Cell wall disassembly in ripening fruit is highly complex, involving the dismantling of multiple polysaccharide networks by diverse families of wall-modifying proteins. While it has been reported in several species that multiple members of each such family are expressed in the same fruit tissue, it is not clear whether this reflects functional redundancy, with protein isozymes from a single enz...

This work explores multiaxial stress effects on fatigue crack nucleation and growth in filled natural rubber based on experiments using short thin-walled cylindrical specimens subjected to axial and twist displacements. Cyclic stress–strain response exhibits significant initial softening relative to the monotonic response, followed by a more gradual additional softening. Irreversible breakage o...

Approaching a dangerous bifurcation, from which a dynamical system such as the Earth's climate will jump (tip) to a different state, the current stable state lies within a shrinking basin of attraction. Persistence of the state becomes increasingly precarious in the presence of noisy disturbances. We argue that one needs to extract information about the nonlinear features (a 'softening') of the...

Excessive softening of fruits during the ripening process leads to deterioration. This is of significant global importance as softening-mediated deterioration leads to huge postharvest losses. N-glycan processing enzymes are reported to play an important role during climacteric fruit softening: however, to date these enzymes have not been characterized in non-climacteric fruit. Two ripening-spe...

the main postharvest problems of persimmon in iran are severe softening and disease incidence on the fruits during storage. therefore, delay in softening and/or control of diseases result in the storage life extension of persimmon fruit. the strategy of induced disease resistance in plants by biotic and abiotic treatments is an attractive method for controlling diseases. salicylic acid (sa) is ...

The origin of root softening during cassava retting was investigated in a natural retting and in a sterile fermentation. Softening only occurred in the natural retting. Although high activities of endogenous pectin methyl esterase were found in cassava extracts from both fermentations, the depolymerizing enzymes polygalacturonase, active at low pH, and pectate lyase were only found in the non-s...

This study compares the capability of two different mathematical forms of the so-called softening variable to describe strain-induced stress softening observed within cyclic uniaxial tension of the human thoracic aorta. Specifically, the softening variable, which serves as the stress reduction factor, was considered to be tangent hyperbolic-based and error function-based. The mechanical respons...

Papaya (Carica papaya L.) is a climacteric fleshy fruit that undergoes dramatic changes during ripening, most noticeably a severe pulp softening. However, little is known regarding the genetics of the cell wall metabolism in papayas. The present work describes the identification and characterization of genes related to pulp softening. We used gene expression profiling to analyze the correlation...

One of the principal changes that takes place in apples as they ripen on the tree and in storage is the softening of the flesh of the fruit. In recent years many studies have been made on the ripening and storage of apples (iO),^ and in these the softening of the fruit has been given major consideration. In general, it has been found that there is a gradual, though somewhat irregular, softening...