36 results match your criteria: "American Farm School[Affiliation]"

This is a review of mucus, and its principal component, mucins, in oral processing; it examines oral processing from the viewpoint of mucins being integral functional constituents of the food after the latter's insertion into the mouth. Under this light, mucins are treated as an omni-present functional ingredient. The chemical physics of the bolus formation is examined, focused on the role of mucins in the process.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Efficacy Of Transfluthrin Varies By Species And Placement In A Warm Temperate Mediterranean Environment1.

J Am Mosq Control Assoc

December 2024

US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology, 1600 SW 23rd Drive, Gainesville, FL 32608.

Spatial repellents may protect personnel in delimited areas from incursion of vector or nuisance Diptera, such as mosquitoes and sand flies. We investigated the efficacy of resin diffusers impregnated with transfluthrin in protecting 2 simulated military field scenarios (partially opened tents and open bivouacs lacking shelter) from natural populations of Culex species mosquitoes and Phlebotomus species sand flies. Using a benchmark efficacy of 61% expected reduction from a recent literature survey, we found that transfluthrin protected bivouacs from sand flies (74.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Phlebotomine sand flies are important vectors of medical and veterinary importance, transmitting pathogens, such as the Leishmania parasites, responsible for 700,000 to 1 million new cases of leishmaniasis every year. The vast majority of the current sand fly surveillance and control tools are tailored against the adult stages, due to the limited knowledge on the ecology of the larval stages. Since vector control is primarily an ecological problem, an in-depth understanding of the behavior of the target insect pests across all the different life stages of their development is required prior to the development of effective control strategies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Global population continuous growth and increasing consumers' demands for protein-rich diets have posed sustainability challenges for traditional livestock feed sources. Consequently, exploring alternative and sustainable protein sources has become imperative to address the environmental burden and resource limitations associated with conventional ingredients. With respect to food security assurance, insects have emerged as a promising solution due to their exceptional nutritional profile, rapid reproduction rates, and low environmental impact.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Development and application of Single Primer Enrichment Technology (SPET) SNP assay for population genomics analysis and candidate gene discovery in lettuce.

Front Plant Sci

August 2023

European Cooperative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ECPGR) Secretariat c/o Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, Rome, Italy.

Single primer enrichment technology (SPET) is a novel high-throughput genotyping method based on short-read sequencing of specific genomic regions harboring polymorphisms. SPET provides an efficient and reproducible method for genotyping target loci, overcoming the limits associated with other reduced representation library sequencing methods that are based on a random sampling of genomic loci. The possibility to sequence regions surrounding a target SNP allows the discovery of thousands of closely linked, novel SNPs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Muscat of Alexandria grapes are known for their strong floral and fruity aromas, essential for high-quality wines, emphasizing the importance of the winemaking process.
  • - This study analyzed metabolomic changes during fermentation at three wineries on Limnos Island, using advanced techniques to identify 178 different metabolites from the grape musts across multiple vintages and tanks.
  • - Statistical analysis revealed distinct fermentation stages, showing that most compounds like esters and alcohols increased over time, while sugars and amino acids decreased; terpenes generally remained stable, with specific changes in terpenols.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Towards Microplastic Reduction Within Institutions.

Water Air Soil Pollut

August 2022

Department of Environmental Science, Perrotis College, American Farm School, Thessaloniki, Greece.

Globally, universities, institutions, and companies are aiming to reduce the use of single-use plastics as plastic litter, and plastic degradation generates secondary microplastics, all of which cause negative impacts on the environment. In this study the authors conducted a questionnaire-based survey to assess the willingness and motivation of stakeholders within academic settings to change daily habits to minimize plastic and microplastic pollution. The questionnaire, which was answered by 276 individuals with affiliation to the American Farm School or collaborating academic institutions, but primarily the American Farm School, was used to draw conclusions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Among the various parameters affecting olive oil quality, ripening stage is one of the most important. Optimal harvest time ensuring target quality for the final product varies in relation to the effect of many intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Therefore, its determination necessitates thorough examination of each case.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Biomedical measurements by specialized technological equipment have been used in farm animals to collect information about nutrition, behavior and welfare. This study investigates the relation of semen quality (CASA analysis, viability, morphology, membrane biochemical activity and DNA fragmentation) with boar behavior during ejaculation. Sensors were placed on the boar’s body.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A headspace-solid phase microextraction/gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-SPME/GC-MS) method was developed herein for the analysis of virgin olive oil volatile metabolome. Optimisation of SPME conditions was performed by Design of Experiments (DoE) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) approaches and factors, such as sample volume, sample stirring, extraction temperature and time, and desorption temperature and time, were examined to reach optimal microextraction conditions. The potential of the optimised method was then investigated for its use in the classification of Cretan virgin olive oil samples with the aid of multivariate statistical analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Emissions of atmospheric pollutants are well-known for their adverse effects on air quality and public health. Additionally, GHG emissions are responsible for the so called "Radiating Forcing" leading to climate change and degradation of ecosystem services. In this work, we analyze the annual emission trends of various air pollutants, including GHGs, from all 4 sectors of transport (roads, aviation, navigation, and railway) in Greece during the 28-year period between 1990 and 2017, in order to examine the confounding dynamics among external forces, such as the major fiscal recession of 2008, and the GHG/pollutant emissions in the country.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cytosine methylation is an epigenetic modification with essential roles in diverse plant biological processes including vegetative and reproductive development and responsiveness to environmental stimuli. A dynamic process involving DNA methyltransferases and DNA demethylases establishes cytosine DNA methylation levels and distribution along the genome. A DNA demethylase gene from barley (Hordeum vulgare), DEMETER (HvDME), the homologue of the Arabidopsis thaliana DME (AtDME), has been characterized previously and found to respond to drought conditions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Nutritional quality in bell pepper is related to the ripening stage of the fruit at harvest and postharvest storage. Its determination requires time-consuming, tissue-destructive, analytical laboratory techniques. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of ripening stage and of postharvest storage period on fruit nutritional quality, and whether it is feasible to develop reliable models for assessing the nutritional components in peppers using non-destructive methods.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Summer squash (Cucurbita pepo: Cucurbitaceae) are a popular horticultural crop for which there is insufficient genomic and transcriptomic information. Gene expression atlases are crucial for the identification of genes expressed in different tissues at various plant developmental stages. Here, we present the first comprehensive gene expression atlas for a summer squash cultivar, including transcripts obtained from seeds, shoots, leaf stem, young and developed leaves, male and female flowers, fruits of seven developmental stages, as well as primary and lateral roots.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Vegetable grafting is extensively used today in agricultural production to control soil-borne pathogens, abiotic and biotic stresses and to improve phenotypic characteristics of the scion. Commercial vegetable grafting is currently practiced in tomato, watermelon, melon, eggplant, cucumber, and pepper. It is also regarded as a rapid alternative to the relatively slow approach of breeding for increased environmental-stress tolerance of fruit vegetables.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study examines how food safety systems reacted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on preventive measures within established food safety practices.
  • A survey across 16 countries with 825 food companies revealed that the effectiveness of a company’s food safety system significantly influenced its response to the pandemic, highlighting staff awareness and hygiene as key factors.
  • Despite implementing stricter hygiene protocols and acquiring more personal protective equipment, less than half of the companies had existing emergency plans for pandemics, while the retail sector felt the most impact from the pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Advances on the Valorisation and Functionalization of By-Products and Wastes from Cereal-Based Processing Industry.

Foods

September 2020

REQUIMTE-Chemistry and Technology Network, Green Chemistry Laboratory (LAQV), Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Sciences-University of Porto (FCUP), Rua do Campo Alegre, s/n., P-4169-007 Porto, Portugal.

Cereals have been one of the major food resources for human diets and animal feed for thousands of years, and a large quantity of by-products is generated throughout the entire processing food chain, from farm to fork. These by-products mostly consist of the germ and outer layers (bran) derived from dry and wet milling of the grains, of the brewers' spent grain generated in the brewing industry, or comprise other types obtained from the breadmaking and starch production industries. Cereal processing by-products are an excellent low-cost source of various compounds such as dietary fibres, proteins, carbohydrates and sugars, minerals and antioxidants (such as polyphenols and vitamins), among others.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Transcriptional and epigenetic effects of Vitis vinifera L. leaf extract on UV-stressed human dermal fibroblasts.

Mol Biol Rep

August 2020

Research and Development Director, Department of Research and Development, APIVITA S.A., 19003, Markopoulo Attiki, Athens, Greece.

Adverse environmental conditions such as UV radiation induce oxidative and aging events leading to severe damage to human skin cells. Natural products such as plant extracts have been implicated in the skin anti-oxidant and anti-aging cellular protection against environmental stress. Moreover, environmental factors have been shown to impact chromatin structure leading to altered gene expression programs with profound changes in cellular functions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An amplicon metagenomic approach based on the ITS1 region of fungal rDNA was employed to identify the composition of fungal communities associated with diseases of pear fruits during postharvest storage. The sampled fruits were harvested at an orchard using routine management practices involving treatments with various chemical fungicides and were transferred to a storage packinghouse. Effective tags of reading sequences clustered into 53 OTUs whereas Ascomycota was the dominant phylum (83.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sweet cherries, L. (), are gaining importance due to their perenniallity and nutritional attributes beneficial for human health. Interestingly, sweet cherry cultivars exhibit a wide range of phenotypic diversity in important agronomic traits, such as flowering time and defense reactions against pathogens.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Abstract: Fungal pathogens cause surface contamination and potential premature fruit spoilage of bambinella, a fruit endemic to the Maltese islands, leading to the loss of fruit during the postharvest phase. The objective of this study was to isolate, quantify, and characterize fungal contaminants of the small Maltese June Pear and describe their growth kinetics. In total, 284 fungicide-free fruits were collected over three consecutive summers (2014, 2015, 2016).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fluorescence-Sensor Mapping for the in Vineyard Non-Destructive Assessment of Crimson Seedless Table Grape Quality.

Sensors (Basel)

February 2020

Istituto di Fisica Applicata "Nello Carrara" IFAC, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via Madonna del Piano 10, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.

Non-destructive tools for the in situ evaluation of vine fruit quality and vineyard management can improve the market value of table grape. We proposed a new approach based on a portable fluorescence sensor to map the ripening level of Crimson Seedless table grape in five different plots in the East, Central-North and South of the Macedonia Region of Greece. The sensor provided indices of ripening and color such as SFR and ANTH correlated to the chlorophyll and anthocyanin berry contents, respectively.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The olive fruit fly Bactrocera oleae is a major pest of olives worldwide and houses a specialized gut microbiota dominated by the obligate symbiont "Candidatus Erwinia dacicola." Candidatus Erwinia dacicola is thought to supplement dietary nitrogen to the host, with only indirect evidence for this hypothesis so far. Here, we sought to investigate the contribution of the symbiosis to insect fitness and explore the ecology of the insect gut.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

contains two cultivated subspecies, each of which encompasses four fruit-shape morphotypes (cultivar groups). The Pumpkin, Vegetable Marrow, Cocozelle, and Zucchini Groups are of subsp. and the Acorn, Crookneck, Scallop, and Straightneck Groups are of subsp.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF