People battling celiac disease are at a disadvantage because of their inability to consume glutencontaining products (Mezaize, 2009). Also, one of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines is to consume adequate protein (United States Department of Agriculture, 2010). Almond flour is high in protein, which is the structural part of all cells in the body and aids in the functioning of enzymes and hormones. Th...

Modeling the propagation of bacterial cross-contamination within bulk material is a critical task for validating microbial safety complex post-harvest processing tree nuts. In this paper, discrete element method (DEM) coupled with heat transfer modeling was applied to cell problem, and model outputs were translated into case almond kernels contaminated Salmonella in mixing process. The DEM cali...

Salmonellosis outbreaks related to consumption of raw almonds have encouraged the scientific community to study the inactivation kinetics of pathogens in this dry commodity. However, the low moisture content of the product presents a challenge for thermal control, because the time required to achieve the desired thermal inactivation of microorganisms increases sharply with reduced moisture con...

OBJECTIVES Almond (Prunus amygdalus) hull and shell are agricultural by-products that are a source of phenolic compounds.The processing of almond produce shell and hull, accounts for more than 50% by dry weight of the almond fruits. Recently, more studies have focused on the influence of storage conditions and postharvest handling on the nutritional quality of fruits, especially the antioxidant...

Vascular dysfunction is one of the major causes of cardiovascular (CV) mortality and increases with age. Epidemiological studies suggest that Mediterranean diets and high nut consumption reduce CV disease risk and mortality while increasing plasma α-tocopherol. Therefore, we have investigated whether almond supplementation can improve oxidative stress markers and CV risk factors over 4 weeks in...

AIMS To evaluate the antimicrobial properties of flavonoid-rich fractions derived from natural and blanched almond skins, the latter being a by-product from the almond processing industry. METHODS AND RESULTS Almond skin extracts were tested against Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella enterica, Serratia marcescens), Gram-positive bacteria (Listeria mon...

Under normal environmental conditions, many plants synthesize cyanogenic glycosides, which are able to release hydrogen cyanide upon hydrolysis. Each year, there are frequent livestock and occasional human victims of cyanogenic plants consumption. The present work aims to determine the hydrocyanic acid content in different samples of cyanogenic plants, selected from the Tunisian flora, and in t...

In crop plant genetics, linkage maps provide the basis for the mapping of loci that affect important traits and for the selection of markers to be applied in crop improvement. In outcrossing species such as almond (Prunus dulcis Mill. D. A. Webb), application of a double pseudotestcross mapping approach to the F1 progeny of a biparental cross leads to the construction of a linkage map for each ...

Frequent consumption of nuts lowers the risk of CHD. While lowering blood lipids is one of the mechanisms for cardioprotection, the present study sought to determine whether monounsaturated fat-rich almonds also influence other CHD risk factors such as inflammation and haemostasis. This was a randomised, controlled, crossover feeding study with twenty-five healthy adults (eleven men; fourteen w...