Harvest Handling and Postharvest Conditions for Optimum Nutrient Quality in Mango: Minerals and Vitamins

Good practices at harvest and postharvest could be useful in obtaining nutritious mango with high minerals and vitamins. The present study evaluated effect of harvest handling and postharvest conditions on the level of minerals and vitamins using standard methods. Ripe, half-ripe and unripe mangoes were harvested on parent plant and on ground around parent plant. The half-ripe and unripe mangoes were further divided to include heat ripened mangoes. The mango samples were separately stored naturally at 25±3oC and heat ripened at 37±5oC for 0 to 10 day after harvest (dah). The results show Ijebu-Mamu mangoes could cater for reference dietary intake of Vit C. Mango harvested on parent plant has highest level of minerals and vitamins than those picked on ground. Ripe mango has highest level of minerals, halfripe mango presented highest level of vits. B1 and B2 and unripe mango has highest level of Fe and Vit. C. Heat caused increased level of minerals and reduced level of vitamins. The minerals show increased level from 0 to 4 or 6 dah while vitamins reduced from 0 till 10 dah. High level of minerals and vitamins was obtained with optimum integrated harvest and postharvest condition of half-ripe mango naturally ripened at 6 dah. The present results highlight effects of the  assessed harvest handling and postharvest conditions and their co-optimization that might be necessary for high minerals and vitamins in mango

Spectrophotometic Determination of Caffeine and Vitamin B6 in Selected Beverages, Energy/Soft Drinks and Herbal Products

In this study, a simple, sensitive and reproducible spectrophotometric technique has been developed and validated for the determination of caffeine and vitamin B6 in beverages, energy/soft drinks and herbal products. The determination of caffeine and vitamin B6 in the respective samples were carried out at maximum (λmax) absorbance of 272 and 290 nm respectively. The method was validated in terms of linearity, sensitivity (limit of Detection (LOD) and limit of Quantification (LOQ), accuracy (% Recovery), precision (relative standard deviation). The method was linear from (4-20 µg/ml and 50 - 250 µg/ml with r 2 of 0.9991 and 0.9996 for vitamin B6 and caffeine respectively. The accuracy of the method ranged from 99.48 - 101.42% for caffeine and 99.94% - 102.35% for vitamin B6. The detection limit and quantification limit were 0.192 µg/ml and 0.640 µg/ml for vitamin B6 while 0.0155 µg/ml and 0.0518 µg/ml was obtained for caffeine. The method for the two analytes was found to be precise as the percentage relative standard deviation was below 5%. Therefore, the method proposed in this study is rapid, suitable and can be used as a quality control index for caffeine and vitamin B6 in beverages, energy/soft drinks and herbal products in industries. Keywords: Caffeine, Vitamin B6, Beverages, Energy/Soft drinks, Herbal products, Spectrophotometr

Ympäristöraportointi suomalaisissa suuryrityksissä

This study was designed to determine the degree of resistance to hypotonic saline for different variants of blood haemoglobin that are found locally, relative to normal adult red cell haemoglobin and to one another. Blood specimens from 25 individuals, five for each type of haemoglobin variant, were exposed to varying degrees of hypotonicity at room temperature and the optical density (OD) was read after  incubation. The pattern of haemolysis was consistent in all samples for each haemoglobin variant.  HbAA was found to be most susceptible to saline hypotonicity, followed by HbAC and HbAS while HbSC and HbSS were highly resistant to lysis when exposed to varying degrees of hypotonicity. The three variants containing HbA, that is HbAA, HbAC, HbAS had close similarity in the pattern of haemolysis. Similarly, HbSC and HbSS exhibited a close pattern as well. We suggest that the pattern observed in the two categories may be as a result of the presence of the adult haemoglobin gene (A) in the former group and the presence of the sickle haemoglobin gene (S) in the latter, respectively. We observed that the pattern of susceptibility to saline hypotonicity found in these variants has an inverse relationship to the severity of clinical manifestation commonly observed in individuals having these different haemoglobin variants