Sustainable alternatives for post-harvest strawberry conservation

Harvest and Post-harvest Operations

Harvest and post-harvest operations constitute principal constraints to rice production, especially in irrigated systems, because of the larger yield that has to be handled. Post-harvest crop losses of up to 35% have been reported and attributed to inefficiency of manual threshing of rice by small-scale farmers. This leads to poor grain quality and rejection of locally produced rice. The Africa...

Effect of pre-harvest chitosan sprays on post-harvest infection by Botrytis cinerea and quality of strawberry fruit

The effect of pre-harvest sprays of chitosan on post-harvest decay and quality of strawberries stored at 3 and 13°C was investigated. Strawberry plants were sprayed with 2, 4 and 6 g l, chitosan solutions as the fruit were turning red. A second spray was performed after 10 days. Fruit were picked 5 and 10 days after each spray. Harvested fruit from chitosan sprayed plants were challenged with B...

Subsidy Effects on Managed Ecosystems: Implications for Sustainable Harvest, Conservation, and Control

Sustainable harvest: managing plasticity for resilient crops

Maintaining crop production to feed a growing world population is a major challenge for this period of rapid global climate change. No consistent conceptual or experimental framework for crop plants integrates information at the levels of genome regulation, metabolism, physiology and response to growing environment. An important role for plasticity in plants is assisting in homeostasis in respo...

Biological control of post-harvest diseases of fruits and vegetables: alternatives to synthetic fungicides