Assigning a basic color name to an object and rating the amount of a particular hue is a fundamental visual capability. Traditional color scaling studies have used increment flashes or isoluminant stimuli of a homogeneous color. Natural objects, however, do not contain a single color but are characterized by a distribution of different chromatic hues. Here we study color scaling using photograp...

Fruits, being highly nutritive, are important component of human diet but they possess very short post-harvest shelf life. As ripen, they become very soft and more prone to injuries, which makes them highly perishable. In India, over 30% of the annual produce is wasted due to spoilage. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop technologies to overcome postharvest losses of fruits. Physiologists...

Micro RNAs (miRNAs) are a class of non-coding, short RNAs having important roles in regulation of gene expression. Although plant miRNAs have been studied in detail in some model plants, less is known about these miRNAs in important fruit plants like banana. miRNAs have pivotal roles in plant growth and development, and in responses to diverse biotic and abiotic stress stimuli. Here, we have an...

Chlorophyll breakdown is a visual phenomenon of leaf senescence and fruit ripening. It leads to the formation of colorless chlorophyll catabolites, a group of (chlorophyll-derived bilin-type) linear tetrapyrroles. Here, analysis and structure elucidation of the chlorophyll breakdown products in leaves of banana (Musa acuminata) is reported. In senescent leaves of this monocot all chlorophyll ca...

Trichoderma isolates were obtained from diseased leaves and fruit collected from plantations in the main banana production area in Northern Queensland. Phylogenetic analyses identified the Trichoderma isolates as T. harzianum and T. virens. The Trichoderma spp. were found to be antagonistic against the banana leaf pathogens Mycosphaerella musicola, Cordana musae, and Deightoniella torulosa in v...

Multicellular electrophysiological responses from the dorsal organ on the cephalic lobes of third instar Drosophila melanogaster larvae (wild-type Canton S) stimulated with a cold-trapped banana volatile extract showed that this structure has an olfactory function in the fruit fly. Responses of the dorsal organ were also recorded to constituents of the banana volatile extract as they eluted fro...

Vinegar fermentation was essentially a two-step process comprising the anaerobic conversion of sugars to ethanol (C2H5OH) and the aerobic oxidation of ethanol to acetic acid (CH3CO2H). It was to be found that vinegar could be successfully produced from the juice extracted from banana using yeast and Acetobacter. Banana fruit pulp was a suitable raw material for ethanol production by fermentatio...

BACKGROUND The problems of vitamin A deficiency and chronic diseases have emerged in recent years in some countries in the Micronesian region. These problems are associated with the dietary shift towards imported processed foods and lifestyle changes. Research in the Federated States of Micronesia indicates that yellow- and orange-fleshed banana cultivars contain significant levels of provitami...

High polyphenol and polysaccharide levels in plant tissues such as banana fruit and leaves constitute a significant challenge to the extraction of sufficient amounts of high-quality RNA required for cDNA library synthesis and molecular analysis. To determine their comparative effectiveness at eliminating polyphenols, polysaccharides and proteins, three protocols for RNA extraction from in vitro...

Variations in banana susceptibility to crown rot disease have been observed but the molecular mechanisms underlying these quantitative host-pathogen relationships are still unknown. This study was designed to compare gene expression between crowns of banana fruit showing a high susceptibility (S(+)) and crowns showing a low susceptibility (S(-)) to the disease. Comparisons were performed at two...