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This work presents results of a qualitative empirical study on practices of farmers participating in the Czech system of organic agriculture (ecological agriculture). Growth of this sector has been seen almost solely in positive terms, without questioning its content. However, Czech organic agriculture does not stem from the organic movement as is the case in Western Europe and therefore it is necessary to ask what it draws on and to discover, with regard to its nature, whether it can meet the expectations stated in official policies. This paper briefly describes the development of organic farming in other countries and the current problem of its conventionalization. The research study then shows evidence that organic farming is not adopted only because of state's subsidies, but also due to the specific value orientation of farmers, despite the history and the lack of tradition of these specific practices in the Czech Republic.

The key focus of the project "Bringing the datawarehouse for agriculture into practice" is to develop an IT solution for the implementation of data integration in agriculture. This solution is elaborated in cooperation with a whole range of bodies in the Czech Republic; the lead partner is the Pardubice region where the pilot phase of datawarehouse implementation is being performed. Apart from Czech legal subjects, partners from Finland, Estonia and Poland are also participating in the eFarmer operation. The datawarehouse project is one of the biggest subprojects of the eFarmer operation and is directly connected to the subproject of "Analysis of data and information flow and storage in rural regions", which was carried out within the eFarmer operation in the last period.

The aim of the paper is the evaluation of the present sale of the chosen organic products in the condition of the Czech Republic. The sale analysis is made according to the structure of plant and animal products with the help of both qualitative and quantitative evaluation parameters as for example the amount of production and their prices, sales conditions and the used distribution channels. The part of the paper is also analyses of present state of demand for chosen organic foodstuff and of the consumer's interest in organic foodstuff. The attention is paid mainly to the recognition of the consumer's interest in organic foodstuff, for the consumer's interest is the limit factor of the demand for organic products.

This paper compares two Taiwanese high-tech enterprises, Acer and Trend Micro, which choose different international brand marketing strategies due to the diverse managing types and product characteristics. The hardware products and business software sold by Acer and Trend Micro are discussed to reveal their international brand development and marketing strategy. The research findings can be provided for different enterprises for decision-making when they consider their internationalization and brand strategy.

This article presents a review of data and results of investigations from the period 1958-2006 regarding the occurrence of insects of the genus Cephalcia Panzer (Hymenoptera, Pamphiliidae) in Norway spruce stands of the Beskidy Mountains (Western Carpathians, southern Poland). Currently, eight species are known for the area: C. abietis, C. alashanica, C. alpina, C. annulicornis, C. arvensis, C. erythrogaster, C. fulva and C. masuttii. Information regarding each species is given, with details on identification, local occurrence and importance.

Finnish agriculture changed radically with the EU joining in 1995. The commitment of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) led to unprecedented changes in economic environment - in agriculture as in processing industry. Finland lost the possibility to regulate the original price level of agricultural products supported by the national border protection and export subsidies. Prices guaranteed by the EU are much lower today than before the EU-membership. Recently, Finland has evaluated ten years being an EU member. Despite its competitive disadvantage, given mostly by unfavourable production conditions, Finnish agriculture has not lost within the competitive environment of the single market and it has tried to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the CAP. The article recapitulates the ten year effort of Finnish agriculture to ensure the competitiveness within the EU single market.

An important issue in the theory of social constructivism is the issue of spatial arrangement. Space is grasped as the primary/secondary zone of operation. The secondary zone of operation is determined by the use of technical means. Technically conditioned social networks currently give a new dimension to both zones. From this point of view, the new solutions for the network/agglomeration economies arise: networks may substitute for agglomerations.

To determine the countryside, different criteria can be used from the simplest one - the population density - to more complex ones like the economic indicators or the combination of factors characterizing the particular types of municipalities or regions. Generally, it is possible to divide these indicators into subjective and objective ones and further to categorize them according to other properties. The objective of this article is to collect as much information as possible about the methods of defining the borders of rural areas used in the Czech Republic and to set these criteria into a system. We would like to evaluate the applicability of these criteria and to state the advantages and disadvantages of their use. The article also compares statistical data related to the selected features characterizing countryside.

Portion of the electronically processed agendas and transactions of all kinds constantly increases and also the volume and importance of the processed agendas grows. Therefore, the need for supervision and inspection of these transactions is also increasing. One possibility is to accomplish control e.g. with the use of specialised mining instruments. The main disadvantage of this approach is the fact that the discovered suspicious transaction was completed long ago and it is impossible to change it. In such a case, we need to inspect and evaluate transactions in the real time still before their completion. But the complexity of real-time analysis of transaction rapidly grows with the increasing set of aspects of this assessment. This paper describes the conception, architecture and possibilities to utilize a system which contains mainly the on-line risk analysis and simultaneously it enables an automatic adaptation by the means of utilizing conclusions from a feedback analysis of mining instruments of the data warehouse. This system is suitable e.g. for the automatic on-line analysis of risks of credit card payments, authenticity of the submitted projects (at university), the submitted tax or customs declarations, etc. Without any detriment to generality, we shall use the last mentioned application domain for explaining the system properties.

A laboratory experiment of a completely randomised design and replicated four times evaluated the effectiveness to control the bruchid, Callosobruchus maculatus in cowpea by the synthetic insecticide Actellic dust, and by the natural protectants ash, coconut oil, powdered cloves and black pepper. The data collected included the number of damaged and undamaged seeds, weight of damaged and undamaged seeds and the number of live and dead bruchids. Seeds treated with Actellic dust and black pepper powder had significantly low percentages of damaged seeds. Black pepper powder and coconut oil showed good potential in protecting cowpea against bruchid damage.

The paper describes the role of rural tourism for the sustainable development of rural areas and stresses out the importance of strategic approach in the planning of their development. The author identifies core problems, which eliminate their use and disable individual strategies set by some entrepreneurs in rural tourism. Concretely it is the absence of developing projects and focus on the development of individual villages. Then it is the lack of will to cooperate, local resources are not effectively used and the local community is not adequately involved.

This review is a short introduction to phylogenetic analysis. Phylogenetic analysis allows comprehensive understanding of the origin and evolution of species. Generally, it is possible to construct the phylogenetic trees according to different features and characters (e.g. morphological and anatomical characters, RAPD patterns, FISH patterns, sequences of DNA/RNA and amino acid sequences). The DNA sequences are preferable for phylogenetic analyses of closely related species. On the other hand, the amino acid sequences are used for phylogenetic analyses of more distant relationships. The sequences can be analysed using many computer programs. The methods most often used for phylogenetic analyses are neighbor-joining (NJ), maximum parsimony (MP), maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference.

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of inverted radicle and hypocotyl grafting methods on potted nursery tree production in chestnut. The study was carried out in greenhouse conditions in 2003-2004. Newly germinated chestnut seeds and young seedlings of SA 5-1 genotype were used as rootstocks and sprouts with dormant buds of the same genotype were used as scions. Graftings were done at three periods from April to June. Graft success and scion shoot growth were examined to determine a suitable method and time of grafting. It was found in the study that potted chestnut nursery trees could be produced in one year using either of the grafting methods. Better graft success and survival ratio were obtained from inverted radicle grafting. In this method, graft success was 83.6% in 2003 and 96.7% in 2004.

Twenty-four Czech dairy farms were visited to record lameness prevalence and to identify factors associated with high lameness prevalence at the farm level and/or increased lameness risk at the level of individual cows. All cows were checked for lameness and forty cows per farm were examined for overgrown claws, body dirtiness and skin lesions. The farm environment was scored between 1 (excellent) to 5 (very poor) in three different aspects: floor slipperiness, cow care quality, and housing quality. Data on hoof trimming schedules were obtained from farm managers. Lameness prevalence on farms was in a wide range from 6% to 42% (median 22%). At the farm level, floor slipperiness and poor animal care were associated with high lameness prevalence (Spearman correlations, P < 0.05), and the proportion of cows with overgrown claws tended to be associated with it (P < 0.10). The reported time schedules of hoof trimming (continuous trimming applied or not; and time elapsed since the whole herd was trimmed) were unrelated to either the prevalence of overgrown claws or the prevalence of lameness. Within farms, cows with overgrown claws and dirty cows were at an increased risk of being lame (multiple logistic regression, P < 0.05) and cows with skin lesions tended to be more lame (P < 0.10). The risk of lameness had an inverted U-shape dependence on age (P < 0.05), with cows at 7-8 years of age being the most endangered by lameness. We conclude that there is a large potential for lameness reduction on some Czech dairy farms through improving the cow care and reducing floor slipperiness, and that within farms, cows with overgrown claws and also dirty cows and cows with skin lesions should be given special attention since they are more likely to get lame.

PCR primers for diagnosis of Rhynchosporium secalis in seed samples of barley were developed. For the quantification of the pathogen in seed samples a real-time PCR with SYBR Green approach was used. Amounts from 1.8 to 419.1 pg of R. secalis DNA per 100 ng of total DNA were detected in 18 samples of barley seeds contaminated by R. secalis in field conditions. The correctness of this quantitative analysis was checked using an artificial infection of seeds with 1, 2, 5 and 20% level of infection by R. secalis. The level of contamination of artificially infected samples decreased with a lowering amount of added seed powder contaminated by the pathogen, the correlation coefficient for this analysis was 0.98. While the primer pair used in these analyses shows cross-reactions with other pathogens (P. teres, Drechslera tritici-repentis, F. culmorum and F. poe), it is recommended to check the products of RT-PCR by agarose-gel electrophoresis, in which these pathogens are easily distinguishable from R. secalis by different lengths of the amplified fragments.

The acute and chronic toxicity to honeybees, Apis mellifera of water guttation and dew collected from winter rape plants treated with the insecticide Nurelle D^® (a.i. chlorpyriphos + cypermethrin) was investigated. Caged bees were fed on sugar syrup containing water guttation and dew for 24 h (acute toxicity test) and for 10 days (chronic toxicity test). Bee mortality and food consumption were determined daily. A contact toxicity test was performed within 24 h on bees kept in Petri dishes (10 bees per dish) lined with filter paper saturated with the test solution. The acute Nurelle D^® contact and oral toxicity tests showed that the mortality of bees treated with water guttation and dew collected from the treated plants did not exceed 10%. A chronic toxicity test showed that adding contaminated water guttation and dew to the syrup caused an insignificant increase in bee mortality and reduced the syrup consumption significantly. The chlorpyriphos residue found in contaminated water guttation and dew were below the limit of detection (0.8 µg/kg) and the cypermethrin residue was below the detection levels.

The Web of Science database searched results for papers published from the Veterinary Research Institute, Brno, Czech Republic, were analysed. The Veterinary Research Institute has increased publication activity in 2001-2005; more than 4 times in comparison with the period 1990-2004. The impact factor of journals has increased 5.5 times. The collaboration with 31 foreign countries and 175 institutions resulted in the publication of 277 papers in 93 journals during the past five years. Positioning of the Veterinary Research Institute is now among the worldwide leading teams is evident in twelve research profiles. The Web of Science is an efficient tool for record analysis and researcher's and institution's publication activities.

The identification of the improvement areas and utilization of information and communication technologies in agriculture, as the support of the agricultural development in line with the environmental sustainability criteria, have gained importance and priority in our knowledge driven society. Rules define constraints, conditions and policies of how the business processes are to be performed but they also affect the behavior of the resource and facilitate the strategic business goals achieving. They control the business and represent business knowledge. The article deals with business rules and rule technology and identifies the business and technical opportunities they afford company. It shows also how to specify and classify business rules from the business perspective and to establish an approach to managing them that will enable a faster change in business processes and other business concepts in particular business in agricultural area. This article could provide business analysts with an essential approach to understanding, redesigning and communicating what really happens in the business processes.

Green areas and urban forests represent important factors of urbanized environment which attracts more and more attention of forest management and silviculture. Recreational load and its types are the most important driving variable for the management framework in which basic silvicultural methods should be applied. The problem of the required combination of natural and social limits is resolved by a matrix which takes into account forest ecosystem quality and recreation. The matrix defines 9 or 27 units (their number depends on the fact if we take into account the age of stand or not) for which basic management rules could be prepared. The basic rules concerning biological aspects are described in a general way in the article.

A six year old male iguana (Iguana iguana) was brought to our clinic after a fall from a height of 1.5 meters. The patient showed apathy, dehydration, and paresis of all the limbs. Postural reflexes, palpebral reflex, and response to painful stimuli were minimal. The patient had extremely high levels of uric acid (1 734.0 µmol/l) and phosphorus (9.80 mmol/l), ratio of calcium to phosphorus (0.18), leucocytosis (23.3×10⁹/l) with heterophilia (17.10×10⁹/l), and high activity of ALT, AST and CK (2.09, 6.59, and 260.0 µkat/l). Tracheoscopy and pneumoscopy revealed presence of blood clots in the trachea and lungs with haemorrhage within the parenchyma. Based on the results of the clinical examination, endoscopy and laboratory diagnostics, the clinical diagnosis was chronic kidney failure, liver lipidosis and lung haemorrhage. Because of a very poor prognosis, the patient was euthanised. At necropsy, the signs of visceral gout and hepatomegaly with diffuse yellowish white discoloration and with dotted brown pigmentation were also observed. The kidneys were enlarged, and stained brown grayish. The gross and histopathological examination confirmed the clinical diagnosis of visceral gout, chronic kidney failure, liver steatosis and granulomatous pneumonia, with lung haemorrhage associated with urate deposits in lung tissue and posttraumatic status.

The enhanced use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has a strong impact on business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) relationships as well as the way the key business processes are conducted. It can save costs and time, enable businesses to reach a wider market and to respond more quickly to the customer demands. These benefits open up new ways of doing international business. The policy objective is to encourage the integration of e-business into normal business by promoting the take-up of e-business services. Information and communication technologies are necessary to be seen as a tool for the increase of prosperity and competitiveness.

The article investigates the socio-economic importance of collection and use of non-wood forest products (NWFP) for inhabitants in the Czech Republic (CR) in 2005 and brings a comparison with former investigations and research projects. The research project consisted of these parts in 2005: 1. Analysis of hitherto performed research projects and their results in 1999-2003, 2. Investigation of quantities and values of NWFP collected in 2004 and 2005, 3. Specific investigation of socio-economic importance of NWFP collection and use. The results of respective investigations prove NWFP collection being quite important for the inhabitants of the CR. The importance consists in the material value of picked commodities on the average annual level higher than 3,000 mil. CZK. Nevertheless, collecting NWFP is considered as a very important recreational activity. Only a small part of the population collecting NWFP (about 12%) collects NWFP to save money.

This article deals with the possibilities of making usage of ICT (Information and communication technology) to support cooperation among teams. There are two main approaches: systems based on the www technologies (intranets), and specialised systems, which are dedicated to cooperation (these systems are designated as groupware). Web technologies are the main element of the Internet. They are becoming the most important technology in the presentation layer of current business information systems. The web environment penetrates into all currently used applications. Its integration with all existing systems makes the users locally independent and enables them to use a variety of hardware and software platforms, as well as the advantages of mobile communications. The results of the issues discussed in the article are outlined in specific examples.

Virtual portal (VIPO) is designed to provide users with a single-point access to information, and tools to support their decision-making. VIPO illustrates the best practice presented in terms of case studies coded along three dimensions: field, domain and objectives. The second major source of knowledge is based on software packages made available to users including tutor support. The third part of the portal provides useful links to the existing databases which have the potential to facilitate decision making in agribusiness. All three pillars of the VIPO are complemented by on-line consultancy services.

The main obstacle in assessing the financial impact of foot-and-mouth disease inTurkeyis unavailability of reliable data. Considering this issue, this study aimed at using a Delphi Expert Opinion Survey (DEOS) method to obtain data required for economic analysis of FMD inTurkey. This study concluded that although there were problems in obtaining some information from the experts, in general theDelphitechnique is a promising way of obtaining animal health data, which is otherwise missing and/or not regularly recorded in developing countries.

Social-political transition in the former socialist countries led to a new understanding of borders and created the prerequisites for renaissance and significant activation of the cross-border co-operation. This way, Slovakia along with other countries joined the Euro-regional movement in Europe, which spread since the end of 60-ies through Western-European countries. Formation and institutionalisation of Euro-regional relations, links and co-operation was initially hindered by a whole range of obstacles, including the ones with political background. It was obvious mainly in Slovakia where it influenced the existence and potential establishment of new Euro-regional associations. Rebirth of the Euro-regional activities started after 1998. Currently, there are Euro-regions practically operating along the entire Slovak border with its neighbours. The extent and form of institutionalisation and professional staffing varies. Activities of Euro-regions are merely based on projects which bring funding. Projects are broadly oriented, while the prevailing focus is currently on the economic activation of Euro-regions. There is a lack of partner co-operation and co-ordination of activities between countries and their activities, including cross-border activities and activities of Euro-regions. Euro-regional activities play a significant role in activation of border areas in the country, while they have a complementary character for the regional state policy and regional policy of self-governed regions which is being formulated.

Campylobacter species, in particular C. jejuni and C. coli, cause infections which vary in symptoms, ranging from asymptomatic to severe chronic illness. The only ISO method for the detection of Campylobacter spp. until now has been the cultivation by selective enrichment and distinct conditions of growth taking several days to complete. We compared the Singlepath^® Campylobacter test which involved 24 h of enrichment in Bolton broth, with PCR-based identification. Chicken meat salad with mayonnaise was spiked with C. jejuni and C. coli and the detection limit was determined. PCR provided the same detection limit of 10² CFU/ml for both strains. The immunotest Singlepath^® was positive with C. jejuni only, the quantity of cells being 10³ CFU/ml. C. coli was undetectable by Singlepath^®, even the concentration of 10⁵ did not reveal a positive reaction.