Five treatments were compared using two half-highbush blueberry cultivars (cv Chippewa and Polaris) transplanted and grown for their first three growing seasons at a site in Boutiliers Point, N.S., a Gibraltar brown sandy loam (Ferro-Humic Podzol). The five treatments were as follows: Alfalfa meal + rock P + wood ash; NPK fertilizer; Municipal Solid Waste (MSWC) compost; Ruminant compost; food ...

Objectives: To examine Plate Waste (PW) from elementary and middle school-aged children by school and by grade when grapes were on the lunch menu versus when they were absent. The primary hypothesis tested was that grapes enhance consumption and lessen plate waste, thereby serving as a “gateway” fruit to healthier eating. The foods examined were selected fruits, vegetables, and entrées. The end...

In this experiment 240 Hy-Line (W-36) laying hens from 65 to 75 weeks distributed in 5 treatments and 4 replicates (12 birds per replicate) in a completely randomized design were used. The amounts of watermelon skin meal (WSM) used to set the treatments were 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2% in 1 to 5 experimental groups. The results showed that using WSM up to 2% significantly improved the performance and...

BACKGROUND Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) is a lignocellulosic waste produced in palm oil industry. EFB mainly consists of cellulose, hemicellulose (mainly xylan) and lignin and has a great potential to be reused. Converting EFB to fermentable sugars and value-added chemicals is a much better choice than treating EFB as waste. RESULTS A cellulase-producing strain growing on oil palm empty f...

Fruit and vegetables wastes not only have no commercial value, but also require expensive operations of removal and disposal, representing a significant cost for the manufacturers of plant products. However, this material may represent an important resource of commercially worth phyto-molecules endowed with various nutraceutical properties. In the present work, we have verified the possibility ...

New palm oil mill processes are characterized by advanced oil separation technologies with zero dilution water (‘ECO-D’ for example as a new system for oil recovery without dilution water) and continuous sterilization of the fresh fruit bunch (FFB). These processes have a deep impact on the amount and composition of waste water (POME). Compared to conventional palm oil mills the total amount of...

Environments that are crowded with larvae of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, exhibit a temporal deterioration in quality as waste products accumulate and food is depleted. We show that natural selection in these environments can maintain a genetic polymorphism with one group of genotypes specializing on the early part of the environment and a second group specializing on the late part. ...

In the present study, a variety of agro-industrial wastes have been utilized for meaningful purpose to produce valuable biocatalyst. All wastes used were low cost and easily accessible while, some available throughout the year. A number of bacterial strains isolated from rotten fruits and vegetables were screened for the production of industrially important polygalacturonase (PGase) using pecti...