Phytophthora capsici is a pathogen on several economically important crops including pepper. The fungus attacks the roots, stems, leaves and fruit of the plant. Experiments were conducted to determine environmental conditions that may affect infection of pepper fruit by zoospores of P. capsici. Two techniques were used to inoculate the mature green pepper fruit. First, the blossom end of the fr...

Mango fruit (Mangifera indica L.) are highly perishable and have a limited shelf life, due to postharvest desiccation and senescence, which limits their global distribution. Recent studies of tomato fruit suggest that these traits are influenced by the expression of genes that are associated with cuticle metabolism. However, studies of these phenomena in mango fruit are limited by the lack of g...

A study was carried out to determine the effects of different mulch materials on plant growth, some quality properties and yield in melon cultivars in high altitude environmental condition. Clear mulch application affected more plant growth than the other applications. Fruit width, fruit length, dry matter in fruit, total soluble solid, color, husk thickness, fruit fresh thickness, fruit firmne...

Many ant species have morphologically distinct worker sub-castes. This presumably increases colony efficiency and is thought to be optimized by natural selection. Optimality arguments are, however, often lacking in detail. In ants, the benefits of having workers in a range of sizes have rarely been explained mechanistically. In Atta leafcutter ants, large workers specialize in defence and also ...

OBJECTIVES We tested whether leukocyte telomere length maintenance, which underlies healthy cellular aging, provides a link between sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption and the risk of cardiometabolic disease. METHODS We examined cross-sectional associations between the consumption of SSBs, diet soda, and fruit juice and telomere length in a nationally representative sample of healthy a...

Passionfruit (Passiflora edulis, Sims, cultivar "Sweetheart") were subject to gamma irradiation at levels suitable for phytosanitary purposes (0, 150, 400 and 1000 Gy) then stored at 8 °C and assessed for fruit quality and total ascorbic acid concentration after one and fourteen days. Irradiation at any dose (≤1000 Gy) did not affect passionfruit quality (overall fruit quality, colour, firmness...

The date fruit, which is produced mostly in the hot arid regions of Southern Asia and North Africa, in large quantities, is marketed all over the world as an important crop. Date grading is an important process for producers and affects the fruit quality evaluation and export market. In this research Adaptive Network Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) was applied as a decision making technique to c...

Colletotrichum musae is an important cosmopolitan pathogenic fungus that causes anthracnose in banana fruit. The entire genome of C. musae isolate GM20 (CMM 4420), originally isolated from infected banana fruit from Alagoas State, Brazil, was sequenced and annotated. The pathogen genomic DNA was sequenced on HiSeq Illumina platform. The C. musae GM20 genome has 50,635,197 bp with G + C content ...

Insect parasitoids are known to deposit chemical signals on utilized hosts following oviposition. It is believed that these chemical signals alert future conspecifics of an exploited and thus sub-optimal host alleviating potential suffering among brood that would otherwise compete over a limited resource. Diachasma alloeum (Muesebeck) is a braconid wasp that specifically attacks two species of ...

Identification and selection of promising genotypes of fruit tree are primary steps in breeding programs. The economic importance of almond production in the world has stimulated numerous studies related to breeding, quantitative and qualitative traits, the increase of yield and decrease production costs. In this study, morphological and pomological characteristics of 60 cultivar and superior g...