The performance of five cauliflower cultivars in conventional and alternative phytosanitary management—without the use of synthetic pesticides—was evaluated. Two experiments were conducted at Epagri, Ituporanga Experimental Station in February 2018 and 2019. A randomized block design with four repetitions was adopted, with twenty plants of each cultivar as plots. The seedlings were transplanted on millet and mucuna straw at a spacing of 0.5 m × 0.8 m. We evaluated agronomic yield, inflorescence quality, pest damage and plant diseases, especially bacterial and fungal rots. The cauliflower hybrids Vera, Verona and Serena stood out in productivity and quality, being the most indicated for sowing in off-season crops, in the Alto Vale do Itajaí region. The most productive cultivars were less damaged by bacterial diseases and defoliating caterpillars and without interference of whitefly infestation on yield. The results also reveal that it is possible to control pests and diseases with phytosanitary products of lower toxicity, i.e., with lower residues of synthetic pesticides.

This paper contributes to a long-standing debate in development practice: under what conditions can externally established participatory groups engage in the collective management of services beyond the life of a project? Using 10 years of panel data on water point functionality from Indonesia’s rural water program, the Program for Community-Based Water Supply and Sanitation, the paper explored the determinants of subnational variation in infrastructure sustainability. It then investigated positive and negative deviance cases to answer why some communities successfully engaged in system management despite being located in difficult conditions as per quantitative findings and vice versa. The findings show that differences in the implementation of community participation, driven by local social relations between frontline service providers, that is, village authorities and water user groups, explain sustainable management. This initial condition of state-society relations influences how the project is initiated, kicking off negative or positive reinforcing pathways, leading to community collective action or exit. The paper concludes that the relationships between frontline government representatives and community actors are important and are an underexamined aspect of the ability of external projects to generate successful community-led management of public goods.

The purpose of this article is to determine the equitability of airport and university allocations throughout Ethiopian regional states based on the number of airports and institutions per 1 million people. According to the sample, the majority of respondents believed that university allocation in Ethiopia is equitable. In contrast, the majority of respondents who were asked about airports stated that there is an uneven distribution of airports across Ethiopia’s regional states. Hence, both interviewees and focus group discussants stated that there is a lack of equitable distribution of universities and airports across Ethiopia’s regional states. This paper contributes a lesson on how to create a comprehensive set of determining factors for equitable infrastructure allocation. It also provides a methodological improvement for assessing infrastructure equity and other broader implications across Ethiopian regional states.

This paper assesses South Africa’s massive infrastructure drive to revive growth and increase employment. After years of stagnant growth, this is now facing a deep economic crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This drive also comes after years of weak infrastructure investment, widening the infrastructure deficit. The plan outlines a R1 trillion investment drive, primarily from the private sector through the Infrastructure Fund over the next 10 years (Government of South Africa, 2020). This paper argues that while infrastructure development in South Africa is much-needed, the emphasis on de-risking for private sector buy-in overshadows the key role the state must play in leading on structurally transforming the economy.

With the purpose of knowing the phytosocilogy of weeds associated to a carrot crop (Daucus carota L.) under conditions of the municipalities of Ventaquemada and Jenesano-Boyacá, one lot per municipality destined to carrot cultivation was selected and a W-shaped layout was made covering an area of 500 m². Relative density, relative frequency, relative dominance and the importance value index (IVI) were calculated, as well as the Alpha and Beta diversity indices for the sampled areas. A total of 6 families and 11 species were counted, of which 63.64% were represented by annual plants and 36.36% by perennial plants. The class Liliopsida (Monocotyledon) was represented by the Poaceae family. The Magnoliopsida class (Dicotyledon) was represented by the following families: Asteraceae, Brassicaceae, Boraginaceae, Leguminosaceae, Polygonaceae, the last one being the one with the highest number of species. The species R. crispus and P. nepalense were the ones with the highest values of Importance Value Index (IVI) with 0.953 and 0.959, respectively. According to the Shannon-Wiener diversity and Simpson’s dominance indices, the evaluated areas presented a low species diversity and a high probability of dominant species. The results obtained can serve as a basis and tool for carrot growers in the evaluated areas to define management plans for the associated weeds and thus optimize yields in this crop.