Assessing variability in carbon footprint throughout the food supply chain: a case study of Valencian oranges

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - This study aims to analyse the variability in the carbon footprint (CF) of organically and conventionally produced Valencian oranges (Spain),...     

Designing healthy,climate friendly and affordable school lunches

Purpose

This study aims to develop a model with which to build diets taking into account nutritional, climate change and economic aspects. A case study is used to test the proposed model, consisting of finding the optimal menus for school children in Spain from combinations of 20 starters, 20 main dishes and 7 desserts for a 20-day planning period.

Methods

An optimizing technique, specifically integer goal programming, is used as a means of designing diets which take into account the aforementioned aspects. Goal programming (GP) is used to design those menus that meet, or nearly meet, all the requirements with respect to caloric content, caloric share among macronutrients, nutrients to encourage and nutrients to limit, while reducing the carbon footprint (CFP) and the lunch budget. In order to have real, acceptable dishes, a school catering company provided information about the typical dishes they serve. The CFP of each dish was assessed, based on literature about life cycle assessment and CFP studies on food products. The nutritional value of each dish was obtained from databases, whereas prices were gathered from a wholesaler.

Results and discussion

After solving the goal programming model for several CFP and budget goals, the results show reductions with respect to the average CFP of between ?13 and ?24 %, and reductions with respect to the average budget between ?10 and ?15 % while maintaining the nutritional aspects similar to the average of the proposed menus. The results show that a wide range of budget is available, maintaining an almost constant CFP and meeting nutritional requirements to a similar degree; therefore, it is possible to avoid trade-offs between the CFP and the budget. The analysis of the dishes selected shows how the optimization model, in general, avoids the dishes which have a high CFP and high price and which are low in iron content, but high in protein and cholesterol.

Conclusions

Goal programming constitutes a suitable tool for designing diets which are economically, environmentally and nutritionally sustainable. Its flexibility enables specific issues to be studied, such as the existence of possible trade-offs between budget and CFP, attained by changing the budget and the CFP goals. By means of an iterative process, new dishes could be introduced or the existing ones could be improved, thus providing catering companies with useful information.

     

Organic versus conventional citrus. Impact assessment and variability analysis in the Comunitat Valenciana (Spain)

Purpose

Taking into account the large area of citrus in Spain and the impacts generated by agriculture, reducing the environmental impact of this crop represents an important goal. This study attempts to compare the environmental impact of two citrus cropping systems, organic and conventional, in the region of Valencia (Spain), and to assess the variability within both farming systems in order to highlight the influence of management practices on the environmental performance.

Methods

A survey was carried out on citrus farmers, 145 corresponding to organic production and 122 to conventional. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to estimate the environmental impacts of farms and the contribution of each production stage to impacts. Two functional units (FUs), mass- and area-based, were chosen. The variability and confidence intervals of the average impact results were assessed by means of a bootstrap technique. Finally, a k-means cluster analysis was performed to identify groups of farms with comparable impact levels.

Results and discussion

The mean impact values of the conventional farm sample were higher than those of the organic farms, when using 1 ha year^?1 as FU, whereas for the FU of 1 kg no differences were found for some impact categories. Most of the impact results were also observed to be highly variable. The distribution of the mean after the bootstrap confirmed both the variability of the impacts and the differences between the farming systems. The cluster analysis determined two groups via their impact categories. Cluster-1, which showed higher impacts, was made up of part of the conventional farms while cluster-2 included the remaining conventional farms and all the organic ones. No difference in yield was found between the conventional farms of both clusters.

Conclusions

Bootstrapped LCA offers the ability to assess the variability of the impacts, regardless of the sample size and the non-normal impact distributions. The cluster analysis shows that conventional farms can attain similar impacts than the organic ones, while maintaining the yield. FU selection is crucial, since a mass-based FU reduces the difference in the environmental performance between conventional and organic farms. To attain a more sustainable citrus farming, a careful selection of the management practices is needed.

     

Novel carbocyclic nucleoside analogs suppress glomerular mesangial cells proliferation and matrix protein accumulation through ROS-dependent mechanism in the diabetic milieu

The synthesis of a series of novel 3,4-cis- and 3,4-trans-substituted carbocyclic nucleoside analogs from protected uracil and thymine is described. The key reaction in the followed synthetic protocols utilized the Mitsunobu reaction to couple 3,4-substituted cyclopentanols to ³N-benzoyl uracil or ³N-benzoyl thymine. These molecules were evaluated with regard to their ability to treat diabetic nephropathy. Our results show that two analogs significantly reduced high-glucose induced glomerular mesangial cells proliferation and matrix protein accumulation in vitro and, more interestingly, exhibited an anti-oxidative effect suggesting that the activity may be mediated through ROS-dependent mechanism.     

Blockade of Notch ligand δ1 promotes allograft survival by inhibiting alloreactive Th1 cells and cytotoxic T cell generation

The Notch signaling pathway has been recently shown to contribute to T cell differentiation in vitro. However, the in vivo function of Notch signaling in transplantation remains unknown. In this study, we investigated the importance of Delta1 in regulating the alloimmune response in vivo. Delta1 expression was upregulated on dendritic cells and monocytes/macrophages upon transplantation in a BALB/c into B6 vascularized cardiac transplant model. Whereas administration of anti-Delta1 mAb only slightly delayed survival of cardiac allografts in this fully MHC-mismatched model, it significantly prolonged graft survival in combination with single-dose CTLA4-Ig or in CD28 knockout recipients. The prolongation of allograft survival was associated with Th2 polarization and a decrease in Th1 and granzyme B-producing cytotoxic T cells. The survival benefit of Delta1 blockade was abrogated after IL-4 neutralization and in STAT6KO recipients, but was maintained in STAT4KO recipients, reinforcing the key role of Th2 cell development in its graft-prolonging effects. To our knowledge, these data demonstrate for the first time an important role of Delta1 in alloimmunity, identifying Delta1 ligand as a potential novel target for immunomodulation in transplantation.     

Measuring and Improving Eco‐efficiency Using Data Envelopment Analysis

The concept of eco‐efficiency can be defined with the “product value/environmental influence” ratio. Different models have been proposed to measure eco‐efficiency. The main difference among them is the weighting system used to aggregate the environmental results. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) permits this aggregation without requiring a subjective judgment about the weights. In this study, we applied a DEA model to Spanish Mahón‐Menorca cheese production to determine the most eco‐efficient production techniques. To this end, 16 scenarios of Mahón‐Menorca cheese production were built regarding technical (degree of automation) and cleaner production criteria. The environmental impacts were assessed by means of life cycle assessment. We carried out an economic assessment by determining the economic value added and the net income for each scenario. The results are referred to as 1 kilogram (kg) cheese ripened over 105 days. Through DEA, an eco‐efficiency ratio between 0 and 1 was obtained. Three scenarios were found to be eco‐efficient, with a high degree of automation (enclosed vat and molding and demolding machines) and accelerated cheese ripening. We used Monte Carlo simulation to carry out a sensitivity analysis to compare the influence of price changes on the eco‐efficiency ratio. The results emphasize the consistency and stability of the eco‐efficient scenarios.