Mignon Sandor

University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine | USAMV Cluj · Department of Environment and Plant Protection

Genetic diversity in crop plants is the conditio sine qua non for sustainable agriculture and long-term food security. Our research carried out the morphological, agronomic, and physico-chemical characterization and resistance to late blight of 35 tomato landraces from seven countries. These landraces have been approved and appear in the Official C...

The major disadvantage of setting up a willow coppice is the low survival rate, which reduces economic efficiency and crop sustainability. The aim of this research was to test, under controlled conditions, the impact of water, gibberellic acid A3 (0.05%), and humic acid (0.2%) on the growth and development of two willow clones. Under humic acid tre...

Conservation tillage is often discussed as an effective tool to improve the soil quality in agriculture. Four sites across Europe (in Germany, Romania, Spain, and Sweden) were investigated as case studies for country-specific reductions in tillage intensity. Conventional tillage (CT) by mouldboard ploughing was compared with shallow and deep non-in...

European viticultural landscapes not only support a significant share of rural livelihoods and cultural traditions, but also conserve biodiversity and sustain various ecosystem services. Winegrowers' practices of inter-row management (including whether to have vegetation in the inter-rows, type of vegetation, duration of vegetation cover, and soil...

Medicinal and aromatic plants hold a high share of interest in Romania. To offset the harvesting of spontaneous flora and ensure the sustainable conservation of natural resources, the cropping of highly valuable plants of interest represents a priority for the current agricultural system. This study was conducted due to the need for more balance in...

CONTEXT: Agroforestry is gaining interest in in Europe however the trade-offs associated with its uptake are still uncertain. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to explore the sustainability trade-offs and synergies associated with a range of agroforestry systems in Europe and assess the underlying reasons for different performance regardin...

The introduction of temporary grassland into an annual crop rotation is recognized to improve soil ecosystem services, and resulting legacies can be beneficial for the following crops. In this context, the aim of the present study was to evaluate legacy effects of introducing temporary grassland into an annual crop rotation on five ecosystem servic...

The conservation of plant and animal genetic heritage is not a purpose in itself, but it represents the sine qua non condition for practicing a sustainable agriculture and to ensure nutrition and food security on long-term. Our research focused on identifying the areas with the richest genetic diversity of vegetables in Transylvania, Romania, as we...

Sustainability assessment is a complex field and its uptake amongst agricultural producers limited. Furthermore, the scope of current sustainability assessment tools does not extend to systems in which food production is integrated with production of non-food biomass (e.g. agroforestry). Participatory approaches to tool development offer a means to...

Agroforestry systems have multifunctional roles in enhancing agronomic productivity, co-production of diversity of food and non-food products and provision of ecosystem services. The knowledge of the performance of agroforestry systems compared with monoculture is scarce and scattered. Hence, the objective of the study was to analyze the agronomic...

The objective of this study is to carry out a vegetation study at the Bozanta’s tailing pond, located 5 km away from Baia-Mare.Between 2016 and 2017, using the metric frame, the existing species were identified and the following phytocenothic and population indices were determined: presence, frequency, presence classes, and the average abundance-do...

The harmonization of methodologies for the assessment of radicular endophytic colonization is a current necessity, especially for the arbuscular mycorrhizas. The functionality of mycorrhizal symbionts for plants can be described only by indicators obtained based on microscopic analysis. That is the reason for which a unifying methodology will lead...

Analysis of ten vernal ephemerals from Agro-Botanical Garden UASVM Cluj-Napoca revealed that all were naturally colonized by arbuscular mycorrhizae and fine root endophytes. Dark septate endophytes were observed in seven species. Highest frequency of arbuscular mycorrhizae colonization was found in Muscari armeniacum while second highest in Crocus...

Agroforestry, relative to conventional agriculture, contributes significantly to carbon sequestration, increases a range of regulating ecosystem services, and enhances biodiversity. Using a transdisciplinary approach, we combined scientific and technical knowledge to evaluate nine environmental pressures in terms of ecosystem services in European f...

Phytobiont enhanced nutrient uptake through arbuscular mycorrhiza comes at a cost in form of carbon fixed through photosynthesis. Geophytes operate under resource efficiency constraint due to their particular life-cycle and have to balance it very well. This translates in highly controlled investment towards mycobiont, that could explain the wide r...

MicroResp is a colorimetric method developed by Campbell et al., (2003), used for assessing the community level physiological profile of the microbial population. MicroResp can be used to assess soil health, pollution induced community tolerance, also for toxicity testing, pesticide degradation profiles, bioremediation evaluation and water ecology...

The Public Goods Tool (PGT) assesses the agriculture related public goods” provided by a farm. The assessment was trialled on an initial pilot of seven agroforestry farms from five countries (UK, Italy, Poland, Romania, Denmark).

Agricultural practices, such as the use of fertilizers, can change the structure and function of soil microbial community. Monitoring and assessing the soil microbiota and its dynamics related to different factors can be a powerful tool for understanding basic and applied ecological contexts. The main objective of this paper was to assess the chang...

In Romania, all actions related to mining management are found in “Strategy of the mining industry for 2012-2035”. Today, numerous tailing ponds have remained outside rehabilitation operations, and they are becoming more natural, as is the case of the tailing pond in Capusu Mare. The vegetation study was conducted in 2015, at the tailing pond III i...

Evaluation of biological assembly of a terrestrial ecosystem is generally observed from an aboveground quantitative perspective, without taking into account the diversity and extent of microbial functional processes. The use of resources is directly proportional to the microbial community structure and function, which are not reflected in current t...

Soil fauna activity in agricultural soil is a key factor to maintain soil fertility and to assure soil ecosystem services. It is now accepted that agricultural practices like tillage and pesticide use can harm soil organisms including earthworms and springtails. Other practices like the use of green manure or animal manure have been considered as b...

In the last two decades, both on International and European level a series of treaties and laws have been devised in order to save local varieties of crop plants. The most important methods of traditional seed conservation are on farm and ex situ (Maxim et al., 2010; Kontoleonet al., 2009). The identification of local Romanian varieties of bean, th...

Mining industry is one of the most polluting, in particular through the mine tailings and tailing ponds. In Romania, most of these were rehabilitated natural, as is the case at Căpuș.Our studies and research were conducted in 2013 and had two main objectives: to establish natural recovery capacity of the four tailings ponds from the exploitation an...

A comprehensive and quantitative knowledge of ecological factors affecting crop production is needed in purpose to meet the challenge of growing world population with minimal environmental impact. Earthworms are target organisms both for scientists studying the biological component of soils and for farmers concerned with monitoring the quality of t...

We examined the potential for natural attenuation of ten hydrokarst systems (HKS) in three mountain units in the Carpathian Mountains. We sampled in places where water enters below ground and where water emerges back to the surface in springs and is used as drinking water by the local communities. Water samples were used to assess the degree of che...

A comprehensive and quantitative knowledge of ecological factors affecting crop production is needed in purpose to meet the challenge of growing world population with minimal environmental impact. Earthworms are target organisms both for scientists studying the biological component of soils and for farmers concerned with monitoring the quality of t...

The issue of biodiversity conservation was set at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 when the UN adopted the Convention on Biodiversity. Agricultural biodiversity is an essential element of biodiversity. European Union adopted a series of directives in order to reduce genetic erosion which is more and more accented on cultivated plants. Between 2005 and 2010,...

Most epidemiological studies on tick-borne pathogens involve collection of ticks from the environment. An efficient collection method is essential for large sample pools. Our main aim was to evaluate the efficacy of a new method, where traditional flagging was enhanced by the use of CO2 dispersed into the white flannel. The CO2 was spread through a...

A laboratory study was conducted with soil microcosms to deepen our understanding on earthworm and enchytraeid decomposition activity regarding soil fertility improvement in sustainable agricultural management systems. We investigated the effects of different earthworm and enchytraeid species and their interaction on the consumption and decompositi...

Soil biodiversity make essential contribution to soil fertility and health, being considered as an important forces for the achievement of sustainability in agroecosystems (Sandor, 2008). Conventional agricultural practices could negatively affect soil biodiversity by damaging habitats and disrupting their functions. New management strategies have...

During the second part of the twentieth century the cultivated plants have been faced with genetic erosion, because of the expandinding industrial farming systems. The sustainable agriculture can not exist without a rich genetic diversity. After the United Nations Conference from Rio de Janeiro (1992), when the Convention on Biological Diversity wa...

A mesocosm study was conducted in order to evaluate the effects of short-term rainfall and temperature variation on soil microbial biomass and bacteria to fungi ratio. In addition, the relation between the decomposition process of two organic fertilizers, cattle manure and barley straw, and the activity of soil microbial biomass was also studied. I...

Soil respiration is the main element in the carbon cycle that makes possible for plants carbon plants to return inthe atmosphere. The objective of this work was to present and discuss some aspects of the soil CO<SUB>2</SUB> efflux. We definedherein, some terms associated to the soil respiration concept, we tackled some aspects regarding the influen...

The amount of carbon dioxide emitted from soil is produced almost entirely by plant root respiration andmicrobial decomposition of organic matter. The amount of carbon released by peat bogs (histosol) depends on theinteraction between the quantity of water in the bogs and organic carbon produced and consumed, which also dependson the chemical natur...

Losses of carbon from peat lands occur in the form of CO2 emissions, methane, dissolved carbon or otherparticles, CO2 flux depending on the balance between carbon fixations by photosynthesis and it release throughrespiration in plants and peat mineralization, whole process being controlled by temperature and humidity.CO2 emissions from the two hist...

Nutrients leaching from the agricultural soils is a major environmental concern worldwide. The risk of nutrients leaching in soils fertilized with straw and manure was tested in mesocosms experiments during seven months. The biotic community of the mesocosms was controlled to assure a different functional diversity for each kind of fertilizer. Afte...

Preservation of genetic variability at crop plants is of maximum importance for sustainable agriculture. Local varieties of crop plants can hold some unique genes that encode important characteristics for the present and future of humanity’s nutrition: resistance at stress factors, biotic and abiotic, nutritional and therapeutic qualities, excellen...

By the services which are offered to ecosystems, soil biodiversity plays a crucial role in assurance of theirfunctions. Long time researches are necesary for a well understanding of soil biodiversity functions in naturalecosystems and also agroecosystems. The present paper discusses some aspects regarding difficulties of studyingsoil biodiversity....

The efficiency of organic amendment applications as a sustainable practice is directly related with activity of soil organisms and their interactions. Earthworms (Lumbricidae) are one of the most important group of soil organisms, which can critically affect organic matter mineralization by incorporating, decomposing and redistributing soil surface...

The preservation of the genetic variability at the crop plants is an important premise for a long durable agriculture. Romania still has an important genetic diversity at the crop plants. Unfortunately in Romania the risk of this diversity disappearance is very big due to the age of the seeds producers and the big surface of unused land. During 200...

The reduction of agro biodiversity started to concern more and more international organizations. The most important documents drawn up regarding this are: Convention on Biodiversity adopted in ONU Conference of Rio de Janeiro (1992), 98/95 EEC Directive, The International Convention regarding Genetic Resources of Plants for Alimentation and Agricul...

The biodiversity conservation was included in environment problems at the ONU conference for environment and development, from Rio de Janeiro (1992). Important parts of the conservation are traditional varieties and local populations of crop plants. The UE regulation 98/95 comes to protect the vegetal genetic resources. Unlike the other countries w...