The nutritional efficiency of Coffea spp. A review

Reduced soil fertility has been surpassed by the supply of mineral nutrients, which results in increased rates of plant production and costs. In this context, the optimization of plants’ nutritional efficiency is critical to increase productivity and reduce the cost of agricultural production systems. The nutritional efficiency of plants is conditioned by numerous factors and the growing environment. Therefore, the knowledge of genetic basis and mode of inheritance can assist in selecting genotypes with desirable agronomic characteristics coupled with nutritional efficiency and genetic variability. The trend of expanding agricultural frontiers has increased interest in the use of genotypes with the potential to adapt to adverse conditions of soil fertility. Within crops, the coffee beans are the second most traded commodity in the world. In this sense, optimization of nutritional efficiency of the coffee has a positive impact on the sum of efforts to make sustainable activity. This review aimed to present a systematic analysis of the nutritional efficiency of the coffee. Key words: Nutrient absorption and utilization, root length, genetic variability

Relevant principal component analysis applied to the characterisation of Portuguese heather honey

The main purpose of this study was the characterisation of ‘Serra da Lousã’ heather honey by using novel statistical methodology, relevant principal component analysis, in order to assess the correlations between production year, locality and composition. Herein, we also report its chemical composition in terms of sugars, glycerol and ethanol, and physicochemical parameters. Sugars profiles from ‘Serra da Lousã’ heather and ‘Terra Quente de Tra´ s-os-Montes’ lavender honeys were compared and allowed the discrimination: ‘Serra da Lousã’ honeys do not contain sucrose, generally exhibit lower contents of turanose, trehalose and maltose and higher contents of fructose and glucose. Different localities from ‘Serra da Lousã ’ provided groups of samples with high and low glycerol contents. Glycerol and ethanol contents were revealed to be independent of the sugars profiles. These data and statistical models can be very useful in the comparison and detection of adulterations during the quality control analysis of ‘Serra da Lousã’ honey