Antifungal activities of twenty four plant extracts and secondary metabolites of five Trichoderma strains were tested against conidial germination and germ tube growth of Colletotrichum capsici. Hundred percent inhibition of conidial germination and shortest germ tube formation of Colletotrichum capsici were recorded in Azadiracta indica (leaf), Ocimum sanctum (leaf) and Curcuma longa (rhizome)...

Crop pathogens are notorious for their rapid adaptation to their host. We still know little about the evolution of their life cycles and whether there might be trade-offs between fitness components, limiting the evolutionary potential of these pathogens. In this study, we explored a trade-off between spore production capacity and latent period in Puccinia triticina, a fungal pathogen causing le...

Keyword retrieval in handwritten document images (word spotting) is very challenging given that OCR accuracy is not yet adequate for handwritten scripts, specially with large lexicons. Various proposed approaches build indices on information such as image features or OCR scores and have improved the performance of the traditional approach that builds index on OCR’ed text. In this paper, we impr...

While the typical Arabian camel is characterized by a single colored coat, there are rare populations with white spotting patterns. White spotting coat patterns are found in virtually all domesticated species, but are rare in wild species. Theories suggest that white spotting is linked to the domestication process, and is occasionally associated with health disorders. Though mutations have been...

Syllable or phoneme spotting if reliably achieved, provides a good solution to the spoken word andlor continuous speech recognition problem, . We previously showed tha t the Time-Delay Neural Network (TDNN) provided excellent recognition performance (98.6%) of the "BDG" consonant task. We would also like to extend the encouraging performance of TDNN to wordlcontinuous speech recognition. In thi...

natural plant extracts / products have the potential as safe alternatives for chemical fungicides in plant disease management. methanol and pure methanol: water (50:50 v/v) extracts of peppermint, lavandula, eucalyptus, datura and nettle were screened for their antifungal activity against alternaria sesami, the causal agent of alternaria leaf spot of sesame at 5, 10 and 15% concentrations in sh...

Disease severity was recorded 2 weeks after planting when seedlings were still at the primary leaf stage. In all of the rows planted with inoculated seeds, some of the plants were symptomless and others had leaf spots and puckering symptoms characteristic of bacterial brown spot. No difference in type or severity of symptoms was noted in any of the treatments. None of the treatments resulted in...

Several pest insects of human and livestock habitations are known as vectors of Salmonella enterica; however, the role of plant-feeding insects as vectors of S. enterica to agricultural crops remains unexamined. Using a hemipteran insect pest-lettuce system, we investigated the potential for transmission and retention of S. enterica. Specifically, Macrosteles quadrilineatus and Myzus persicae i...

Currently, most fresh-cut processing facilities in the United States use chlorinated water or other sanitizer solutions for microbial reduction after lettuce is cut. Freshly cut lettuce releases significant amounts of organic matter that negatively impacts the effectiveness of chlorine or other sanitizers for microbial reduction. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether a sanitizer wa...