Hortic. bras., v. 27, n. 1, jan.-mar. 2009 The Northeast region of Brazil responds for nearly 95% of the national melon (Cucumis melo L.) production. Located at this region, States of Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará supply respectively 55 and 28% of the total melon harvested in Brazil (FNP, 2007). The expansion of the area used for melon production in this region, in addition to an intensive year...

BACKGROUND Phosphorus (P) is a major limiting nutrient for plant growth in many soils. Studies in model species have identified genes involved in plant adaptations to low soil P availability. However, little information is available on the genetic bases of these adaptations in vegetable crops. In this respect, sequence data for melon now makes it possible to identify melon orthologues of candid...

The antidiabetic activities of bitter melon powders produced with lyophilization/superfine grinding and hot air drying/normal grinding were investigated in vivo for selecting a suitable bitter melon processing procedure. After a five-week treatment, bitter melon lyophilized superfine grinding powder (BLSP) had a higher antidiabetic activity with reducing fasting blood glucose levels from 21.40...

Oriental melon (Cucumis melo L. var. makuwa) is an important fruit for human consumption. However, this plant species is one of the most recalcitrant to genetic transformation. The lack of an efficient in vitro system limits the development of a reproducible genetic transformation protocol for Oriental melon. In this study, an efficient transgenic production method for Agrobacterium-mediated tr...

Results 13/30, 13/21 and 6/19 were sensitized to profilin, while 14/30, 11/21 and 5/19 were positive to Bet v 1. 40% of profilin positive patients had clinical food allergy with melon or water melon. ISAC profilin results were compared at different cut-off levels with SPT to pure profilin. 11 patients were serologically profilin positive between 0.01 and 0.29 ISU ; 7 of them were SPT profilin p...

Ripening-associated pectin disassembly in melon is characterized by a decrease in molecular mass and an increase in the solubilization of polyuronide, modifications that in other fruit have been attributed to the activity of polygalacturonase (PG). Although it has been reported that PG activity is absent during melon fruit ripening, a mechanism for PG-independent pectin disassembly has not been...

Clinical case Caucasian 16-year-old boy was refered to Immunoalergology Unit for food allergy investigation. Since early childhood the patient avoids ingestion of peach although without any symptoms to mention. At the age of 7 he experienced labial and palpebral angioedema, oropharyngeal pruritis and dyspnoea immediately after ingestion of a non-peeled fresh apple and later with a cooked apple....

Oriental melon (Cucumis melo L. var. makuwa) is one of six subspecies of melon and is cultivated widely in East Asia, including China, Japan, and Korea. Although oriental melon is economically valuable in Asia and is genetically distinct from other subspecies, few reports of genome-scale research on oriental melon have been published. We generated 30.5 and 36.8 Gb of raw RNA sequence data from ...

Momordica charantia (bitter melon) is commonly known as vegetable insulin, but the mechanisms underlying its hypoglycemic effect remain unclear. To address this issue, the effects of bitter melon extracts on postprandial glycemic responses have been investigated in rats. An aqueous extract (AE), methanol fraction (MF) and methanol insoluble fraction (MIF) were prepared from bitter melon. An ora...

The SBP-box gene family is specific to plants and encodes a class of zinc finger-containing transcription factors with a broad range of functions. Although SBP-box genes have been identified in numerous plants, including green algae, moss, silver birch, snapdragon, Arabidopsis, rice, and maize, there is little information concerning SBP-box genes, or the corresponding miR156/157, function in me...