1,720,991 research outputs found
Alternative approaches to synthetic fungicides to manage postharvest decay of fruit and vegetables: Needs and purposes of a Special Issue
No full textIntegrated management of postharvest gray mold on fruit crops
Full text linkGray mold, incited by Botrytis cinerea, causes major postharvest losses in a wide range of crops. Some infections that occur in the field remain quiescent during the growing season and develop after harvest. The pathogen is also capable of infecting plant tissues through surface injuries inflicted during harvesting and subsequent handling; these develop during storage, even at 0 °C, and spread among products by aerial mycelial growth and conidia. The postharvest decay by this pathogen is controlled by a combination of preharvest and postharvest practices. To minimize postharvest gray mold, control programs rely mainly on applications of fungicides. However, mounting concerns of consumers and regulatory authorities about risks associated with chemical residues in food have led to imposition of strict regulations, the banning of use of certain chemical groups, and preferences by wholesaler, retailers and consumers to avoid chemically treated produce. These developments have driven the search for alternative management strategies that are effective and not reliant on conventional fungicide applications. In this review, conventional and alternative control strategies are discussed including their advantages and disadvantages. They include the use of conventional fungicides, biocontrol agents, physical treatments, natural antimicrobials, and disinfecting agents. Based on examples to control gray mold on specific crops, it is concluded that an integrated management program where adoption of a holistic approach is the key for meeting the challenge of minimizing postharvest losses caused by B. cinerea. To optimize the efficacy of treatments, it is essential to understand their mechanism of action as much as possible. Information about direct and indirect effects of each approach on the pathogen is also presente
Microbiome succession during apple fruit development: healthy and pathological microbial assemblages
No full textThe surface and internal tissues of fruits host diverse microbial communities but the functional role of this microflora, outside of pathogenic species, in fruit health and quality are largely unknown. The recent use of universal primer sets and advanced sequencing technologies, however, has greatly increased our understanding of these microbial communities without the need to culture them. This is fostering a paradigm shift that views an organism and its microbiota as a single entity (metaorganism). We present our current understanding of the microbiome assembly in apple fruit and its implication on postharvest pathology. We first describe the initial microbial colonization and establishment in flowers, as well as the spatial and temporal community dynamics during fruit development. We then elucidate the patterns of succession that take place in the fruit microbiome as it develops and matures in the field, and subsequently after harvest and during cold storage. Next, we discuss the crucial need to identify species comprising the core microbiome and the need to conduct functional analysis of networks and the cross-talk between microbial components. We then discuss the utilization of this information for the practical development of targeted and precise biological control strategies against postharvest diseases and highlight the opportunities and challenges that exist for designing and manipulating the fruit microbiome. Lastly, topics of research that will enable a paradigm shift in fruit management are discussed in which a fruit and its dynamic microbiota are viewed as one biological entity
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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