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Organic farming as an approach to sustainable agriculture tries to decrease environmental problems and possible health hazards caused by the residues from pesticides. Since the agricultural professionals are responsible to inform the farmers and the public by education and extension efforts, it is necessary to understand their attitudes. The main purpose of this research was to investigate factors influencing agricultural professionals' attitudes towards organic farming. We used a survey research by questionnaire in Fars province (a southern province in Iran) to collect data from 138 agricultural professionals in autumn 2007. Major independent variables in the study were knowledge of organic farming, general attitude towards the environment, social norm about organic farming, moral norm about organic farming, nutrient attitude, health attitude, perceived transitional difficulty and negative attitude towards conventional agriculture. The findings showed that negative attitude towards conventional agriculture, general attitude towards the environment, perceived transitional difficulty and moral norm had significant and direct effects on attitude towards organic farming. Negative attitude towards conventional agriculture had the most direct effect. As it was expected, the perceived transitional difficulty had a negative effect on attitude towards organic farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The awareness and conception of the genetic diversity in faba bean (Vicia faba) accessions are important for the enforcement of degree addressed to their usages and conservations. The aim of this work was to estimate the genetic diversity and population structure in Iraqi faba bean using SSR markers for utilization in crossing and variety development. To assess genetic variation and population structure among faba bean accessions, 25 microsatellite loci were exerted. The analysis of diversity indices in the set of faba bean accessions examined here showed that the microsatellites were informative for genotype characterization. In total, 72 polymorphic alleles were exposed to an average of 2.88 per locus and three unique alleles were detected. The average of PIC, gene diversity, marker index, resolving power and Shannon diversity was 0.513, 0.569, 1.671, 2.173 and 0.830, respectively. The patterns detected in the dendrogram and PCA divided 19 accessions into five distinct clusters with different levels of sub-grouping within the cluster. High-level genetic differentiation within a population or group (83%) was significantly greater than that among groups or populations (17%), as planned by Analysis Of Molecular Variance (AMOVA). The model of clustering, based on the analysis of STRUCTURE software, identified four groups genetically dispersed. These findings have additional importance in faba bean breeding as well as maintenance programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]