Search results for " fruits"
showing 10 items of 39 documents
Development of new non-dairy beverages from Mediterranean fruit juices fermented with water kefir microorganisms
2016
The aim of this work was to explore the use of several Mediterranean fruit juices as fermentable substrates to develop new non-dairy fermented beverages. Microbiological, chemical and sensory features of kefir-like beverages obtained after the fermentation of juices extracted from fruits cultivated in Sicily (southern Italy) with water kefir microorganisms were investigated. Results indicated that both lactic acid bacteria and yeasts were able to develop in the fruit juices tested, but the highest levels were registered with prickly pear fruit juice. All fruit juices underwent a lactic fermentation, since a lactic acid content was detected in the resulting kefir-like beverages. Except kiwif…
Early detection of mechanical damage in mango using NIR hyperspectral images and machine learning
2014
Mango fruit are sensitive and can easily develop brown spots after suffering mechanical stress during postharvest handling, transport and marketing. The manual inspection of this fruit used today cannot detect the damage in very early stages of maturity and to date no automatic tool capable of such detection has been developed, since current systems based on machine vision only detect very visible damage. The application of hyperspectral imaging to the postharvest quality inspection of fruit is relatively recent and research is still underway to find a method of estimating internal properties or detecting invisible damage. This work describes a new system to evaluate mechanically induced da…
Modeling of the process of moisture loss during the storage of dried apricots
2011
[EN] Moisture content is a reference parameter for dried food because the growth of most microorganisms is inhibited below certain water activity levels. In addition, it has a determining influence on the evolution of important parameters, such as color and flavor, and on other properties and deterioration reactions, such as texture, oxidation processes and nutritional value. During the storage of some dried fruits, moisture is produced due to Maillard reactions and exchanged with the surrounding environment through the packaging. The evolution of dried foods during their shelf life depends on the storage conditions. The aim of this study is to analyze the evolution of the moisture content …
Highly sensitive monoclonal antibody-based immunoassays for the analysis of fluopyram in food samples
2019
Monoclonal antibody-based techniques have become a useful analytical technology in the agro-food sector. Nowadays, residues of the recently registered fungicide fluopyram are increasingly being found in quality control programs. In the present study, novel chemical derivatives of this pesticide were prepared and specific and high-affinity monoclonal antibodies to fluopyram were raised for the first time. Moreover, immunoassays to fluopyram were developed in two alternative enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay formats, using homologous and heterologous assay conjugates, with limits of detection below 0.05 µg L−1. The optimized immunoassays were applied to the analysis of fluopyram in fortified …
A Novel System for Measuring Damaging Impacts on Table Olives
2015
The consumer today demands high quality products; fruit with defects or in poor condition generate dissatisfaction and a consequent reduction in consumption. In recent years, interesting systems have been used (i. e. "artificial fruit") in order to identify the cause of damage during mechanical harvesting and/or post-harvest operations. In this paper, the authors present a new system designed to measure the impacts received by table olives in the processing stages from harvesting to packaging. The device is an instrumented sphere designed and implemented by the Agricultural Mechanics Section of the Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Italy. It contains a t…
Growth of citrus production among the Euro-Mediterranean countries: political implications and empirical findings
2013
The agricultural matter has always played an important role in holding back the Euro-Mediterranean integration process due to the strong complementarity of the agricultures of the coastal countries which share excellent products including citrus fruits. The main goal of this paper is to understand the growth dynamics of the citriculture in the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Through the application of the dynamic formulation of the Shift and Share Analysis it has been possible to analyse the trend of the amount of harvested citrus production, in physical and economic terms, in the last fifteen years, and above all which components, structural and competitive, have mainly influenc…
Genetic islands in pome fruit pathogenic and non-pathogenic Erwinia species and related plasmids
2015
New pathogenic bacteria species belonging to the genus Erwinia associated with pome fruit trees (Erwinia pyrifoliae, E. piriflorinigrans, E. uzenensis) have been increasingly described in the last years, and comparative analyses have found that all these species share several genetic characteristics. Studies at different level (whole genome comparison, virulence genes, plasmid content, etc.) show a high intraspecies homogeneity (i.e. among E. amylovora strains) and also abundant similarities appear between the different Erwinia species: presence of plasmids of similar size in the pathogenic species; high similarity in several genes associated with exopolysaccharide production and hence, wit…
Application of near Infrared Spectroscopy to the Quality Control of Citrus Fruits and Mango
2016
NIR spectroscopy is a proved tool to measure the optical properties of the samples, which are related to their chemical and textural properties. This technology can be used for determining the internal and external quality of fruits. Accordingly, many studies have been reported for long time to assess the quality of different fresh fruits by using reflectance measurements acquired with visible-NIR spectroscopy. We have been working on the estimation of the quality of fruits using computer vision for more than twenty years, always focused on problems that affect the local industry. As the region of Valencia (Spain) is one of the main producers and exporters of citrus fruits worldwide, most o…
Influence Of within-tree and environmental factors On fruit quality of cactus Pear (O. ficus-Indica)
2010
Introduction. Opuntia ficus-indica fruit quality was studied, in the main sites for cactus pear cultivation in Italy, with the ultimate goal of understanding the main sources of variability and increasing crop value. Materials and methods. A first study was carried out in 2006 on mature Opuntia ficus-indica trees, cvs. Gialla and Rossa, grown in ten commercial orchards located in the main sites for their cultivation in Italy. Trees were managed to produce an out-of-season crop in October, through the removal of the spring flush at bloom time, during the first week of June. Trees had a similar crop [(52 ± 10) kg of fruits•tree-1], and no more than six fruits were left on each of the fruiting…
Gas chromatographic evaluation of pesticide residue contents in nectarines after non-toxic washing treatments
2004
Washing with aqueous solutions of citric acid, ethanol, glycerol, hydrogen peroxide, potassium permanganate, sodium metabisulfite, sodium laurylsulfate (SLS), sodium hypochlorite, and urea is evaluated for pesticide residue reduction in nectarines and compared with simple tap water washing. Residues of pesticides commonly utilized in nectarines (chlorpyrifos, fenarimol, iprodione, malathion, methidathion, myclobutanil, parathion and pirimicarb) are extracted with ethyl acetate and anhydrous sodium sulfate, extract is concentred and analyzed by GC with nitrogen-phosphorus detection. The formation of possible toxic by-products (chlorpyrifos oxon, malaoxon, methidaoxon and paraoxon methyl) is …