Economic Analysis of Strategies to Combat HLB in Florida Citrus

citrus greening, huanglongbing, asian citrus psyllid, Crop Production/Industries, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Modified insulated punnets and conventional packaging films for retail storage of robusta banana fruits

The application of poor consumer packaging technology to Banana fruits can increase fruit susceptibility to diseases which affect quality and shelf-life. Understanding the use of appropriate consumer packages is crucial in developing packages for the fresh produce sector. In this study, four different consumer packages and Control Samples (CT) which included Perforated Insulated Punnet (PP), Non-perforated Punnet (NP), Perforated Films (PF) and Non-perforated Films (NF) were used. Fruits in packages were stored at 27°C for 7 days where rate of ripening, weight loss, total soluble solids, taste, pulp texture and consumer acceptance were assessed. The results demonstrated that the use of perforated punnets was better in reducing the rate of ripening. The changes in TSS was progressive in all the treatments but the control sample produced the highest Brix at 16% compared with Brix 15% for fruits in PP, NP. PF and NF. Weight loss was more pronounced in the control sample 11.7% compared with the least weight loss of 0.7% for fruits in NF. Except, Sweetness and TSS without dilution all the parameters assessed were statistically significant at P ≤ 0.05. Based on the results obtained in this research, it can be shown that the use of insulation and perforations of punnets demonstrated appropriateness which offers a promise and can be adopted for consumer use in the fresh produce sector

Integrated Pest Management and Protection Practices by Limited Resource Farmers

This article focuses on the perceptions of limited resource farmers (LRFs) on integrated pest management (IPM) and protection practices. Data were collected from 90 LRFs in the Alabama Black Belt and analyzed by descriptive statistics. The results revealed that most farmers used pesticides and practiced crop rotation and other practices, yet a majority was not familiar or inadequately familiar with IPM. It is recommended that instituting a coordinated or seamless IPM education program on a long-term or continuing basis will enable the LRFs to be well familiar with and also practice IPM on a sustained basis

Residue Number System-Based Approach to Minimise Energy Consumption in Wireless Sensor Networks

This study harnesses the useful number properties of the residue number system (RNS) to minimise energy consumption in a wireless sensor network. In a traditional cluster-based wireless sensor network, large bit representations of aggregated packets are transmitted to the base station. However, large bit patterns of packets are slower compared to smaller bits. The proposed approach splits aggregated data into a pre-specified number of transmission channels using a moduli set. Cheap energy cost routes from the cluster heads are computed to deliver the chunked aggregated data to the base station. Forward and reverse converters are proposed to encode data into RNS and decode the RNS data that reaches the base station. MATLAB simulation is used to implement the proposed data splitting method and to evaluate network performance. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method is more effective at minimising transmission energy when compared with traditional approaches in which complete packets are transmitted