This study identifies and assesses the main contributors to the environmental impact of dehydrated apple snacks produced through the hot air drying method, which is the most common method for ...dehydrating food. The study aims to fill the gap of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies regarding dehydrated apple snacks produced using the hot air drying method. A “cradle to gate” approach of an LCA is performed, including the apple production, storage and calibration, peeling and cutting, dehydration, and packaging stages. The inventory used is mainly primary data collected from a fresh and dehydrated apple snacks producer. The results show that the snack producer’s stages have a larger contribution to the majority of categories when compared to the fresh apple producer’s stages. The electricity consumption within the snack production and the use of liquefied petroleum gas in dehydration are shown to be the largest contributors to the majority of the impacts. However, apple production is also shown to have a relevant contribution to the impact categories due to the use of pesticides, fertilizers, diesel, and electricity.
Rapid apple decline disease (RAD) has been affecting orchards in the USA and Canada. Although the primary cause for RAD remains unknown, viruses may contribute to the incidence or severity of the ...disease. We examined the diversity and prevalence of viruses in orchards affected by RAD in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys (British Columbia, Canada). Next-generation sequencing identified 20 previously described plant viruses and one viroid, as well as a new ilarvirus, which we named apple ilarvirus 2 (AIV2). AIV2 was related to subgroup 2 ilarviruses (42–71% nucleotide sequence identity). RT-PCR assays of 148 individual leaf samples revealed frequent mixed infections, with up to eight viruses or viroid detected in a single tree. AIV2 was the most prevalent, detected in 64% of the samples. Other prevalent viruses included three ubiquitous viruses from the family Betaflexiviridae and citrus concave gum-associated virus. Apple rubbery wood virus 1 and 2 and apple luteovirus 1 were also readily detected. The thirteen most prevalent viruses/viroid were detected not only in trees displaying typical RAD symptoms, but also in asymptomatic trees. When compared with reports from orchards affected by RAD in Pennsylvania, New York State, and Washington State, regional differences in relative virus prevalence were noted.
Many viruses occur in apple (
(Borkh.)), but no information is available on their seed transmissibility. Here, we report that six viruses infecting apple trees, namely, apple chlorotic leaf spot ...virus (ACLSV), apple green crinkle-associated virus (AGCaV), apple rubbery wood virus 2 (ARWV2), apple stem grooving virus (ASGV), apple stem pitting virus (ASPV), and citrus concave gum-associated virus (CCGaV) occur in seeds extracted from apple fruits produced by infected maternal trees. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and quantitative RT-PCR (RT-qPCR) assays revealed the presence of these six viruses in untreated apple seeds with incidence rates ranging from 20% to 96%. Furthermore, ASPV was detected by RT-PCR in the flesh and peel of fruits produced by infected maternal trees, as well as from seeds extracted from apple fruits sold for fresh consumption. Finally, a large-scale seedling grow-out experiment failed to detect ACLSV, ASGV, or ASPV in over 1000 progeny derived from sodium hypochlorite surface sterilized seeds extracted from fruits produced by infected maternal trees, suggesting no detectable transmission via embryonic tissue. This is the first report on the seedborne nature of apple-infecting viruses.
Apple stands out as one of the main fruits processed worldwide, generating an immense volume of industrial by-products, collectively known as apple pomace. This material contain important levels of ...bioactive compounds that could be used in food and pharmaceutical products, answering to current demands regarding the incorporation of natural-based ingredients, generally preferred for their reduced side effects (contrarily to the observed with most artificial components).
The option for industrial by-products as source of bioactive compounds has evident economic advantages, counteracting the typically higher cost of biorefinery processes, when compared with the employment of artificial compounds. In addition, this approach is aligned with current circular economy premises, in the sense of using an industrial waste as the starting material to extract high added value compounds.
Apple pomace remaining from cider and juice production companies is as a striking example of an underutilized industrial by-product. In fact, most bioactive compounds (particularly phenolics) in apple are found in its peels, resulting to be more concentrated in pomace than in whole fruits. The major phenolic compounds in apple pomace (e.g. flavonoids, hydroxycinnamic acids, or di-hydrochalcones) are associated with health promoting activities, mainly based on their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial properties. Therefore, these compounds could have different food and/or pharmaceutical (e.g., in novel dermal formulations) applications. Besides bioactive compounds, apple pomace contains high levels of pectin, which could likewise be used (as a natural gelling agent) in newly developed formulations.
•Apple pomace is among the most abundant byproducts worldwide.•Bioactive and functional compounds in apple pomace were characterized.•Phenolics, triterpenoids and pectin hold great potential for different formulations.•The bioactivity of each compound was explored to assess its potential usefulness.•Apple pomace was validated as a competitive source of valuable nutraceuticals.
The apple target recognition algorithm is one of the core technologies of the apple picking robot. However, most of the existing apple detection algorithms cannot distinguish between the apples that ...are occluded by tree branches and occluded by other apples. The apples, grasping end-effector and mechanical picking arm of the robot are very likely to be damaged if the algorithm is directly applied to the picking robot. Based on this practical problem, in order to automatically recognize the graspable and ungraspable apples in an apple tree image, a light-weight apple targets detection method was proposed for picking robot using improved YOLOv5s. Firstly, BottleneckCSP module was improved designed to BottleneckCSP-2 module which was used to replace the BottleneckCSP module in backbone architecture of original YOLOv5s network. Secondly, SE module, which belonged to the visual attention mechanism network, was inserted to the proposed improved backbone network. Thirdly, the bonding fusion mode of feature maps, which were inputs to the target detection layer of medium size in the original YOLOv5s network, were improved. Finally, the initial anchor box size of the original network was improved. The experimental results indicated that the graspable apples, which were unoccluded or only occluded by tree leaves, and the ungraspable apples, which were occluded by tree branches or occluded by other fruits, could be identified effectively using the proposed improved network model in this study. Specifically, the recognition recall, precision, mAP and F1 were 91.48%, 83.83%, 86.75% and 87.49%, respectively. The average recognition time was 0.015 s per image. Contrasted with original YOLOv5s, YOLOv3, YOLOv4 and EfficientDet-D0 model, the mAP of the proposed improved YOLOv5s model increased by 5.05%, 14.95%, 4.74% and 6.75% respectively, the size of the model compressed by 9.29%, 94.6%, 94.8% and 15.3% respectively. The average recognition speeds per image of the proposed improved YOLOv5s model were 2.53, 1.13 and 3.53 times of EfficientDet-D0, YOLOv4 and YOLOv3 and model, respectively. The proposed method can provide technical support for the real-time accurate detection of multiple fruit targets for the apple picking robot.
Fire blight, caused by
, is one of the most devastating apple diseases. The selection of cultivars of low susceptibility and the study of the genetic mechanisms of the disease play important roles in ...fire blight management. The susceptibility level to fire blight was evaluated in 102 accessions originating from Asturias, a cider-producing region located in the north of Spain with a wide apple germplasm. Evaluations took place under quarantine conditions using artificial inoculations of grafted plants. The results revealed wide variation in susceptibility responses and low-susceptible cultivars were identified. In addition, 91 cultivars were genotyped using the Affymetrix Axiom
Apple 480 K SNP array to conduct genome-wide association studies (GWAS). A statistically significant signal was detected on chromosome 10 using the multi-locus mixed model (MLMM). Two genes were identified as major putative candidate genes: a TIR-NBS-LRR class disease protein and a protein containing a development and cell death (DCD) domain. The outcomes of this study provide a promising source of information, particularly in the context of cider apples, and set a starting point for future genetic and breeding approaches.
The large number of cultivars belonging to the cultivated apple (Malus × domestica Borkh.) reflects an extremely wide range of variability, including for fruit quality traits. To evaluate some ...characteristics of fruit quality, 22 apple genotypes were selected from a collection of germplasms containing more than 600 accessions, based on different considerations, including the use of fruits (dessert, cooking, processing, juice, cider, multipurpose). The mean water content of the studied apple genotypes was 85.05%, with a coefficient of variation (CV) of 2.74%; the mean ash content was 2.32% with a CV of 22.1%, and the mean total soluble solids was 16.22% with a CV of 17.78%, indicating a relatively small difference between genotypes for these indices. On the contrary, relatively large differences were registered between genotypes for fruit weight, volume, and titratable acidity with means of 119.52 g, 155 mL, and 0.55% malic acid, and CVs of 35.17%, 34.58%, and 54.3%, respectively. The results showed that peel hardness varied between 3.80 and 13.69 N, the toughness between 0.2 and 1.07 mm, the flesh hardness between 0.97 and 4.76 N, and the hardness work between 6.88 and 27.84 mJ. The current study can emphasize the possibility of choosing the appropriate apple cultivars to cross in the breeding process and how future strategies can help apple breeders select breeding parents, which are essential key steps when breeding new apple cultivars. In addition, multivariate analysis has proven to be a useful tool in assessing the relationships between Malus genetic resources.
Propionic acid bacteria (PAB) are a source of valuable metabolites, including propionic acid and vitamin B12. Propionic acid, a food preservative, is synthesized from petroleum refining by-products, ...giving rise to ecological concerns. Due to changing food trends, the demand for vitamin B12 has been expected to increase in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to look for new, alternative methods of obtaining these compounds. This study was conducted with an aim of optimizing the production of PAB metabolites using only residues (apple pomace, waste glycerine, and potato wastewater), without any enzymatic or chemical pretreatment and enrichment. Media consisting of one, two, or three industrial side-streams were used for the production of PAB metabolites. The highest production of propionic acid was observed in the medium containing all three residues (8.15 g/L, yield: 0.48 g/g). In the same medium, the highest production of acetic acid was found — 2.31 g/L (0.13 g/g). The presence of waste glycerine in the media had a positive effect on the efficiency of propionic acid production and P/A ratio. The concentration of vitamin B12 obtained in the wet biomass of
Propionibacterium freudenreichii
DSM 20271 ranged from 90 to 290 µg/100 g. The highest production of cobalamin was achieved in potato wastewater and apple pomace, which may be a source of the precursors of vitamin B12 — cobalt and riboflavin. The results obtained show both propionic acid and vitamin B12 can be produced in a more sustainable manner through the fermentation of residues which are often not properly managed.
Key points
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The tested strain has been showed metabolic activity in the analyzed industrial side-streams (apple pomace, waste glycerine, potato wastewater).
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All the side-streams were relevant for the production of propinic acid.
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The addition of waste glycerine increases the propionic acid production efficiency and P/A ratio.
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B12 was produced the most in the media containing potato wastewater and apple pomace as dominant ingredients.
•An online optical sensing system was developed to detect apple qualities.•ILE-WSM method was proposed to complete the apple image segmentation.•NSR method was proposed to eliminate the scattering ...effects in the raw spectra.•ILE-WSM method was effective with the surface bruises detection accuracy of 97.3 %.•NSR method had better effective compare with other existing preprocessing methods.
An optical sensing system for the detection of surface bruises and the internal qualities of apples has been developed. Isohypse line extraction combined with marker constraint watershed segmentation (ILE-WSM), as a method to resolve the uneven brightness problem in apple images during bruise detection was investigated. The method has three steps: first, morphological filtering to reduce the random noise in the raw images; second, the ILE to locate the bruise position in the de-noised images; and finally, the WSM to complete the final image segmentation. For a 300 undamaged and bruised apples, the correct classification rate was 97.3 % using the ILE-WSM method, showing better segmentation ability than the Otsu method. For internal quality detection, the normalized spectral ratio (NSR) method has been proposed to correct the light scattering effects in the raw spectra. The NSR has the advantages of a simple calculation and high precision over the other methods. The final detection models for the apple soluble solids content (SSC) and dry matter content (DMC) were built on the key variables after selection by the competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) method. The root mean square error of the prediction dataset (RMSEP) and the correlation coefficient of the prediction dataset (Rp) of the final model prediction for the SSC and DMC were 0.412 % and 0.957 and 0.602 % and 0.937, respectively. The size of the whole system was 1600 mm × 500 mm × 1500 mm and the total time required to inspect each apple was 0.42 s. The optical sensing system can successfully be applied to apple surface bruise and internal quality detection.
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