Transpiration and moisture evolution in packaged fresh horticultural produce and the role of integrated mathematical models: A review

Transpiration has various adverse effects on postharvest quality and the shelf-life of fresh fruit and vegetables (FFV). If not controlled, the water released through this process results in direct mass loss and moisture condensation inside packaged FFV. Condensation represents a threat to the product quality as water may accumulate on the product surface and/or packaging system, causing defects in external appearance and promoting growth of spoilage microorganisms. Thus, moisture regulation is extremely important for extending FFV shelf-life. This review focuses on transpiration phenomenon and moisture evolution in packaged fresh horticultural produce. It provides recent information on various moisture control strategies suitable for packaging of fresh horticultural produce. It also provides an evaluation on the role and application of integrative mathematical modelling in describing water relations of FFV for packaging design, as well as, an overview of models reported in literature

High-value supply chains, food standards and poor farmers in developing countries: the case of vegetable exports from Senegal

This paper studies the welfare effects of high-value FFV exports from Senegal to the EU. We analyze how the structure of the export supply chain has changed in response to tightening food standards and investigate the impact for the local population. The study yields four important findings. First, we find that public and private food standards in the EU have lead to increased consolidation and increased vertical coordination in the FFV supply chain with a shift away from smallholder contract-based production to integrated estate production. Second, these structural changes have increased the participation of rural households, and especially poorer households, in the supply chains through wage employment on FFV estates. Third, we find that household participation in FFV export production, whether through contract-farming or through estate wage employment, generates significant income gains. Fourth, high-value FFV trade has a major impact on rural poverty-reduction and the increasing prevalence of food standards is even enhancing this impact.International Relations/Trade,

Improving Kenya's Domestic Horticultural Production and Marketing System: Current Competitiveness, Forces of Change, and Challenges for the Future (Volume I: Horticultural Production)

The specific objectives of this Volume are to: estimate the share of domestic FFV production going to international and domestic markets; determine the share of imports from Tanzania and Uganda in Kenya’s horticultural markets; investigate the competitiveness of Kenya’s horticultural produce in local and regional markets; determine the current and likely future share of key marketing channels in Kenya’s domestic FFV marketing system, especially “modern” channels such as supermarkets and more traditional channels such as open air markets and kiosks; and recommend steps that should be taken to place Kenya’s domestic horticulture in a position to compete favorably in local and regional markets.Food Security, Food Policy, Horticultural Production, Kenya, Crop Production/Industries, Q18,

Aqueous Amino Acids and Proteins Near the Surface of Gold in Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic Force Fields

We calculate potentials of the mean force for twenty amino acids in the vicinity of the (111) surface of gold, for several dipeptides, and for some analogs of the side chains, using molecular dynamics simulations and the umbrella sampling method. We compare results obtained within three different force fields: one hydrophobic (for a contaminated surface) and two hydrophilic. All of these fields lead to good binding with very different specificities and different patterns in the density and polarization of water. The covalent bond with the sulfur atom on cysteine is modeled by the Morse potential. We demonstrate that binding energies of dipeptides are different than the combined binding energies of their amino-acidic components. For the hydrophobic gold, adsorption events of a small protein are driven by attraction to the strongest binding amino acids. This is not so in the hydrophilic cases - a result of smaller specificities combined with the difficulty for proteins, but not for single amino acids, to penetrate the first layer of water. The properties of water near the surface sensitively depend on the force field

Vertical Coordination and Grower Organization in the Supermarket Fruit and Vegetables Supply Chain in Croatia

Abstract: The means by which fruit and vegetables growers are linked with the upstream partners in the supermarket supply chain are investigated in 15 semi-structured interviews with inter alia the managers of Croatia’s five major supermarket chains. Contrasting to existing literature we find that supermarkets vertically coordinate with larger growers directly through loose 1-year marketing contracts specifying the terms of payment, without giving financial or technical assistance to the farmers. An exception is the largest Croatian supermarket which has a dominant position in the market and sometimes provides comprehensive farm assistance or even fully vertically integrates farm production. Wholesalers more often provide farm assistance to FFV growers. Though, in the future it can be expected that the wholesalers drop out of the FFV supermarket supply chain. The major bottleneck for farmers to directly supply to the supermarket chains is the access to a distribution facility for grading, sorting and packaging of FFV. Also, farmers need to organize to meet the supermarkets’ minimum quantity requirements. Since bad experience with cooperatives in the communist era is widespread, farmers distaste cooperatives and the degree of organization of FFV growers in Croatia is very low. We present an innovative model for a producer organization which could overcome the main challenges growers face in the FFV supermarket supply chain and secure that even small farmers participate. Also, we outline policy measures for the Croatian government and the European Commission to foster this development.supermarket supply chain, vertical coordination, fruit and vegetables, farm assistance, producer organization, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Genetic Algorithm for quick finding of diatomic molecule potential parameters

Application of Genetic Algorithm (GA) for determination of parameters of an analytical representation of diatomic molecule potential is presented. GA can be used for finding potential characteristics of an electronic energy state which can be described by analytical function. GA was tested on two artificially generated datasets which base on potentials with known characteristics and two LIF excitation spectra recorded using transitions in CdKr and CdAr molecules. Tests on generated datasets showed that GA can properly reproduce parameters of the potentials. Tests on experimental spectra indicated that changing the potential model from Morse, which is frequently used as a starting potential in IPA, to expanded Morse oscillator (EMO) leads to noticeable improvement of agreement between simulated and experimental data

Two-loop effective potential for a general renormalizable theory and softly broken supersymmetry

I compute the two-loop effective potential in the Landau gauge for a general renormalizable field theory in four dimensions. Results are presented for the \bar{MS} renormalization scheme based on dimensional regularization, and for the \bar{DR} and \bar{DR}' schemes based on regularization by dimensional reduction. The last of these is appropriate for models with softly broken supersymmetry, such as the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. I find the parameter redefinition which relates the \bar{DR} and \bar{DR}' schemes at two-loop order. I also discuss the renormalization group invariance of the two-loop effective potential, and compute the anomalous dimensions for scalars and the beta function for the vacuum energy at two-loop order in softly broken supersymmetry. Several illustrative examples and consistency checks are included.Comment: 38 pages. Typos in equations (3.5), (3.11), and (6.3) are fixed. Explicit claim of renormalization group invariance in the general case of softly-broken supersymmetry is added. Additional discussion of cases of multiple simple or U(1) groups. Equations in Appendix B rewritten in a more useful for

Yeah, Right, Uh-Huh: A Deep Learning Backchannel Predictor

Using supporting backchannel (BC) cues can make human-computer interaction more social. BCs provide a feedback from the listener to the speaker indicating to the speaker that he is still listened to. BCs can be expressed in different ways, depending on the modality of the interaction, for example as gestures or acoustic cues. In this work, we only considered acoustic cues. We are proposing an approach towards detecting BC opportunities based on acoustic input features like power and pitch. While other works in the field rely on the use of a hand-written rule set or specialized features, we made use of artificial neural networks. They are capable of deriving higher order features from input features themselves. In our setup, we first used a fully connected feed-forward network to establish an updated baseline in comparison to our previously proposed setup. We also extended this setup by the use of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks which have shown to outperform feed-forward based setups on various tasks. Our best system achieved an F1-Score of 0.37 using power and pitch features. Adding linguistic information using word2vec, the score increased to 0.39

Examining Farmers’ Marketing Practices in the Fresh Fruits and Vegetables (FFV) Industry

This study is to examine the farmers’ marketing practices in the fresh fruits and vegetables (FFV) industry. It aims firstly, identifies the current marketing practices of FFV; secondly to determine the factors which motivate contract farmers to participate in contract farming; thirdly to identify the determinants of FFV farmers participating in contract farming and lastly to evaluates the nature of sourcing and procurement practices by FFV buyers (with a special focus on hypermarkets). The study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative research. The study was conducted a survey on FFV farmers by using a structured questionnaire. The survey was conducted from April 2007 to July 2007 in populous states namely Kedah,Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Perak, Selangor and Johor in Peninsular Malaysia. The study utilized a random sampling method. A total of 208 FFV farmers were interviewed. One hundred and sixty seven FFV farmers were independent farmers and the remaining were contract farmers. As for the qualitative research, an in-depth interview was conducted with FFV buyers which include Malaysian Agrifood Corporation (MAFC), Mydin, Giant, ECONSAVE and UO Superstore to get insights on FFV buyers sourcing and procurement practices. Factor analysis was carried out to identify latent factors that influenced FFV farmers in their participation in contract farming. The factor analysis uncovered five factors,as perceived by the FFV farmers, as reasons for their involvement in contract farming. These factors are: market assurance, access to marketing information and technology, transfer of technology to improve farming practices, access to inputs and indirect benefit. These factors, in sum, explained 76.8 per cent of the variance in the farmers’ decision-making process. The FFV contract farmers also agreed that the new approach in marketing their produce not only increased their income and knowledge but also enhanced their productivity. Logit analysis uncovers seven determinants of FFV farmers’ participation in contract farming. It was found that land ownership, farm size, education and perceived benefit were four determinants that positively influenced farmers’ participation in contract farming. Complicated process, lack of opportunities and price risk were three determinants that negatively influence the farmers’ participation in contract farming. Several forms of sourcing and procurement practices for FFV produce were observed among the FFV produce buyers. These practices included: 1) Lead or large scale FFV farmers deliver FFV produce directly to supermarkets; 2)wholesalers directly deliver to supermarkets and 3) supermarkets’ use of specialized sourcing and procurement agency such as FAMA. It was observed that supermarkets or hypermarkets do not have any contract agreement directly with farmers as well as any written document. FFV farmers deliver by arrangement. By buying directly from FFV farmers, supermarkets or hypermarkets by pass the middleman, enable them to obtain the supplies in cheaper prices. Supermarkets or hypermarkets buy in bulk and secured their supplies from wholesale market. This was mainly due to wholesalers’ ability in supplying in bulk as well as deliver in the right time and quality. Buyers’criterions in choosing suppliers were volume, price, quality and formed relationship of trust