This project investigated how individual differences in the big-five personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) predicted plant-food consumption in young adults. A total of 1073 participants from two samples of young adults aged 17-25 reported their daily servings of fruits, vegetables, and two unhealthy foods for comparison purp...

Traditional breeding is based on the identification of the most suitable genetic resources from either cultivated or wild germplasm. Starting from wild germplasm, progeny from strawberry crosses with F. virginiana glauca as a common parent have shown significant increases in fruit quality and nutritional features. This confirms the use of the wild species to improve several characteristics of c...

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) quality traits such as juice soluble solid content (Brix), juice pH, color parameters (Hue and Chroma), firmness and water content, are critical factors for fruit quality assessment. The need for screening very large numbers of fruit has led to the development of a high-throughput method using visible-near infrared (VIS-NIR) spectrometry. We are reporting here a se...

The impact of phenylphthalamic acid (PPA) rates including 0 (PPA0), 1000 (PPA1000), 2000 (PPA2000) or 3000 (PPA3000) mg L-1 and perfect fertilizer rates including 0 (PF0), 100 (PF100), 200 (PF200) and 300 (PF300) mg L-1 was studied on vegetative and reproductive growth of ornamental pep...

Eggplant berries are a source of health-promoting metabolites including antioxidant and nutraceutical compounds, mainly anthocyanins and chlorogenic acid; however, they also contain some anti-nutritional compounds such as steroidal glycoalkaloids (SGA) and saponins, which are responsible for the bitter taste of the flesh and with potential toxic effects on humans. Up to now, Quantitative Trait ...

When the allele of a wild species at a quantitative trait locus (QTL) conferring a desirable trait is introduced into cultivated species, undesirable effects on other traits may occur. These negative phenotypic effects may result from the presence of wild alleles at other closely linked loci that are transferred along with the desired QTL allele (i.e., linkage drag) and/or from pleiotropic effe...

Twenty eight F1 hybrids developed during summer, 2010 by crossing 8 diverse parents in all possible combinations without reciprocals were evaluated for diallel analysis for genetic parameters and graphic representation for yield and yield attributing traits during summer 2011 at College of Horticulture, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, India. The validity of the assumptions of diallel analysis was con...

Improving fruit quality has become a major goal in plant breeding. Direct approaches to tackling fruit quality traits specifically linked to consumer preferences and environmental friendliness, such as improved flavor, nutraceutical compounds, and sustainability, have slowly been added to a breeder priority list that already includes traits like productivity, efficiency, and, especially, pest a...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Plant functional traits are assumed to be adaptive. As selection acts on individuals and not on traits, interpreting the adaptive value of a trait not may be straightforward. For example, productive leaves are associated with fertile environments. However, it is not clear if productive leaves confer an advantage in these habitats, or if they are an advantage as part of a sui...

Association mapping has been proposed as an efficient approach to assist plant breeding programs to investigate the genetic basis of agronomic traits. In this study, we evaluated 18 traits related to yield, (FWP, NF, FWI, and FWII), fruit size-shape (FP, FA, MW, WMH, MH, HMW, DI, FSI, FSII, OVO, OBO), and fruit quality (FIR, CF, and SST), in a diverse collection of 100 accessions of Physalis pe...