First, some words about body shapes. Most men tend to be "apples" in that they carry most of their weight above the waist. Most women, on the other hand, are "pears", carrying more of their weight in the hips and thighs, as shown in the figure above. However, some women are more like apples, and their weight is distributed more like that of men. And if apples and pears become obese, these diffe...

Recently, non-destructive techniques such as the Vis / NIR spectroscopy have been used to evaluate the characteristics of maturation and quality of pears. The study aims to validate the readings by the Vis / NIR spectroscopy as a non-destructive way to assess the qualitative characteristics of pear cultivars 'Williams', 'Packams' and 'Carrick', produced according to Brazilian conditions. The ex...

Hyperspectral imaging technology was employed to detect slight bruises on Korla pears. The spectral data of 60 bruised samples and 60 normal samples were collected by a hyperspectral imaging system. To select the characteristic wavelengths for detection, several chemometrics methods were used on the raw spectra. Firstly, principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted on the spectra ranging fr...

Monitoring of nitrate (NO(3)(-)) and nitrite (NO(2)(-)) content in agricultural products in Slovenia has been carried out since 1996. The results of monitoring over the period 1996-2002 are presented. During this time 924 samples of 14 different agricultural products (potato, lettuce, apples, carrot, silage maize, cabbage, grapes, peaches, string beans, cereals, pears, cucumbers, strawberries a...

Real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) has become a widely used method for exploring plant gene expression level. The requires using some stably expressed genes as reference to accurately normalize the RT-qPCR data. However, under various stresses and hormone treatments, levels of most vary. Environmental variations also influence their levels. lack validated, can mislead study function in pears....

Recent evidence indicated that interspecific hybridization was the major mode of evolution in Pyrus. The genetic relationships and origins of the Asian pear are still unclear because of frequent hybrid events, fast radial evolution, and lack of informative data. Here, we developed fluorescent sequence-specific amplification polymorphism (SSAP) markers with lots of informative sites and high pol...

Black stain is a postharvest disease that occurs on the skin of Niitaka pears (Pyrus pyrifolia Nakai) during cold storage, causing significant economic losses to pear production. We investigated antifungal effects peracetic acid (PAA), which strong oxidizing agent and an effective disinfectant, fungi cause black stain, we confirmed its preventive effect after application pears. Fungal isolates ...