Search Results (4)

The ripe fruits of blackcurrant (Ribes nigrum L.) are rich in vitamin C, anthocyanins, and flavonoids. Besides being consumed fresh, the fruits can be processed into fruit juices, jams, wines, and other products, exhibiting considerable economic and nutritional value. Flavonoids are a class of important plant secondary metabolites with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-cancer properties. Although previous studies have confirmed the involvement of multiple structural genes and transcription factors in flavonoid biosynthesis, the specific role of the dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR) gene in regulating flavonoid accumulation during fruit development of blackcurrant remains to be clearly elucidated. In this study, we identified an RnDFR gene located in the nucleus and cytoplasm, which has the same expression trend as flavonoid content in fruit development stages. Overexpression of RnDFR improved the flavonoid accumulation and upregulated the expression levels of related structural genes (4CL, CHS, LDOX, ANR, and UFGT) in tomato. Transiently overexpressing RnDFR in blackcurrant fruit also increased the content of flavonoids and DFR enzyme activity, whereas silencing RnDFR resulted in the opposite effect. In addition, overexpression of RnDFR in tomato seedlings improved cold and drought tolerance by increasing flavonoid accumulation, reducing membrane lipid peroxidation damage and enhancing the activities of antioxidant enzymes. This study systematically reveals the key role of RnDFR in flavonoid biosynthesis and the enhancement of cold and drought tolerance, and offers an important theoretical basis for future efforts to optimize flavonoid content in blackcurrant and improve fruit nutritional quality. Full article

In the food and medical packaging industries, clean packaging is crucial to both customer satisfaction and hygiene. An operational Quality Assurance Department (QAD) is necessary for detecting contaminated packages. Manual examination becomes tedious and may lead to instances of contamination being missed along the production line. To address this issue, a system for contamination detection is proposed using an enhanced deep convolutional neural network (CNN) in a human–robot collaboration framework. The proposed system utilizes a CNN to identify and classify the presence of contaminants on product surfaces. A dataset is generated, and augmentation methods are applied to the dataset for nine classes such as coffee, spot, chocolate, tomato paste, jam, cream, conditioner, shaving cream, and toothpaste contaminants. The experiment was conducted using a mechatronic platform with a camera for contamination detection and a time-of-flight sensor for safe machine–environment interaction. The results of the experiment indicate that the reported system can accurately identify contamination with 99.74% mean average precision (mAP). Full article

Even though the nutritional and economic values of Solanum lycopersicum (tomato) are substantially impacted by microbial spoilage, the available data on its microbial community, particularly during spoilage, are limited and have primarily been characterized using conventional culture-dependent methods. This study employed a targeted high-throughput next-generation sequencing method to longitudinally characterize the microbial diversity of two South African tomato cultivars (jam and round) at varied storage intervals (1, 6, and 12 days). Throughout the storage period, the bacterial communities of the two cultivars were more diverse than the fungal communities. The microbial diversity of both bacteria and fungi was greater and comparable between the cultivars on day 1, but becomes distinct as the storage period increases, with round tomatoes being more diverse than jam tomato, though, on day 12, jam tomato develops greater diversity than round tomato. Overall, the most abundant phyla (though Proteobacteria was most dominant) were Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Bacteriodota in the bacterial communities, while Ascomycota and Basidiomycota formed most fungal communities with Ascomycota being dominant. At the genus level, Pantoea and Klebsiella (bacteria), Hanseniaspora, Stemphylium, and Alternaria (fungi) were prevalent. Taken together, this study casts light on a broad microbial diversity profile thus, confirms the cultivars’ diversity and abundance differences. Full article

Pesticides are used on fruit and vegetable crops to obtain greater yield and quality. Residues can be detected in these crops or their products if applied pesticides do not degrade naturally. Therefore, this study aimed to estimate pesticide residues in some strawberry and tomato-based products available in the market for human consumption and associated dietary risks. Contamination with 3–15 pesticides in the tested samples was found. The total number of pesticides detected in the tested samples was 20, belonging to the group of insecticides (84%) and fungicides (16%). Pesticides of cypermethrin, thiamethoxam, chlorpyrifos, and lambda-cyhalothrin appeared at 100% in a number of samples, where the most detected was cypermethrin followed by thiamethoxam. The average values of pesticide residues detected in the tested samples ranged from 0.006 to 0.568 mg kg⁻¹, where it was found that cypermethrin had the highest residue value and appeared in strawberry jam obtained from the market. The recovery rate of pesticides from fortified samples with pyrethroids ranged from 47.5% (fenvalerate) to 127% (lambda-cyhalothrin). Home processing of fortified tomato and strawberry samples had a significant effect on reducing residues in tomato sauce and strawberry jam, where the reduction reached 100%. The results of acute and chronic risk assessment showed that their values were much lower than 100%, indicating minimal risk of dietary intake. Full article