DESIGNING AN INTEGRATED COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR VEGETABLE PRODUCTION IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA

Vegetable production provide great value in the agricultural production sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Growers and agricultural engineers need a comprehensive database in Arabic lan-guage that can be available for use any time any where. Therefore, this research project was initiat-ed. The computer program was developed using Visual Basic Net 2005 which is one of the ad-vanced visual programming languages. We took into consideration easy usage and coherence be-tween all program components. Main results in-clude computer program with the data base, which includes: vegetable crops, diseases, insect pests and other pests that attacks vegetable crops, management tactics, cultural practices, irrigation requirements, planting dates, data search. Fur-thermore, field trips have been carried out to some vegetable farms in all the Kingdom regions. A digit-ized map of the Kingdom has been added to the program in addition to crop water and heat re-quirements. Various search capabilities have been developed in the program. After the completion of the program build up, verification trips have been carried out for five regions in the presence of farm-ers and extension specialists of the different direc-torate of the Ministry of Agriculture to test the accu-racy of steps used in the program. A manual for the computer program as well as leaflet on pro-gram set up and usage have been included. It is recommended to make this program available at the internet and distribute copies to the Ministry of Agriculture and its directorates as well as farmers

Biochemical studies on the Natamycin antibiotic produced by Streptomyces lydicus: Fermentation, extraction and biological activities

Natamycin “polyene” antibiotic was isolated from the fermentation broth of a Streptomyces strain No. AZ-55. According to the morphological, cultural, physiological and biochemical characteristics, and 16S rDNA sequence analysis, strain AZ-55 was identified as Streptomyces lydicus. It is active in vitro against some microbial pathogens viz: Staphylococcus aureus, NCTC 7447; Bacillus subtilis, NCTC 1040; Bacillus pumilus, NCTC 8214 ; Micrococcus luteus, ATCC 9341; Escherichia coli, NCTC 10416; Klebsiella pneumonia, NCIMB 9111; Salmonella typhi and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, ATCC 10145; S. cerevisiae, ATCC 9763; Candida albicans, IMRU 3669; Aspergillus flavus, IMI 111023; Aspergillus niger, IMI 31276; Aspergillus fumigatus, ATCC 16424; Fusarium oxysporum; Alternaria alternata and Rhizoctonia solani. The active metabolite was extracted using chloroform (1:1, v/v) at pH 7.0. The separation of the active ingredient of the antifungal agent and its purification were performed using both thin layer chromatography (TLC) and column chromatography (CC) techniques. The physico-chemical characteristics of the purified antibiotic viz. color, melting point, solubility, elemental analysis (C, H, N, O and S) and spectroscopic characteristics (UV absorbance and IR, mass & NMR spectra) have been investigated. This analysis indicates a suggested empirical formula of C33H47NO13. The chemical structural analysis with spectroscopic characteristics confirmed that the compound produced by S. lydicus, AZ-55 is Natamycin “polyene” antibiotic

BrainFD: Measuring the Intracranial Brain Volume With Fractal Dimension

A few methods and tools are available for the quantitative measurement of the brain volume targeting mainly brain volume loss. However, several factors, such as the clinical conditions, the time of the day, the type of MRI machine, the brain volume artifacts, the pseudoatrophy, and the variations among the protocols, produce extreme variations leading to misdiagnosis of brain atrophy. While brain white matter loss is a characteristic lesion during neurodegeneration, the main objective of this study was to create a computational tool for high precision measuring structural brain changes using the fractal dimension (FD) definition. The validation of the BrainFD software is based on T1-weighted MRI images from the Open Access Series of Imaging Studies (OASIS)-3 brain database, where each participant has multiple MRI scan sessions. The software is based on the Python and JAVA programming languages with the main functionality of the FD calculation using the box-counting algorithm, for different subjects on the same brain regions, with high accuracy and resolution, offering the ability to compare brain data regions from different subjects and on multiple sessions, creating different imaging profiles based on the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scores of the participants. Two experiments were executed. The first was a cross-sectional study where the data were separated into two CDR classes. In the second experiment, a model on multiple heterogeneous data was trained, and the FD calculation for each participant of the OASIS-3 database through multiple sessions was evaluated. The results suggest that the FD variation efficiently describes the structural complexity of the brain and the related cognitive decline. Additionally, the FD efficiently discriminates the two classes achieving 100% accuracy. It is shown that this classification outperforms the currently existing methods in terms of accuracy and the size of the dataset. Therefore, the FD calculation for identifying intracranial brain volume loss could be applied as a potential low-cost personalized imaging biomarker. Furthermore, the possibilities measuring different brain areas and subregions could give robust evidence of the slightest variations to imaging data obtained from repetitive measurements to Physicians and Radiologists. Copyright © 2021 Ashraf, Chatzichronis, Alexiou, Kyriakopoulos, Alghamdi, Tayeb, Alghamdi, Khan, Jalal and Atta

Temperature-related changes in respiration and Q10 coefficient of Guava

Guava (Psidium guajava L.) is a tropical fruit that presents fast post-harvest ripening; therefore it is a very perishable product. Inappropriate storage temperature and retail practices can accelerate fruit quality loss. The objective of this study was to evaluate the respiratory activity (RA), the ethylene production (EP) and Q10 of guava fruit at different storage temperatures. 'Paluma' guava fruits were harvested at maturity stage 1 (dark-green skin) and stored at either 1, 11, 21, 31 or 41ºC; RA and EP were determined after 12, 36, 84 and 156 h of storage. RA and EP rates at 1 and 11ºC were the lowest - 0.16 and 0.43 mmol CO2 kg-1 h-1 and 0.003 and 0.019 µmol C2H4 kg-1 h-1, respectively. When guavas were stored at 21ºC, a gradual increase occurred in RA and EP, reaching 2.24 mmol CO2 kg-1 h-1 and 0.20 µmol C2H4 kg-1 h-1, after 156 h of storage. The highest RA and EP were recorded for guavas stored at 31ºC. In spite of high RA, guavas stored at 41ºC presented EP similar to guavas stored at 11ºC, an indicator of heat-stress injury. Considering the 1-11ºC range, the mean Q10 value was around 3.0; the Q10 value almost duplicated at 11-21ºC range (5.9). At 21-31ºC and 31-41ºC, Q10 was 1.5 and 0.8, respectively. Knowing Q10, respiratory variation and ripening behavior in response to different temperatures, fruit storage and retail conditions can be optimized to reduce quality losses