Improving control of storage diseases on apple by combining biological and physical post-harvest methods

Post-harvest non-chemical treatments consists of a large range of different approaches, including strengthening of the commodity’s natural defence mechanisms, thermotherapy, application of antagonistic microorganisms and natural antimicrobial substances. NEX0101 is a promising antagonistic biocontrol agent containing the yeast Candida oleophila as the active ingredient. NEX0101 was developed by Bionext, a spin-off from the laboratory of Dr. H. Jijakli, and is currently evaluated for commercial use. The product contains a yeast strain isolated from apple fruit and was originally developed for the control of post-harvest diseases on apple. The antifungal effectiveness of this antagonist can be increased by addition of calcium salts. As the mode of action of this yeast is based on the colonisation of wounds, the mean targets of NEX0101 are blue mould, caused by Penicillium expansum, and grey mould, caused by Botrytis cinerea. Facing possible latent infections, thermotherapy by using hot water treatments could provide an advanced control towards lenticelrot (Gloeosporium spp.). A combination of both physical and biological treatment techniques could broaden the spectrum to all key pathogens on apple and pear. The use of NEX0101 for the control of P. expansum was examined in combination with calcium gluconate. According to the results the combination NEX0101 with calcium gluconate provides an advanced mould control towards P. expansum The best results were achieved using NEX0101 in combination with post-harvest dipping by thermotherapy. The hot water treatment alone was clearly inefficient towards wound parasite P. expansum, on the contrary thermotherapy stimulates the decay caused by this postharvest pathogen. For the future a combination of biological and physical treatments could offer a worthy non-chemical alternative for organic and integrated fruit growers towards fruit rot decay, although more research is necessary to implement these methods in practice

Evaluation of the users value of salts against apple scab and powdery mildew for fruit production

The research was aimed at finding anti resistance strategies for Integrated fruit growing. As the salts tested may be approvable for organic farming, the trial results are also of value for the development of scab an mildew control strategies for organic fruit growing. As new fungicides are mainly unisite action fungicides, the problem of fungicide resistance development is becoming more important every year. Combining chemical fungicides, which is the best anti-resistance strategy, is not always possible or recommended in the case when the number of available chemical fungicides are limited or a reduction in fungicide use is asked for. Therefore the use of salts as an anti-resistance strategy was looked upon. The salts evaluated were K(HCO3), KH2PO3, KHPO4 and K2SiO3. When using these salts as an anti-resistance strategy the efficacy obtained when spraying the compounds alone was often to low to be used in rotation with chemical fungicides. Only with K(HCO3)2 a good efficacy can be observed in some years. The variation in efficacy with K(HCO3)2 observed is higher for powdery mildew. K(HCO3)2 can be considered as a ideal product for scab control in organic orchards at moments of low infection risk

Is the employed scholar free not to publish?:Limitations of disclosure rights in a comparative perspective

The control of works produced by academics in the course of their employment is a controversial issue. This paper examines the protection offered to employed scholars who do not want to publish their work because of the fear that premature dissemination would damage their academic reputation. The right not to publish of employed scholars has been analyzed considering Anglo-American copyright law on the one hand, and French legislation on the other. Irrespective of the differences between these jurisdictions, both positions allow labour conditions to restrict the right not to publish. On top of the comparison of three legal systems, this paper investigates the question of whether the limitations on the right of disclosure conflict with article 15, paragraph 1 c of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ICESCR. Both Anglo-American and French copyright law are not fully consistent with the protection of moral interests offered by the ICESCR. The reason is that it depends on the labour conditions whether there exists any obligation on academic employees to publish. In the absence of this obligation, the employed scholar enjoys the freedom to decide not to publish. ICESCR does not allow these limitations of disclosure rights since article 15, paragraph 1 c does not refer to working conditions

Towards zero latency photonic switching in shared memory networks

Photonic networks-on-chip based on silicon photonics have been proposed to reduce latency and power consumption in future chip multi-core processors (CMP). However, high performance CMPs use a shared memory model which generates large numbers of short messages, creating high arbitration latency overhead for photonic switching networks. In this paper we explore techniques which intelligently use information from the memory hierarchy to predict communication in order to setup photonic circuits with reduced or eliminated arbitration latency. Firstly, we present a switch scheduling algorithm which arbitrates on a per memory transaction basis and holds open photonic circuits to exploit temporal locality. We show that this can reduce the average arbitration latency overhead by 60% and eliminate arbitration latency altogether for a signicant proportion of memory transactions. We then show how this technique can be applied to multiple-socket shared memory systems with low latency and energy consumption penalties. Finally, we present ideas and initial results to demonstrate that cache miss prediction could be used to set up photonic circuits for more complex memory transactions and main memory accesses

Qualité des pommes de terre : nouvelles méthodes d'évaluation calibrées sur l'analyse sensorielle

Quality of potatoes : new assessment methods calibrated by means of sensory analysis [frying index]. For the potato sector, raw material quality became an important criterium because it determines the type of use and the transformation ability of the tubers. It is now primordial to be able to identify the quality level of a share by reliable and objective methods. The qualitative criteria of potatoes are for the most estimated via sensory tests. During this survey, we measured several texture descriptors (desintegration, flouriness, granulation), the flesh colour, the after-cooking blackening susceptibility, the taste intensity and the after-frying coloration of the samples. In order to get rid of the human subjectivity, we studied the potentialities of near infrared spectrometry (NIRS) and of image analysis to predict or to measure these sensory behaviours. We observed high correlation between real values and values predicted by NIRS models, mainly for texture descriptors and flesh colour. Frying index prediction by NIRS is acceptable, but less precise than its measurement by image analysis

Nonlinear optical interactions in silicon waveguides

The strong nonlinear response of silicon photonic nanowire waveguides allows for the integration of nonlinear optical functions on a chip. However, the detrimental nonlinear optical absorption in silicon at telecom wavelengths limits the efficiency of many such experiments. In this review, several approaches are proposed and demonstrated to overcome this fundamental issue. By using the proposed methods, we demonstrate amongst others supercontinuum generation, frequency comb generation, a parametric optical amplifier, and a parametric optical oscillator