Vegetables represent an attractive means of providing increased calcium nutrition to the public. In this study, it was demonstrated that lettuce expressing the deregulated Arabidopsis H(+)/Ca(2+) transporter sCAX1 (cation exchanger 1) contained 25%-32% more calcium than controls. These biofortified lettuce lines were fertile and demonstrated robust growth in glasshouse growth conditions. Using ...

Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) is extensively grown and is the most widely used food crop for the called “Fourth Range” of vegetables. Lettuce exhibits healthy properties mainly due to the presence of antioxidant compounds (vitamins C and E, carotenoids, polyphenols) alongside significant fibre content and useful amounts of certain minerals. Lettuce can establish a mutualistic association with arb...

We studied effects of free copper ion activity and total copper concentration on copper uptake by lettuce from nutrient solution and a model was developed. In ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid and dissolved organic matter treatments, when pH and free copper ion activity were the same, root copper concentration did not change with the total copper concentration. However, at fixed pH and total copp...

BACKGROUND Human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (hG-CSF) can serve as valuable biopharmaceutical for research and treatment of the human blood cancer. Transplastomic plants have been emerged as a new and high potential candidate for production of recombinant biopharmaceutical proteins in comparison with transgenic plants due to extremely high level expression, biosafety and many other ad...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of combination of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and high-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting on the growth of lettuce variety ‘Multigreen 3’ in a greenhouse. Supplemental blue light had an impact on the efficiency of photosynthetic performance in lettuce; however, different blue light wavelengths had uneven effect. The 470 nm light also had a positive ...

U.S. salmonellosis outbreaks have occurred following consumption of tomato and cantaloupe but not lettuce. We report differential contamination among agricultural seedlings by Salmonella enterica via soil. Members of the family Brassicaceae had a higher incidence of outbreak than carrot, lettuce, and tomato. Once they were contaminated, phyllosphere populations were similar, except for tomato. ...

The manipulation of biological substrates is becoming more popular route towards generating novel computing devices. Physarum polycephalum is used as a model organism in biocomputing because it can create ‘wires’ for use in hybrid circuits; programmable growth by manipulation through external stimuli and the ability withstanding a current and its tolerance to hybridisation with a variety of nan...

Salmonella Enteritidis SE86 is an important foodborne pathogen in Southern Brazil and it is able to produce a biosurfactant. However, the importance of this compound for the microorganism is still unknown. This study aimed to investigate the influence of the biosurfactant produced by S. Enteritidis SE86 on adherence to slices of lettuce leaves and on resistance to sanitizers. First, lettuce lea...

Enteric viruses account for most foodborne illness in the United States. The objective of this study was to determine whether the isoelectric point (pI) of viruses such as feline calicivirus (FCV), echovirus 11, and bacteriophages phiX174 and MS2 had any effect on their attachment to butterhead lettuce. The adsorption of virus particles to the lettuce was variable. Bacteriophage MS2 was the onl...