Food and agriculture commodity boards have become important funders of nutrition research. There are benefits and cautions (biases toward health benefits, failure to publish negative results, and aggressive promotion of single studies) for this activity. The California Dried Plum Board, along with other commodity boards, have developed independent Scientific Nutrition Advisory Panels to guide a...

Thermal pasteurization is known as the most common method in food processing. In this study, the effectiveness of come up time on inactivation of heat resistance isoform of polyphenol oxidase (PPO), as a pasteurization index, was investigated during heating of the quince puree in a water bath at 60 to 90 . M5 decision tree, a novel statistical method, was applied to understand the simple relati...

Interest in dried plum has increased over the past decade due to its promise in restoring bone and preventing bone loss in animal models of osteoporosis. This study compared the effects of dried plum on bone to other dried fruits and further explored the potential mechanisms of action through which dried plum may exert its osteoprotective effects. Adult osteopenic ovariectomized (OVX) C57BL/6 m...

The transition of print media into a digital form allows the tailoring of news for different audiences. This thesis presents a new approach to tailoring called augmenting. Augmenting makes articles more informative and relevant to the reader. The PLUM system augments news on world-wide natural disasters that readers often find remote and irrelevant. Using community profiles, PLUM automatically ...

Traditionally, strawberry fruit has been used as a medicinal agent to nourish the skin and blood, benefits kidney treat weakness, fatigue, anaemia, inflammation and cancer. Strawberry products (cake and biscuits) prepared from fragaria fruit puree are more beneficial because of antioxidant activity attributed to higher anthocyanin and ascorbic acid content. An attempt has been made to develop v...

Continuous-flow microwave heating has potential in aseptic processing of various food products, including purees from sweetpotatoes and other vegetables. Establishing the feasibility of a new processing technology for achieving commercial sterility requires evaluating microbial inactivation. This study aimed to assess the feasibility of using commercially available plastic pouches of bioindicat...

Enzymatic browning in avocado puree and guacamole was evaluated by reflectance measurements for several varieties of avocado with varying amounts of chemical additives. Paste from Booth 8 had a greater tendency to brown than that from Lula. Browning at 75°F was effectively retarded without flavor change by 30 mg percent of sodium bisulfite or 200 mg percent ascorbic acid. Lemon juice or citric ...

Although large-scale programs, like India's Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), have improved latrine coverage in rural settings, evidence suggests that actual use is suboptimal. However, the reliability of methods to assess latrine use is uncertain. We assessed the reliability of reported use, the standard method, by comparing survey-based responses against passive latrine use monitors (PLUMs) th...

Previous reviews of plum phytochemical content and health benefits have concentrated on the European plum, Prunus domestica L. However, the potential bioactivity of red- and dark red-fleshed Japanese plums, Prunus salicina Lindl., so-called blood plums, appears to warrant a significant increase in exposure, as indicated in a recent review of the whole Prunus genus. Furthermore, Japanese plums a...

Plum curculio, Conotrachelus nenuphar (Herbst), is a quarantine pest of many temperate fruits, such as pomes, Malus spp.; stone fruits, Prunus spp.; and blueberries, Vaccinium spp.; in North America east of the Rocky Mountains and a small area in Utah. There are two strains, a northern univoltine one that undergoes obligate diapause as an adult and a southern multivoltine strain that usually ha...