The effects of fermentation on selected nutrients in the seed of the African locust-bean were investigated. The protein content of the seeds declined from 50.1% of dry weight in the unfermented sample to 32.4% of dry weight in the fully fermented sample. Methionine, cystine, and tryptophan were the limiting amino acids in the African locust-bean seed protein: the pattern of other essential amino acids was comparable to that of whole egg. Fermentation was accompanied by a decrease in seven essential amino acids. The riboflavin content of the seeds rose from 144.0 ug per 100 gm dry weight in the unfermented sample to 835.3 ug per 100 gm dry weight in the fully fermented sample. Thiamin content also increased with fermentation, from 31.3 up per 100 gm dry weight in the unfermented sample to 99.0 ug in the partially fermented sample; the thiamin content decreased with extended fermentation. Thus, fermentation enhanced both the riboflavin and thiamin content of the African locust-bean seed. Although there was some deterioration in protein quantity and quality, the fermented seed contains sufficient amounts of essential amino acids to supplement those provided by the staple cereal grains, if eaten in adequate amounts. / Graduation date: 1978

No description available.

Excerpted from the Foreword: The first International Conference on Jojoba and Its Uses was held at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, June 1 -3, 1972. This meeting, arranged by the University of Arizona, Division of Continuing Education and Office of Arid Lands Studies and sponsored by the Indian Division, Office of Economic Opportunity, included two days devoted to conference papers and discussion and a one -day field trip to Superior, Arizona to see natural stands of jojoba. The purpose of the conference was to bring together scientists and technologists interested in jojoba and its potentialities for production of useful products. The conference was aimed toward a full discussion of available information on previous investigations on the plant itself, on chemistry of the seed, utilization of the wax contained in the seed, problems involved in the collection of seeds and production under cultivation.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Hamburg, 1982. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-89).

Cultivated meadowfoam (Limnanthes alba Benth.) is an annual oil seed crop native to southern Oregon. California and British Columbia. The genus Limnanthes is composed of nine species and divided into two sections, Inflexae and Reflexae. The seed oil of meadowfoam is a rich source of erucic acid and several novel very long-chain fatty acids (VLCs). The former has been linked to increased risk of heart disease. The safe limit of erucic acid for human consumption is up to 5% of total fatty acids. Because the erucic acid concentrations of wildtype lines typically range from 9 to 23% and low erucic acid variants have not been discovered, chemical mutagenesis was used to develop a mutant line (LE76) with greatly reduced erucic acid (3%). The phenotypic distributions of F��� progeny from crosses between wildtype and mutant lines were continuous and differed across genetic backgrounds. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting erucic and dienoic acid were mapped using F���:��� progeny from a cross between LE76 and Wheeler (a wildtype line) and a simple sequence repeat (SSR) map spanning the meadowfoam genome. The domestication of meadowfoam was based on L. alba, belonging to section Inflexac. The secondary and tertiary gene pools have not been important to the domestication process and have not supplied diversity for meadowfoam breeding. With the objectives of introgressing genes from wild relatives and also producing cytoplasmic male sterile lines by inserting the nuclear genome of L. alba into wild cytoplasm, inter-sectional crosses involving L. alba and three subspecies of L. douglasii and intra-sectional crosses involving L. alba and two subspecies of L. floccosa were carried out. The isolation mechanisms involved in keeping species apart from each other were found to be different within and between sections. The study of partially fertile intra-sectional hybrids showed that the reduced pollen viability (30-33%) was not due to structural differences between the chromosomes of the two species, as normal meiotic behavior was observed in PMCs. The inter-sectional crosses were found to be incompatible and various abnormalities during pollen tube growth were observed. / Graduation date: 2002

Meadowfoam (Limnanthes alba Bentham; Order: Brassicales; Family: Limnanthaceae) is a self-compatible, predominantly allogamous, insect pollinated species. Meadowfoam oil is a source of novel unsaturated very-long-chain (VLC) seed oils (C������ and C������) with low concentrations of saturated fatty acids (typically less than 2%) and outstanding oxidative stability. Here we report the development of 389 SSR markers for meadowfoam. All the 389 SSRs were screened on 14 meadowfoam germplasm accessions to assess their utility and efficiency. Ninety-six percent of the SSR markers (373 out of 389) were polymorphic among the 14-germplasm accessions (from nine taxa) with a mean heterozygosity of 0.63. We also report that the physical size of the meadowfoam genome was estimated to be 5.52 pg using flow cytometry; thus, the meadowfoam genome is ca. 16 times larger than the Arabidopsis genome. Karyotype analyses revealed that the meadowfoam genome is made up of two metacentric and three submetacentric chromosomes. Meadowfoam has two pairs of chromosomes with subterminal nucleolar organizing regions (NOR's). A genetic map comprised of 84 SSR loci dispersed among five linkage groups with 11 to 22 SSR loci per linkage (6 SSR loci segregated independently) was constructed. The map was 988.7 cM long with a mean density of 11.8 cM and minimal clustering of loci. A total of 20 quantitative trait loci (QTL) were identified for five mating system characters in meadowfoam, using the SSR linkage map of meadowfoam. Individual QTL for mating system traits peta1 area (pa), seeds per plant (spp) and seeds per flower (spf)I account for up to 20% of the backcross phenotypic variance, with most traits showing QTL effects of 5-15%. The QTL for protandry and chiasma frequency were adjacent to the QTL for spp and spf. This study has provided evidence that the correlation between the chiasma frequency and the type of mating system is not a direct developmental relationship between these factors, but is due to a selective advantage of the combination of the characters found. The speculation that the genetic factors underlying chiasma frequency and autonomous seed set have co-evolved during evolution negates the self-fertilization as an "evolutionary dead end". / Graduation date: 2002

Thesis (M.S.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Food Science." Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-170).

Several reports appear in the literature linking low temperature damage in plants with boron (B) deficiency and alleviation of low temperature injury with B application has been reported in some crops and trees. These results imply that low temperature might increase plant B requirements, beside the reduction of B uptake by plant roots, or that low B tissues might be more sensitive to cold temperature damage than B adequate tissues. In controlled experiments, it has been shown that low root zone temperature (RZT) induces B deficiency in cassava, a tropical root crop. Apart from this, there are few definitive detailed investigations on low temperature effects on B nutrition of plants, including temperate species which are more tolerant of low temperature. Winter oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.), a crop sensitive to low B supply, is a major crop in the middle and lower Yangtse river basin, China, where low B soils are widespread. Appearance of B deficiency in oilseed rape often coincides with cold weather during its winter and spring growth. However, the incidence and severity of B deficiency of oilseed rape plants and the efficacy of B fertilization varies from year to year and location to location in ways that are not explained simply by differences in cultivar, agronomy or soil B levels. Low temperature is probably one of the important environmental factors influencing growth and yield of oilseed rape in relation to B nutrition. Therefore,the objective of the studies in this thesis was to investigate mechanisms of low temperature effects on B nutrition of plants with emphasis on oilseed rape. Field and glasshouse experiments were carried out and the physiological basis of plant response to B at different air and root temperatures is discussed. A field experiment with oilseed rape cv. Zheyouyou 2 was carried out on a red soil (Hapludult, US Soil Taxonomy) with low B availability in Zhejiang province, China. Canopy covers made from transparent plastic sheets, which increased night temperatures by up to 1.5 oC around shoots for 15 days in early February, strongly increased shoot dry weight at all levels of B supply. Furthermore, covering plants increased shoot dry weight of B deficient plants without increasing their leaf B concentration. This suggests that internal B requirements were decreased by canopy covering, possibly due to higher temperatures within the canopy. Experiments conducted to investigate the effect of RZT (10 and 20ƒn oC) on oilseed rape cv. Hyola 42 response to B in solution culture, in summer and winter, showed that regardless of canopy conditions, low RZT (10 oC) promoted the distribution of shoot B towards the actively growing leaves, especially when B supply was low. At low B supply, B deficiency symptoms appeared later at 10 oC than 20 oC RZT and B concentrations in the youngest fully opened leaves (YOL) were higher in plants grown at RZT of 10 oC than that at 20 oC. Growth of plant dry weight (DW) was not affected by RZT in the summer but was greatly reduced at 10 oC than 20 oC in winter. In B adequate plants, shoot to root ratio (S/R ratio) was not affected by RZT regardless of canopy conditions. By contrast, S/R ratio was smaller in low B plants at 10 oC than 20 oC. In addition, low RZT delayed occurrence of plant B deficiency symptoms regardless of plants¡¦ pre-treatment RZT (either 10 or 20 oC). These results appeared to contradict the response to low RZT found in previous studies with cassava. In a subsequent experiment, low RZT of 5 oC not only greatly reduced plant DW production of oilseed rape, but also accentuated plant B deficiency. Partitioning of B into the young growing shoots was also depressed and a significant decrease of B concentration in the youngest shoot parts was caused by 5 oC RZT in comparison with that at the control RZT (10 oC). Similar results were also observed in sunflower (Helianthus annuus L. cv. Hysun 25). But B deficiency symptoms in sunflower were induced by RZT as high as 12 oC, when plants were supplied with 0.25 £gM B, whilst these plants were free from B deficiency at warmer RZT (17 - 27 oC). Higher external B concentrations were required at such RZT (Chilling temperature) for plant growth free from B deficiency. Therefore, there is a RZT threshold below which an increased response to B is expected in plants of oilseed rape and sunflower. And in the range of chilling RZT, the external B requirement for shoot growth increased with lower RZT. The threshold RZT was considerably higher in the chilling-sensitive plant species, sunflower, than in oilseed rape, a chilling-resistant plant species. At chilling RZT, leaf functioning was impaired by low B supply as measured by potassium (K) leakage from the youngest mature leaf blade (YML) of sunflower, whereas it was much less directly affected by RZT, and there was no effect of RZT on B- adequate plants. By contrast to leaves, root function was impaired more by chilling RZT than low B. Despite their different threshold RZT, in both oilseed rape and sunflower, the rates of B uptake (BUR) and B translocation from root to shoot (BTR) were dramatically depressed by chilling RZT especially at low B supply (0.2 £gM B): being only 30% of those at the control (5 oC vs 10 oC RZT) in oilseed rape and 33% (10 oC vs 20 oC RZT) in sunflower, respectively. By contrast, there was little or no difference over a range of warmer RZT (10 - 20 oC for oilseed rape, and 20 ¡V 27 oC for sunflower). It is predicted that higher rates of B application will be required for plant growth when soil temperature is below a critical threshold, which is between 5 and 10 oC for oilseed rape, and about 17 oC for sunflower, respectively. Below the threshold RZT plant B deficiency was induced and accentuated due to impairment of B translocation into growing shoot parts besides the decrease of B uptake rate and B transport rate and greater shoot to root ratio. In comparison with RZT, little is known about causal mechanisms linking cold air temperature and B nutrition. Experiments in this thesis showed not only B transport to the shoot was strongly reduced by low night air temperature during a 6 day period (11.719.4 vs 15.5 ¡V 23.5 oC), but also that an overnight chilling (at 0 oC) could cause more severe injury to low B than adequate B leaves of oilseed rape plants, expressed by higher solute leakage, in comparison with control (at 10 oC). Moreover, after chilling treatment, solute leakage from low B leaves was increased by exposure to light, which suggests that low temperature injury to leaves in low B plants after a freezing night in the field is at least partly a consequence of light induced damage of leaves. In summary, at chilling temperature, B uptake, transport and partitioning into growing shoots are strongly impaired, and B use efficiency in the growing tissues might be reduced as well. Low temperature contributes to plant B deficiency also by increasing S/R ratio, so that shoot B demand is not satisfied by available B. Furthermore, low air temperature might increase the internal B requirement for shoot growth. To further understand mechanisms of low temperature, especially the air temperature, effects on plant responses to B, more research is needed, such as the relationship between low temperature and B incorporation into cell walls which may play an important role in leaf tolerance to chilling temperature.

No description available.

Graduation date: 1999