Estimation of microbial numbers in foods by conventional microbiological techniques takes days, so there is a need for faster methods that can give results in minutes. Research was undertaken to investigate the use of bioluminescent ATP determination and a firefly luciferase assay to estimate the initial population of aerobic mesophilic bacteria on fresh-cut melons immediately after preparation...

The purpose of the work was to compare quality selected honey available on Polish market, including traditional (rape, lime and meadow marsh honey) non-traditional (lime, buckwheat, honeydew from coniferous honeydew). Parameters such as electrical conductivity, color, pH, acidity, water, hydroxymethylfurfural, total phenols content, ability deactivate ABTS cation radicals were determined. profi...

Ingestion, excretion and respiration in aphids were studied using artificial diets labelled with radioactive sucrose or amino acids. The rate of ingestion of a 25 % w/v sucrose diet was 12.4 nl mg-1 h-1 and the honeydew excretion rate was 5.3 nl mg-1 h-1, about 43 % of the volume ingested during the same period. The concentration of sugars in the honeydew was equivalent to 0.53 mol l-1 sucrose ...

A rare sample of maple (Acer spp.) honey from Croatia was analysed. Ultrasonic solvent extraction (USE) using: 1) pentane, 2) diethyl ether, 3) a mixture of pentane and diethyl ether (1:2 v/v) and 4) dichloromethane as solvents was applied. All the extracts were analysed by GC and GC/MS. The most representative extracts were 3) and 4). Syringaldehyde was the most striking compound, being domina...

Resistance of four brassica leafy vegetables: kale, Chinese cabbage, rape and Ethiopian mustard to cabbage aphid, Brevicoryne brassicae (L.) was studied in cage experiments at the Botswana College of Agriculture, Gaborone, Botswana. A completely randomised design with cultivars as treatments and four replicates per treatment was used. One newly laid nymph was placed on each of the four potted p...

The inhibitory e!ects of six fungicides on macrospore germination and production of secondary conidia of Claviceps africana were studied. E!ects of these fungicides on germination of sorghum seed also were determined. Panicles from male-sterile sorghums with honeydew exudate were harvested from the USDA-ARS Research Farm, Isabela, Puerto Rico in the Spring of 1997. Honeydew exudate-infested pan...

Honeydew, the sugary exudate of the scale insect Ultracoelostoma brittini, is an important food source in black beech (Nothofagus solandri var. solandri) forests in the South Island of New Zealand. Two of the most prominent foragers of honeydew are honey bees (Apis mellifera) and wasps (Vespula germanica and V. vulgaris). Observations in the field and using a captive bee hive were used to inves...

Invasive ant species can have dramatic impacts on native ants, through direct predation and by usurping common resources. Most invasive ants and many native ants use honeydew, produced by phloem-sucking hemipterans. Because colonies of invasive ants can become very large after establishment, these ants may facilitate greater hemipteran trophobiont population growth compared with their sympatri...

AIMS To identify ascomycetous yeasts recovered from sound and damaged grapes by the presence of honeydew or sour rot. METHODS AND RESULTS In sound grapes, the mean yeast counts ranged from 3.20 +/- 1.04 log CFU g(-1) to 5.87 +/- 0.64 log CFU g(-1). In honeydew grapes, the mean counts ranged from 3.88 +/- 0.80 log CFU g(-1) to 6.64 +/- 0.77 log CFU g(-1). In sour rot grapes counts varied betwe...