Search Results (6)

Chinese cherry [Prunus. pseudocerasus Lindl., syn. Cerasus. pseudocerasus (Lindl.) G.Don], an economically important tetraploid fruit crop native to southwestern China, is celebrated as “the earliest fruit of spring”. Understanding the inheritance and heterosis of major agronomical traits is essential for advancing its breeding. In this study, we conducted a three-year observation and inheritance analysis of 32 economic traits in the reciprocal F₁ populations (NH, n = 114; HN, n = 87) derived from Chinese cherry landraces “Nanzaohong” and “Hongfei”. The results revealed a broad segregation for all traits in F₁ offspring. Fruit size exhibited an inheritance tendency toward smaller dimensions, with some individuals displaying extreme values (Fruit weight, HH = 3.90~12.15%) that highlighted the potential for selecting larger fruits. The hybrids showed a tendency for sweeter fruit flavor, with total soluble solids (RHm = 7.00~19.35%) and soluble sugar (RHm = 11.09% and 17.47%) exhibiting hybrid vigor, along with a decreasing tendency in titratable acid (RHm = −16.08~−1.05%). The flowering and fruiting phenology tended to occur earlier, with extremely early and late flowering lines offering the potential to extend the ornamental and harvesting periods. Fruit bitterness (H² = 0.98 and 0.95) and fruit skin color (H² = 0.93 and 0.89) displayed the highest heritability. Correlation analysis revealed strong internal correlations among trait categories, confirming the reliability of the data collection and analysis. Moreover, no significant differences were observed between the maternal and the paternal effect on the inheritance for agronomic traits attributes. This study systematically clarifies the inheritance trends of agronomic traits in Chinese cherry, providing a foundation for the rational selection of parental lines in breeding strategies and laying the groundwork for future molecular genetic research. Full article

Durian (Durio zibethinus L.), a tropical fruit celebrated in Southeast Asia for its distinct flavor, is the focus of this comprehensive review. The fruit’s pulp is rich in high-value bioactive compounds, including gamma-glutamylcysteine, a precursor to the essential antioxidant glutathione. With durian cultivation gaining prominence in Southeast Asia due to its economic potential through cultivar enhancement, an in-depth examination of durian-related research becomes crucial. This review explores the health benefits of durian, analyzing the nutritional compositions and bioactive compounds present in the pulp, peel, and seed. It also underscores durian-based food products and the potential for valorizing durian waste. This review encapsulates the significant advancements made in omics-based research, aimed at deciphering the molecular complexities of durian fruit post-harvest ripening and the metabolic shifts impacting its sensory attributes. It is the first to summarize studies across genome, transcriptome, and metabolome levels. Future research should prioritize the development of molecular markers to accelerate the breeding of elite cultivars with preferred traits. It also proposes the exploration of durian waste valorization, including underexplored parts like flowers and leaves for their bioactive compounds, to promote a sustainable bioeconomy. Finally, it suggests the development of innovative durian products catering to the tastes of health-conscious consumers. Full article

In this article, we propose a deep learning-based algorithm for the classification of crop types from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 time series data which is based on the celebrated transformer architecture. Crucially, we enable our algorithm to do early classification, i.e., predict crop types at arbitrary time points early in the year with a single trained model (progressive intra-season classification). Such early season predictions are of practical relevance for instance for yield forecasts or the modeling of agricultural water balances, therefore being important for the public as well as the private sector. Furthermore, we improve the mechanism of combining different data sources for the prediction task, allowing for both optical and radar data as inputs (multi-modal data fusion) without the need for temporal interpolation. We can demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on an extensive data set from three federal states of Germany reaching an average F1 score of $0.92$ using data of a complete growing season to predict the eight most important crop types and an F1 score above $0.8$ when doing early classification at least one month before harvest time. In carefully chosen experiments, we can show that our model generalizes well in time and space. Full article

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plants are commonly injured by the off-target movement of synthetic auxin herbicides. A greenhouse and a field trial were conducted to determine the relative tolerance of eight fresh market tomato cultivars to drift-simulating rates of dicamba or 2,4-D. Tomato cultivars included ‘BHN 589’, ‘Celebrity’, ‘Florida 91’, ‘Mountain Merit’, ‘Primo Red’, ‘Red Deuce’, ‘Red Morning’, and ‘Skyway’. Dicamba (3,6-dichloro-methoxybenzoic acid) and 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) were applied at 2.8 g ae ha⁻¹ and 5.3 g ae ha⁻¹-D, respectively. By 14 weeks after treatment (WAT), herbicide-treated plants of each cultivar produced less total and marketable yield than their respective nontreated control in the greenhouse trial. For most cultivars, dicamba-treated plants had less marketable yield than 2,4-D-treated plants in the greenhouse. Herbicide treatments also reduced total and marketable yields of each cultivar when compared with their control in the field study at 14 WAT, except for ‘Mountain Merit’. The severity of yield loss from herbicide treatments was cultivar-dependent. Field-grown ‘Skyway’ plants treated with dicamba produced the lowest marketable yield. In contrast, herbicide-treated plants of ‘Florida 91’ produced high marketable yields in the field, but ‘Red Deuce’ plants receiving 2,4-D were also highly productive. Herbicide residue in fruit sampled the third week of the harvest was nondetectable. Because the type of auxin herbicide drift is often unanticipated, ‘Florida 91’ may be the preferred cultivar for cultivation among those tested to maximize tomato production in the field. Full article

The academic study of Tibetan Buddhism has long emphasized the textual, philological, and monastic, and sometimes tended to ignore, dismiss, or undervalue the everyday practices and beliefs of ordinary people. In this article, I show that traditional folk songs, especially changlü, are windows into the vernacular religion of ethnically Tibetan Himalayans from the Nubri valley of Gorkha District, Nepal. While changlü literally means “beer song”, and they are often sung while celebrating, they usually have deeply religious subject matter, and function to transmit Buddhist values, reinforce social or religious hierarchies, and to emplace the community in relation to the landscape and to greater Tibet and Nepal. They do this mainly through three different tropes: (1) exhortations to practice and to remember such things as impermanence and death; (2) explications of hierarchy; and (3) employment of spatialized language that evokes the maṇḍala. They also sometimes carry opaque references to vernacular rituals, such as “drawing a swastika of grain” after storing the harvest. In the song texts translated here, I will point out elements that reproduce a Buddhist worldview, such as references to deities, sacred landscape, and Buddhist values, and argue that they impart vernacular religious knowledge intergenerationally in an implicit, natural, and sonic way, ensuring that younger generations internalize community values organically. Full article

The Pentateuch and later Jewish tradition associates the key pilgrimage festivals with stories about Israel’s past. Nevertheless, these festivals all began as agricultural or seasonal festivals. Using comparative evidence from the ancient Near East, and looking at the Covenant Collection, the earliest biblical law collection, through a redaction critical lens, we can uncover the early history of these festivals and even how they developed in stages. A similar process is evident with the Sabbath, which appears to have begun as a moon festival, as per certain biblical references and from comparative evidence, but which eventually developed into the seventh day of rest as part of the institution of the week, and then comes to be associated with the story of God resting after creation. These developments, from celebrating agricultural and lunar cycles to celebrating mnemohistorical events, can be seen as part of two parallel processes: the coalescing of Israelite cultural memory and the institution of the linear calendar as the dominant conception of time. Full article