The discovery of aquaporins has provided a new basis for studying and interpreting water relations in plants. However, slow progress has been made in elucidating the functional facets of the aquaporin-mediated water pathway in whole plant systems. While increasing experimental evidence suggests that these proteins are directly involved in mediating water homeostasis at varying environmental con...

Harvesting grapes at the appropriate maturity is key to production of high quality red wines. Viticulturists, oenologists and winemakers define several types maturity: technological, phenolic aromatic. Aromatic probably most important for determining wine typicity, including terroir expression. This article (part II) reviews influence factors management practices on aromatic maturity; latest kn...

This work evaluated the enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant defense systems of avocados cv. Hass stored at 7 ± 0.5 °C for 10, 20, 30 d, stage edible ripeness. The enzyme system included superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT), was composed total phenolic compounds (TPC), carotenoids (TC), α-, β-, γ-tocopherols, as well hydrophilic (H-AOX) lipophilic (L-AOX) activities. ...

The phenological phases of field crops have shifted to earlier times in the Czech Republic recent decades; additionally, they shown correlations with temperatures from previous spring months. Using a thermal time model called PhenoClim, between and phenophases allow us evaluate strongest predictors (i.e., maximum temperature) indicators base growing degree days for selected winter wheat (Tritic...

Rapid ripeness assessment of fruit after harvest is important to reduce post-harvest losses by sorting according the duration until they become ready eat. However, there has been little research on non-destructive estimation and ripening speed avocado fruit. Unlike previous methods, which classify into a few categories (e.g., unripe ripe) or indirectly estimate from its firmness, we developed m...

The ripeness of grapes at the harvest time is one of the most important parameters for obtaining high quality red wines. Traditionally the decision of harvesting is to be taken only after analysing sugar concentration, titratable acidity and pH of the grape juice (technological maturity). However, these parameters only provide information about the pulp ripeness and overlook the real degree of ...