Abstract

This study assesses the green competitiveness of agriculture across European Union (EU) Member States, utilizing fifteen environmental indicators aligned with the European Green Deal. The results reveal significant disparities in performance, with variation coefficients ranging from 5.52% to nearly 200%. The highest dispersion was observed in emissions and energy consumption, while indicators such as organic farming and pesticide use showed greater consistency. The average green competitiveness index in 2022 was 0.4749, indicating a moderate level across the EU and a slight decline compared to 2018. Although overall competitiveness remained stable, the reduced standard deviation and narrowing gap between Member States suggest increasing convergence. Greece, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic demonstrated the highest competitiveness, while Malta and Cyprus ranked lowest. Positive trends were observed in France, Denmark, Portugal, Lithuania, and Ireland, whereas Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Luxembourg experienced notable declines. Despite a relatively strong performance in most indicators, five areas – organic farming, landscape diversity, ammonia emissions, renewable energy use, and agricultural contribution to renewable energy – require targeted national action. The findings underscore the need for multidimensional sustainability assessments and country-specific policies to enhance agricultural competitiveness in line with the goals of the green transition.

Abstract

The embryo rescue technique plays an essential part in developing new varieties of seedless grapes. To enhance the efficiency of seedless grape embryo rescue breeding, this study evaluated 22 hybrid combinations, it systematically probed into the impacts of diverse parental genotypes and plant hormones on both embryo development and germination. In addition, an in-depth exploration was carried out regarding the transformation of abnormal plantlets. Results indicate that ‘Ruby Seedless’, Delight’, ‘Huozhouheiyu’, ‘Zitian Seedless’, and ‘Zhengyan Seedless’ are suitable as maternal parents, while ‘Zitian Seedless’, ‘Shennongxiangfeng’, ‘Hongqitezao’, and ‘Guibao’ are optimal as paternal parents. Among these combinations, ‘Ruby Seedless × Shennongxiangfeng’ and ‘Ruby Seedless × Zitian Seedless’ demonstrated the highest embryo rescue efficiency. Their embryo development rates were 55.05% and 59.76%, yielding 1,348 and 2,235 viable plantlets, respectively. When 1.0 mg L^-1 ZT(Zeatin) was added to the MM3 + 0.2 mg L^-1 IAA (Indole – 3 – Acetic Acid) embryo development medium, the development rate of the ‘Ruby Seedless × Zitian Seedless’ embryos went up by a huge 64.73%. In the germination medium WPM, the supplementation of 0.2 mg L^-1 ZT + 0.2 mg L^-1 IAA resulted in the highest germination rate of 85.71% for the hybrid combination ‘Huozhouheiyu × Shine Muscat’. Furthermore, we successfully recovered a total of 3,365 abnormal plantlets and regenerated 1,234 normal plantlets through direct transformation and cotyledon induction. After hybridization, we successfully transplanted 4,287 plants. This study offers theoretical insights that can enhance the efficiency of embryo rescue breeding for seedless grapes, offering valuable resources for future breeding programs.

Abstract
During the recent pandemic, the world has grown more sensitized and concerned about climate change as expressed by the outcomes of the recent COP26 and COP27 conferences in 2021 and 2022, respectively. The mission of the many participant nations was to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels in the generation of electricity, or to embrace a decarbonization process. That is, most nations are committed to rely more and more on clean energy sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermic and, of course, nuclear. At this moment the USA still has the world largest fleet of light water reactors (92) which currently produce approximately 50% of the clean electricity consumed in the country. Recent legislation in the USA has provided funds to the private sector to prevent the premature shutdown of operating commercial nuclear power plants. The goal of the US Department of Energy is not only to keep existing nuclear plants operating but also to build new capacity through advanced reactors including micro reactors, small modular reactors, and larger scale Gen III and Gen IV reactors. It is argued that the commercialization of accident tolerant fuels (ATF) in the next quinquennium may contribute to the life extension of current light water reactors.

Biography
Dr. Raul B. Rebak is a corrosion research scientist at General Electric Research in Schenectady, New York since 2007. Previously he was the lead for materials corrosion testing in the Yucca Mountain Project at the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Raul has more than 30 years’ experience in environmental degradation processes of materials in many fields including nuclear power, oil & gas, energy storage, healthcare, transportation, and aerospace. Raul is a Fellow of both NACE International and ASM International.

Abstract
The citrus industry is Australia’s largest fresh fruit exporting industry by volume, with major export markets in Asian countries and the United States. However, the export of fresh produce (particularly fruit) is limited by quarantine restrictions in several countries. One of the major causes of these restrictions includes postharvest decay and defects. These post-harvest losses can reach 30% of the total production in developed
and 50% in less developed countries. National breakdown of on-farm losses for citrus is between 20-30% that equals 30-35,000 tones in Australia. We propose a novel, safe and low-cost citrus defect discrimination and grading mobile application based on computer vision and image analysis technique to sort healthy from defective and also, predict the early disease infestation that may result in reducing the application of commonly used synthetic fungicides (hence reduced MRLs) during post-harvest management. Deep neural networks (DNN) was employed to extract desired features with an appropriate set of filters applied on the given set of images. The system was able to automatically categorize and then sort the given various samples in respective classes in real-time citrus post-harvesting procedures. It is efficient, cost-effective, accurate and non-destructive, furthermore, it will improve inspection time and quality sorting guarantee in citrus production and supply chain management.Besides this the solution will allow farmers to reduce waste and achieve a sustainable and efficient gradingprocess, providing real-time information which accurately identifies fruit diseases and imperfections that
would also improve the efficiency of supply chain by 30-35%.

Biography
Professor Harvinder Singh has been an academic for nearly two decades with strong teaching and research expertise in applied informatics, traditional and molecular plant breeding approaches for the improvement and management of cereal crops, and medicinal plants. He has IPs for novel inventions in agriculture and has published over 50 research articles in peer reviewed journals, books and conference proceedings. He has also presented his research at national and international conferences.