In 1984 studies were initiated to identify the bird species causing damage to pistachio nuts, quantify the losses, and explore possible methods for alleviating bird losses. The first year's field observations were made to identify and determine the level of activity of the various depredating bird species in the orchard. Field samples of nuts were collected to assess the levels of damage occurr...

Adsorption of violet B azo dye from aqueous solutions was studied by different cellulose agricultural waste materials (almond shell (AS), pistachio shell (PS), walnut shell (WS), Tea waste (TW) and orange peel (OP)). Cellulose agriculturalwaste sorbents characterized by FTIR and SEM methods. The effects of different parameters such as contact time, pH, adsorbent dosage and initial dye concentra...

This work introduces a biochar as novel catalyst prepared from the pistachio hull, and demonstrates its catalytic potential for degrading the reactive red 198 (RR198) dye in catalytic ozonation processes (COPs). The prepared pistachio hull biochar (PHB) was a macroporous, basic material with low specific surface area. PHB had the greatest catalytic potential at an optimal alkaline pH of 10. Sig...

Classiication of real-time X-ray images of randomly oriented touching pistachio nuts is discussed. The ultimate objective is the development of a system for automated non-invasive detection of defective product items on a conveyor belt. We discuss the extraction of new features that allow better discrimination between damaged and clean items (pistachio nuts). This feature extraction and classii...

Nuts are part of a healthy diet such as Mediterranean diet. Benefits of nuts in reducing the risk of heart disease has been reasonably attributed to their composition of vitamins, minerals, unsaturated fatty acids, fiber and phytochemicals such as polyphenols, tocopherols, squalene and phytosterols. More than 75% of total fatty acids of nuts are unsaturated. αtocopherol is the main tocopherol i...

The objective of this work was to study the effect pistachio by-product flour (PBF) addition wheat on rheological properties dough. Pistachio levels used were: 0 (C), 5 (P5), 15 (P15), and 25 g/100 g (P25). Alveographic farinographic assays, gluten, moisture content (H), dough pH were studied. In addition, texture profile analysis, dynamic rheology relaxation performed. water absorption, develo...

Mortality of pear psylla to amitraz was studied by means of bioassays. Variation between samples, temporal variation within the season in one orchard and spatial variation between Swiss regions were considered. Variation between samples was large enough to produce different Probit functions and LC50 values. Temporal and spatial variations were too small to indicate resistance. Prediction interv...

Synthetic sugar esters are a relatively new class of insecticidal compounds that are produced by reacting sugars with fatty acids. The objective of this research was to determine how systematic alterations in sugar or fatty acid components of sugar ester compounds influenced their insecticidal properties. Sucrose octanoate, sorbitol octanoate, sorbitol decanoate, sorbitol caproate, xylitol octa...

Rhodococcus fascians, a phytopathogen that alters plant development, inflicts significant losses in plant production around the world. We report here the complete genome sequence of R. fascians D188, a well-characterized model isolate, and Rhodococcus species PBTS (pistachio bushy top syndrome) 1 and 2, which were shown to be responsible for a disease outbreak in pistachios.

In pistachio nuts, aflatoxin is mainly concentrated in the green hull-cracked nuts in the orchard even prior to harvest. However, during the hull-removal process, the hulls of all nuts including the cracked, identifiable nuts are removed causing an important characterization criterion of the contaminated nuts, to be lost. This, in turn, makes it harder to detect the contaminated nuts. However, ...