Ten wild plants (cattail broad leaf shoots, chokecherries, beaked hazelnuts, lambsquarters, plains prickly pear, prairie turnips, stinging nettles, wild plums, raspberries, and rose hips) from three Native American reservations in North Dakota were analyzed to expand composition information of traditional foraged plants. Proximates, dietary fiber (DF), vitamins, minerals, carotenoids, and folat...

Prickly pear (Opuntia spp) fruit has received renewed interest since it contains a betalain pigment that has an attractive purple colour for the production of juice. Prickly pear juice was prepared by homogenizing the fruit and treating the pulp with 48 g of pectinase from Aspergillus niger. Titratable acidity was determined by diluting 10 ml prickly pear juice with 90 ml deionized water and ti...

Pyrus ussriensis Maxim. is native to the northern part of China, but whose habitats are currently being destroyed by environmental changes and human deforestation. An investigation of population structure and genetic diversity of wild Ussurian pear is a priority in order to acquire fundamental knowledge for conservation. A total of 153 individuals of wild Ussurian pear from the main habitats, H...

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were assembled by using the bougainvillea flowers, red turnip and the purple wild Sicilian prickly pear fruit juice extracts as natural sensitizers of TiO(2) films. The yellow orange indicaxanthin and the red purple betacyanins are the main components in the cocktail of natural dyes obtained from these natural products. The best overall solar energy conversion...

Pear psylla (Cacopsylla pyricola Foërster) is the most serious pest of the European pear (Pyrus communis L.) in the production regions of Europe and North America. Nine plant germplasm introductions of pear from Central Europe recently released from plant quarantine were evaluated for nymphal feeding antixenosis, a primary mode of resistance known to be correlated with ovipositional antixenosis...

Introduction: To establish the pharmacognostical and phytochemical standardization parameters of Pyrus pashia fruits in order to ensure quality and safety of this traditionally acclaimed medicinal tree. Methods: The fresh fruits of P. pashia were collected and dried. Fruit was subjected to various pharmacognostical investigations, Extraction procedures, and preliminary phytochemical screening, ...

We developed 22 SSRs by using 3 approaches, RAHM (random amplified hybridization microsatellites), 5’ anchored PCR methods and an enriched genomic library. Seventy of 22 SSRs could be successfully amplified for Pyrus spp., which showed highly polymorphic. Sixty Asian pear accessions from 6 Pyrus species were genetically identified by 9 SSR markers with a total of 133 putative alleles. The SSR m...