To determine the directions of managing the intellectual capital of a university, the authors studied the impact of the knowledge economy on the education sector, analysed the most prestigious international rankings of universities and their criteria and methodologies, assessed the current state and prospects of Ukrainian universities in global rankings. The study of theoretical developments ha...

Experiments were conducted on the role of intra- and inter-genotypic competition in ecological processes operating at the population scale in diseased plant populations.Combinations of Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes showing variation for phenotypic traits relating to competitive ability and pathogen compatibility were infected with the oomycete Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis and Turnip yellows ...

Crop rotation schemes are believed to work by preventing specialist soil-borne pests from depressing the future yields of similar crops. In ecology, such negative plant-soil feedbacks may be viewed as a type of Janzen-Connell effect, which promotes species coexistence and diversity by preventing the same species from repeatedly occupying a particular site. In a controlled greenhouse experiment ...

The improvements in crop production needed to meet the increasing food demand in the 21st Century will rely on improved crop management and better crop varieties. In the last decade our ability to use genetics and genomics in crop science has been revolutionised, but these advances have not been matched by our ability to phenotype crops. As rapid and effective phenotyping is the basis of any la...

Early strategies of crop growth and N acquisition can be critical for determining competitive interactions between weeds and crops. Grain legumes and especially lupins are known to be poor competitors against weeds. Grain legumes are known to have low mineral soil N uptake abilities. However, inter- and intraspecific differences in N uptake ability in relation to below-ground traits have receiv...

One of the remaining methodological challenges of agricultural LCAs is the inclusion of crop rotation effects. They are caused by changes in physical, chemical and biological properties of the agricultural land over time (e.g. soil structure, presence and availability of nutrients, phytosanitary conditions) and cannot be easily measured. LCA studies, focusing on only one vegetation period, have...

A 3-year microplot study was conducted to characterize the interaction between Meloidogyne arenaria race 1 (MA1) and M. hapla (MH), as affected by the five peanut genotypes: Florigiant, NC 7, NC 6, NC Ac 18416, and NC Ac 18016. The interactive effects on infection (total parasitic forms per root unit) and reproduction potentials of each nematode species and crop damage were determined. As a sin...