Adequate mineral fertilization helps to ensure optimal tree growth, fruit development, and predictable yield of apple trees. This 7-year study (2016-2022) aims to investigate the effect of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and magnesium (Mg) fertilizer combinations (NP, NPK, NPKMg, and control) on eight parameters (trunk cross-sectional area-TCSA; fruit yield-FY; number of fruit per tree-FNT; crop load-CL; fruit diameter-FD; fruit weight-FW; fruit scab incidence-FSI; and powdery mildew incidence on shoot-PMIS) on the cultivars (cvs) 'Golden Reinders' (disease susceptible) and 'Pinova' (scab and mildew tolerant). In the 7-year period, TCSA values continuously increased for both cultivars over the years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBentonite fining is one of the generally applied wine-making technological elements that may seriously affect wine components. The aim of this study was (i) to investigate the effect of 21 bentonite products on eight oenological parameters, 19 elements, 21 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and 10 organoleptic properties of white wine; and (ii) to quantify intercorrelations among the parameters separately for each of the four quality attributes. Among oenological parameters, sugar, acidity, malic-, lactic-, citric acid and total phenol contents were significant among several bentonite products.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTree species' composition of forests is essential in forest management and nature conservation. We aimed to identify the tree species structure of a floodplain forest area using a hyperspectral image. We proposed an efficient novel strategy including the testing of three dimension reduction (DR) methods: Principal Component Analysis, Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) and Indipendent Component Analysis with five machine learning (ML) algorithms (Maximum Likelihood Classifier, Support Vector Classification, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest and Artificial Neural Network) to find the most accurate outcome; altogether 300 models were calculated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArabidopsis NODULIN HOMEOBOX (NDX) is a nuclear protein described as a regulator of specific euchromatic genes within transcriptionally active chromosome arms. Here we show that NDX is primarily a heterochromatin regulator that functions in pericentromeric regions to control siRNA production and non-CG methylation. Most NDX binding sites coincide with pericentromeric het-siRNA loci that mediate transposon silencing, and are antagonistic with R-loop structures that are prevalent in euchromatic chromosomal arms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFShot hole disease (SHD) can cause severe epidemics in plum orchards, depending on cultivar susceptibility and training system; however, the combined effect on the progress of temporal disease and on the possible reduction in SHD in the disease management was not investigated. The aim of this 3-year study was (i) to monitor and analyze the temporal dynamics of SHD progress under four training systems (4 × 1.5, 4 × 2, 5 × 2.
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