in INTA Biofortificado were not as outstanding as expected, so experiments should be conducted to compare its iron uptake and delivery with other cultivars.

Management of bushland vegetation using rainwater harvesting in eastern Kenya.

Microcatchment water harvesting (MCWH) improved the survival and growth of planted trees on heavy soils in eastern Kenya five to six years after planting. In the best method, the cross-tied furrow microcatchments, the mean annual increments (MAI; based on the average biomass of living trees multiplied by tree density and survival) of the total and usable biomass in Prosopis juliflora were 2787 and 1610 kg ha-1 a-1 respectively, when the initial tree density was 500 to 1667 trees per hectare. Based on survival, the indigenous Acacia horrida, A. mellifera and A. zanzibarica were the most suitable species for planting using MCWH. When both survival and yield were considered, a local seed source of the introduced P. juliflora was superior to all other species. The MAI in MCWH was at best distinctly higher than that in the natural vegetation (163­307 and 66­111 kg ha-1 a-1 for total and usable biomass respectively); this cannot satisfy the fuelwood demand of concentrated populations, such as towns or irrigation schemes. The density of seeds of woody species in the topsoil was 40.1 seeds m-2 in the Acacia-Commiphora bushland and 12.6 seeds m-2 in the zone between the bushland and the Tana riverine forest. Rehabilitation of woody vegetation using the soil seed bank alone proved difficult due to the lack of seeds of desirable species. The regeneration and dynamics of woody vegetation were also studied both in cleared and undisturbed bushland. A sub-type of Acacia-Commiphora bushland was identified as Acacia reficiens bushland, in which the dominant Commiphora species is C. campestris. Most of the woody species did not have even-aged populations but cohort structures that were skewed towards young individuals. The woody vegetation and the status of soil nutrients were estimated to recover in 15­20 years on Vertic Natrargid soils after total removal of above-ground vegetation.

Towards the Breaking Day : An Ethnography of Belian Curing Rituals among the Luangans of Indonesian Borneo

Towards the Breaking Day is an ethnography of belian, an exceptionally lively tradition of curing rituals performed by the Luangans, a politically marginalized population of swidden cultivators of Indonesian Borneo. The principal purpose of the study is to explore the significance of belian rituals in practice. It asks what belian rituals do socially, politically, and existentially for particular people in particular circumstances. Departing from conventional conceptions of rituals as ethereal liminal or insulated traditional domains, it demonstrates the importance of understanding rituals as emergent within their specific historical and social settings, and highlights the irreducibility of lived reality to epistemological certainty. Each chapter of the book represents an analysis of a concrete ritual performance, exemplifying a diversity of ritual genres, stylistic modalities and sensual ambiences, ranging from low-keyed, habitual affairs to drawn-out, crowd-seizing community rituals and innovative, montage-like cultural experiments. The study is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in non-Christian Central Luangan communities in which ritual and everyday life are complexly intermixed. It is intended as a contribution to the anthropological study of ritual and to the ethnography of Borneo religion in which the study of shamanistic life rituals has been overshadowed by a long-standing fascination with death and funerary rites.

Lyophilized disaccharides – the effect of water during storage

Nearly one fourth of new medicinal molecules are biopharmaceutical (protein, antibody or nucleic acid derivative) based. However, the administration of these compounds is not always that straightforward due to the fragile nature of aforementioned domains in GI-tract. In addition, these molecules often exhibit poor bioavailability when administered orally. As a result, parenteral administration is commonly preferred. In addition, shelf-life of these molecules in aqueous environments is poor, unless stored in low temperatures. Another approach is to bring these molecules to anhydrous form via lyophilization resulting in enhanced stability during storage. Proteins cannot most commonly be freeze dried by themselves so some kind of excipients are nearly always necessary. Disaccharides are commonly utilized excipients in freeze-dried formulations since they provide a rigid glassy matrix to maintain the native conformation of the protein domain. They also act as "sink"-agents, which basically mean that they can absorb some moisture from the environment and still help to protect the API itself to retain its activity and therefore offer a way to robust formulation. The aim of the present study was to investigate how four amorphous disaccharides (cellobiose, melibiose, sucrose and trehalose) behave when they are brought to different relative humidity levels. At first, solutions of each disaccharide were prepared, filled into scintillation vials and freeze dried. Initial information on how the moisture induced transformations take place, the lyophilized amorphous disaccharide cakes were placed in vacuum desiccators containing different relative humidity levels for defined period, after which selected analyzing methods were utilized to further examine the occurred transformations. Affinity to crystallization, water sorption of the disaccharides, the effect of moisture on glass transition and crystallization temperature were studied. In addition FT-IR microscopy was utilized to map the moisture distribution on a piece of lyophilized cake. Observations made during the experiments backed up the data mentioned in a previous study: melibiose and trehalose were shown to be superior over sucrose and cellobiose what comes to the ability to withstand elevated humidity and temperature, and to avoid crystallization with pharmaceutically relevant moisture contents. The difference was made evident with every utilized analyzing method. In addition, melibiose showed interesting anomalies during DVS runs, which were absent with other amorphous disaccharides. Particularly fascinating was the observation made with polarized light microscope, which revealed a possible small-scale crystallization that cannot be observed with XRPD. As a result, a suggestion can safely be made that a robust formulation is most likely obtained by utilizing either melibiose or trehalose as a stabilizing agent for biopharmaceutical freeze-dried formulations. On the other hand, more experiments should be conducted to obtain more accurate information on why these disaccharides have better tolerance for elevating humidities than others.

Harvesting undelimbed Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) from first thinnings for integrated production of kraft pulp and energy

The present study evaluates the feasibility of undelimbed Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) for integrated production of pulp and energy in a kraft pulp mill from the technical, economic and environmental points of view, focusing on the potential of bundle harvesting. The feasibility of tree sections for pulp production was tested by conducting an industrial wood-handling experiment, laboratory cooking and bleaching trials, using conventional small-diameter Scots pine pulpwood as a reference. These trials showed that undelimbed Scots pine sections can be processed in favourable conditions as a blend with conventional small-diameter pulpwood without reducing the pulp quality. However, fibre losses at various phases of the process may increase when using undelimbed material. In the economic evaluation, both pulp production and wood procurement costs were considered, using the relative wood paying capability of a kraft pulp mill as a determinant. The calculations were made for three Scots pine first-thinning stands with the breast-height diameter of the removal (6 12 cm) as the main distinctive factor. The supply chains included in the comparison were based on cut-to-length harvesting, whole-tree harvesting and bundle harvesting (whole-tree bundling). With the current ratio of pulp and energy prices, the wood paying capability declines with an increase in the proportion of the energy fraction of the raw material. The supply system based on the cut-to-length method was the most efficient option, resulting in the highest residual value at stump in most cases. A decline in the pulp price and an increase in the energy price improved the competitiveness of the whole-tree systems. With short truck transportation distances and low pulp prices, however, the harvesting of loose whole trees can result in higher residual value at stump in small-diameter stands. While savings in transportation costs did not compensate for the high cutting and compaction costs by the second prototype of the bundle harvester, an increase in transportation distances improved its competitiveness. Since harvesting undelimbed assortments increases nutrient export from the site, which can affect soil productivity, the whole-tree alternatives included in the present study cannot be recommended on infertile peatlands and mineral soils. The harvesting of loose whole trees or bundled whole trees implies a reduction in protective logging residues and an increase in site traffic or payloads. These factors increase the risk of soil damage, especially on peat soils with poor bearing capacity. Within the wood procurement parameters which were examined, the CO2 emissions of the supply systems varied from 13 27 kg m3. Compaction of whole trees into bundles reduced emissions from transportation by 30 39%, but these reductions were insufficient to compensate for the increased emissions from cutting and compaction.