In this work the total vitamin C contents (ascorbic acid+dehydroascorbic acid) and antioxidant activity of raw and cooked chestnuts was evaluated. The vitamin C contents of raw chestnuts varied significantly between the different cultivars (cv) studied and it varied from 400mg/kg dry weight (cv Lada) to 693mg/kg dry weight (cv Martaínha). The different cultivars behave differently during the co...

Image acquisition system of chestnuts has been designed in this study. After the preprocessing on the images, including image de-noising, image enhancement, image segmentation, edge extraction and edge linking, the parameters of the shape features of chestnuts such as the areas, the perimeter, the circularity, the eccentricity and the degree of circularity have been extracted. This study propos...

Protein content in chestnuts is an important parameter for evaluating the fruit quality. In this work, the pilot application of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy in measuring protein content of chestnuts was implemented. 182 samples were involved and 5 preprocessing methods were compared. PLS regression models developed from the spectra of intact nuts and peeled nuts were established separately....

American chestnut [Castanea dentata (Marshall) Borkhausen], a canopy dominant species across wide swaths of eastern North America, was reduced to an understory shrub after introduction of the blight fungus [Cryphonectria parasitica (Murrill) Barr] in the early 1900s. Restoration of American chestnut by using biotechnology is promising, but the imprecise nature of transgenesis may inadvertently...

BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION The Chinese water chestnut, Eleocharis dulcis ((Burm. f.) Henschel), is a member of the sedge family (Cyperaceae). It is a true aquatic that can only grow in water. The plant has a rush-like appearance with 4-6 tubular stems that are upright and about 3 to 4 feet tall. The plant produces 1 to 2-inch brown corms on rhizomes at its base under the soil. The corms have w...

Gamma radiation has been used as a post-harvest food preservation process for many years. Chestnuts are a seasonal product consumed fresh or processed, and gamma irradiation emerged recently as a possible alternative technology for their post-harvest processing, to fulfil the requirements of international phytosanitary trade laws. After harvest and storage, several problems may occur, such as t...

American chestnut trees once dominated vast areas of deciduous forest in eastern North America, but the exotic chestnut blight almost eliminated the species from the region. Introduction of blight-resistant American chestnut hybrids will probably start in the next decade after many years of tree breeding. What were the historic effects of chestnut on forest soils, and what changes may follow re...