Although it is generally realized that environmental factors may influence the nutritive value of fruits and vegetables, there has not been a great deal of research reported to show the extent to which climatic variants may exert their effect. The work reported in this paper is concerned with the relationship between sunlight and the ascorbic acid content of strawberries. Reports in the literat...

Pitaya is one of the most important commercial cactus fruit. Pitaya fruits are easy to get injury during postharvest handling and storage. Pre-harvest and postharvest calcium treatments have been used to maintain flesh firmness and extend shelf life of many fruits. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of calcium treatments on maintaining pitaya fruit quality during cold storage. Pi...

MicroRNA156 is an evolutionarily highly conserved plant micro-RNA (miRNA) that controls an age-dependent flowering pathway. miR156 and its target SQUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE (SPL) genes regulate anthocyanin accumulation in plants, but it is unknown whether this process is affected by light. Red Chinese sand pear (Pyrus pyrifolia) fruits exhibit a unique coloration pattern in response...

Part of the cellular and physiological functions of BAG-1 (Bcl-2-associated athanogene 1) has been ascribed to the ability of this hsp70 (heat-shock protein 70) co-chaperone to regulate steroid receptor activity. BAG-1 has been reported to inhibit the GR (glucocorticoid receptor) and stimulate the androgen receptor, but to leave the activity of the MR (mineralocorticoid receptor) unchanged. Giv...

In our post-genomic world, where we are deluged with genetic information, the bottleneck to scientific progress is often phenotyping, i.e. measuring the observable characteristics of living organisms, such as counting the number of fruits on a plant. Image analysis is one route to automation. In this paper we present a method for recognising and counting fruits from images in cluttered greenhou...

Xanthomonas arboricola pv. pruni is the causal agent of bacterial spot disease of stone fruits and almond. The bacterium is distributed throughout the major stone-fruit-producing areas of the World and is considered a quarantine organism in the European Union according to the Council Directive 2000/29/EC, and by the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization. The effect of leaf we...

Mango fruits (cv. Fazli and Khirsapat) were treated with 3 dosages (5, 10 and 20g) of Potassium permanganate (PP) and kept in sealed polythene bags at normal room temperature (28-33 C). It was observed that PP had little effect on colour development in both the cultivars. All the treated fruits remained green upto 6 days of storage. All the treatments delayed ripening of mango fruits from 2.37 ...

purpose: to report a case of capsular bag distension syndrome (cbds) with solid material presenting eight years after cataract surgery. case report: a 58-years-old female who underwent an uneventful clear-cornea phacoemulsification with in-the-bag intraocular lens (iol) implantation in the right eye, presented with a chief complaint of blurred vision (va: 20/200) and cobweb like matter appearin...

The respiration of individual 'Hass' and 'Fuerte' fruit was monitored during storage at 8oC and 10oC respectively for 14 days, under a continuous flow of humidified air containing ethylene (C2H4) at 0, 0.01, 0.05, 0.25, 1.0 and 5.0 μL.L. Respiration rates of 'Fuerte' fruit under 0.01 μL.L C2H4 were significantly higher than the controls after 3.3 days of storage, but for 'Hass' fruit respiratio...

BAG-1 is a multifunctional protein that blocks apoptosis and interacts with several types of proteins, including Bcl-2 family proteins, the kinase Raf-1, certain tyrosine kinase growth factor receptors, and steroid hor mone receptors, possibly by virtue of its ability to regulate the Hsp70/ Hsc70 family of molecular chaperones. Two major forms of the human and mouse BAG-1 proteins were detected...