An experiment was carried out on Taif rose cut flowers cv. (Trigintipetala) to study the effect of pulsing with sucrose and silver nitrate (AgNO3) on vase life and other parameters. In the trial, sucrose and AgNO3 at 4 levels of concentrations (0, 3, 5 or 7% w/v sucrose), (0, 20, 30 or 50 ppm AgNO3) were tested alone as well as combination. The cut flowers were treated in three stages of maturity [bud (B), half opening (H.O) or complete opening (C.O)]. The pulsing times were 5, 10 or 24 hours, then transferred to distilled water as control. The experiment was laid out in a completely randomized design replicated thrice. The sucrose, 7% and AgNO3 30% individually recorded higher vase life of 17.2 and 15 days respectively. Whereas, their combinations (sucrose 7% × AgNO3 30%) was significantly superior to the rest of combination in keeping higher water uptake and retarded the chlorophyll as well as the carbohydrate degradation during the postharvest life and resulting in a highest vase life of 19.1 days.

Capsicum chinense Jacq. is well known for its pungency factor, “capsaicin”. An attempt has been made to maintain the desired pungency of Capsicum chinense Jacq. cv. Lota Bhot through in vitro propagation via callusogenesis from leaf explants under the influence of different plant growth hormones and an additional component, Silver nitrate (AgNO3). The combination of Kinetin (45µML-1) along with 2,4-Dichlorophenoxy Acetic Acid (2,4-D) and AgNO3 at 3.5µML-1 and 35µML-1 respectively was found optimum for callus induction as well as multiple shoot induction whereas maximum shoot length was recorded at Kin (40µML-1), 2,4-D (3.0 µML-1) and AgNO3 (30µML-1). In vitro flower induction and fruit development was most observed under the influence of Gibberellic Acid (GA3) at 30µML-1. Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium fortified with Benzyl Amino Purine (BAP) 1and 2,4-D at 4.0µML-1 and 5.5 µML-1 correspondingly was standardized for maximum induction of roots in vitro. Healthy in vitro regenerated plantlets were acclimatized in the potting substrate containing half strength MS medium enriched with soil, sand, vermicompost and vermiculite in all equal proportion and 78.56% of total acclimatized plants were successfully transferred to the main field.

In many circumstances, texture is the only information that can be used in natural image analysis because it is an important property of the surface that characterizes it’s nature. Texture is defined as a spatial arrangement of local (gray level) intensity attributes which are correlated within areas of visual scene corresponding to surface regions. An image region has a constant texture if sets of its local properties in that region are constant. Thus texture analysis has received considerable attention in the field of image analysis and pattern recognition. Texture exhibits some sort of periodicity of the basic pattern of Spongy Tissue in alphonso mango. This leads to use textural property to identify different patterns of Spongy Tissue in alphonso for detection of defects in alphonso mango. Visual assessment of texture made by human is time consuming and inspection made by human does not achieve a high degree of accuracy and preciseness. Automated visual inspection of the textural pattern improves the accuracy and preciseness during detection of defects in alphonso mango. In the literature, the researchers worldwide have been working in various texture analysis algorithms for different applications like detection, recognition, classification, segmentation, clustering etc. Many algorithms suffer from low sensitive detection, difficult back ground adaption and high memory requirement. Problems and limitations associated with the available techniques have been reported by many studies. Each has some drawback under all lighting conditions and no one has used a robust, reliable algorithm for detection of spongy tissue in alphonso mango under real life test environment. To develop an optimized algorithm using a non contact mechanism which will detect the defective alphonso mangoes happen to be a challenging task. The objective of the proposed research work is to obtain computationally cost effective and noncontact solution that achieve better recognition rate under various conditions in consultation with the agriculture scientist. In this paper we have proposed use of subspace analysis techniques for extraction of textural features that identifies Spongy Tissue in alphonso mango successfully. Performance of the proposed algorithm is carried out on the alphonso database [1]. This paper presents a methodology that combines the principal component analysis (PCA) and fisher linear discriminant analysis (FLD) applied for defect detection in alphonso mangoes. Performance of the proposed algorithm has been compared with that of PCA and FLD applied individually for both healthy and defective alphonso mangoes. Experimental results computed using the proposed integrated algorithm, individual PCA and individual FLD have been validated manually with the cut sections of the alphonso mangoes available in the database. It is observed that the proposed method shows significant improvement for both defective as well as healthy alphonso mangoes over PCA and FLD applied individually. The feature vectors extracted by using integrated PCA-FLD method have 99% of the highest discriminant power.

Seed micromorphology of seven species of Minuartia L. were examined by light and scanning electron microscope. High variation was found in seed coat micromorphology were observed. Most of the species investigated had verrucate ornaments except M. meyeri and M. aucheriana (with verrucate-reticulate ornaments), and M. hamate (depressed verrucate ornaments). The shape of cell margin in seeds shows a dentate except M.hybrida was sinuate M.meyeri was serrate and M.picta was irregular dentate. While cell shape also various between species, it was rounded polygonal in M.montana and M.intermedia, but they are oblong in M.meyeri and M.hamata, and elongated polygonal in other species. The testa cell contours of most studied taxa are V-shaped, but they are irregular in M. picta. While position of hilum appear central in all species, exception M.aucheriana, M.picta and M.montana were showed subcentral.