Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-150).

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Restricted until May 2003. Bibliography: leaves 142-172.

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / Almond, Prunus dulcis, is a tree nut crop that originated in central Asia and is now grown commercially worldwide. Within Australia there exists huge potential gain from optimisation of almond cultivars better suited to Australian conditions. This is the ultimate goal of the Australian Almond Breeding Program, which was established in 1997 at the University of Adelaide. As part of this breeding program a unique hybrid population was developed from a cross between the American self-incompatible cultivar 'Nonpareil' (NP) and European self-compatible cultivar 'Lauranne' (LA). The F₁ population derived from this cross is the focus of this study, the population consisted of 181 individuals, of which 93 were selected for use in the mapping study. Investigation of a number of DNA extraction techniques was performed in order to optimise DNA extraction quality and integrity from almond leaves for future applications in molecular work. To determine if the purported F₁ hybrids were true hybrids, derived from a cross between the cultivars NP and LA, both DNA fingerprinting with cluster analysis and S-allele identification was performed, and the majority of F₁ putative hybrids clustered between the two parents when analysed using the simple matching coefficient and UPGMA. The genetic similarity between individuals comprising the mapping population ranged from 70% to 93% while the parents were 72% similar in comparison to each other. This indicated high genetic variability available for studying heritabilities and for production of a genetic map. Analysing the S-allele complement of all the F₁ hybrids was also performed to offer a more robust method for hybrid determination, since individuals in a breeding population with aberrant S-allele inheritance can be considered non-related. The inheritance of the self-fertility gene is important in breeding programs, since the majority of almond cultivars are self-incompatible, tracking the inheritance of this allele in breeding programs is therefore highly desirable. A detailed morphological study was performed on the whole population over three growing seasons, 2001, 2002, and 2003. In 2001 tree characters such as disease prevalence, bare branches, close internodes, level of upright branches, leaf size and colour were measured. For all the seasons a number of other traits were also measured including: yield, bloom time, self-compatibility, percentage of double kernels, shell hardness, kernel weight, shape, taste, pubescence, and colour. The heritability, genetic variance, segregation and raw correlations between traits were calculated and used to establish a mode of inheritance for these traits. Rainfall and temperature maximum, minimum and monthly averages were collected and used to compare trends in the collected morphological data with these climatic data. A preliminary investigation was undertaken to determine if the cellular structure of the kernel testa epidermis was responsible for the pubescent versus smooth mouth feel of the F₁ hybrids. Light and scanning electron microscopy identified the presence of cellular protuberances arising from the epidermis as a potential cause of the pubescent mouthfeel in almonds. Bulked segregant analysis using inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers identified a potential marker linked to the pubescent trait which was converted to a sequence characterised amplified region (SCAR), which was also used to screen twelve almond cultivars for this trait. In addition to the use of BSA for the development of markers linked to traits of interest, the development of genetic linkage maps has the potential to greatly enhance current and future breeding programs by MAS. This study produced a genetic linkage map for this population, constructed using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), ISSR, and simple sequence repeats (SSR), with the mapping program Joinmap 3.0. Two parental maps were constructed, which coalesced into seven linkage groups for the female parent and eight linkage groups for the male parent, corresponding to the chromosome number of eight for almond. The marker density was 9.4 cM/marker for NP and 9.6 cM/marker for LA, covering 65% for the female and male parental maps in compalison to the highly saturated peach x almond map produced by the European Prunus Mapping Program (EPMP). Fourteen markers segregating in both parents were used to produce an integrated parental map for this cross, which coalesced into six linkage groups with a marker density of 11.6 cM/marker. The presence of anchor loci common to the EPMP map allowed homologolls linkage groups to be established between the two populations. This study has contributed to the understanding of key morphological traits important in almond breeding programs. The expression and influence of biotic factors on the expression of these traits was also investigated. Understanding factors responsible for kernel taste is also an important objective and this study has contributed to this knowledge. The development of a genetic linkage map will serve as a permanent and practical resource for almond breeders in Australia, and contribute important data to the EPMP. This has significant benefit for Prunus breeders worldwide, and further enhances knowledge on an economically important nut crop / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1141951 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Agriculture and Wine, 2004

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / Almond, Prunus dulcis, is a tree nut crop that originated in central Asia and is now grown commercially worldwide. Within Australia there exists huge potential gain from optimisation of almond cultivars better suited to Australian conditions. This is the ultimate goal of the Australian Almond Breeding Program, which was established in 1997 at the University of Adelaide. As part of this breeding program a unique hybrid population was developed from a cross between the American self-incompatible cultivar 'Nonpareil' (NP) and European self-compatible cultivar 'Lauranne' (LA). The F₁ population derived from this cross is the focus of this study, the population consisted of 181 individuals, of which 93 were selected for use in the mapping study. Investigation of a number of DNA extraction techniques was performed in order to optimise DNA extraction quality and integrity from almond leaves for future applications in molecular work. To determine if the purported F₁ hybrids were true hybrids, derived from a cross between the cultivars NP and LA, both DNA fingerprinting with cluster analysis and S-allele identification was performed, and the majority of F₁ putative hybrids clustered between the two parents when analysed using the simple matching coefficient and UPGMA. The genetic similarity between individuals comprising the mapping population ranged from 70% to 93% while the parents were 72% similar in comparison to each other. This indicated high genetic variability available for studying heritabilities and for production of a genetic map. Analysing the S-allele complement of all the F₁ hybrids was also performed to offer a more robust method for hybrid determination, since individuals in a breeding population with aberrant S-allele inheritance can be considered non-related. The inheritance of the self-fertility gene is important in breeding programs, since the majority of almond cultivars are self-incompatible, tracking the inheritance of this allele in breeding programs is therefore highly desirable. A detailed morphological study was performed on the whole population over three growing seasons, 2001, 2002, and 2003. In 2001 tree characters such as disease prevalence, bare branches, close internodes, level of upright branches, leaf size and colour were measured. For all the seasons a number of other traits were also measured including: yield, bloom time, self-compatibility, percentage of double kernels, shell hardness, kernel weight, shape, taste, pubescence, and colour. The heritability, genetic variance, segregation and raw correlations between traits were calculated and used to establish a mode of inheritance for these traits. Rainfall and temperature maximum, minimum and monthly averages were collected and used to compare trends in the collected morphological data with these climatic data. A preliminary investigation was undertaken to determine if the cellular structure of the kernel testa epidermis was responsible for the pubescent versus smooth mouth feel of the F₁ hybrids. Light and scanning electron microscopy identified the presence of cellular protuberances arising from the epidermis as a potential cause of the pubescent mouthfeel in almonds. Bulked segregant analysis using inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers identified a potential marker linked to the pubescent trait which was converted to a sequence characterised amplified region (SCAR), which was also used to screen twelve almond cultivars for this trait. In addition to the use of BSA for the development of markers linked to traits of interest, the development of genetic linkage maps has the potential to greatly enhance current and future breeding programs by MAS. This study produced a genetic linkage map for this population, constructed using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), ISSR, and simple sequence repeats (SSR), with the mapping program Joinmap 3.0. Two parental maps were constructed, which coalesced into seven linkage groups for the female parent and eight linkage groups for the male parent, corresponding to the chromosome number of eight for almond. The marker density was 9.4 cM/marker for NP and 9.6 cM/marker for LA, covering 65% for the female and male parental maps in compalison to the highly saturated peach x almond map produced by the European Prunus Mapping Program (EPMP). Fourteen markers segregating in both parents were used to produce an integrated parental map for this cross, which coalesced into six linkage groups with a marker density of 11.6 cM/marker. The presence of anchor loci common to the EPMP map allowed homologolls linkage groups to be established between the two populations. This study has contributed to the understanding of key morphological traits important in almond breeding programs. The expression and influence of biotic factors on the expression of these traits was also investigated. Understanding factors responsible for kernel taste is also an important objective and this study has contributed to this knowledge. The development of a genetic linkage map will serve as a permanent and practical resource for almond breeders in Australia, and contribute important data to the EPMP. This has significant benefit for Prunus breeders worldwide, and further enhances knowledge on an economically important nut crop / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1141951 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Agriculture and Wine, 2004

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Adelaide, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-185).

Bibliography: leaves 256-323.

Almond (Prunus dulcis) is the most important nut crop in terms of world production. Due to its health benefit and high nutritional value the consumption and world supply of almond is increasing. To remain competitive in the world market, the Australian almond breeding program was established to produce cultivars with better adaptation to Australian conditions. As part of this program an almond mapping population consisting of 93 F₁ progeny derived from a cross between the American cultivar ‘Nonpareil’ (NP) and the European self-compatible cultivar ‘Lauranne’ (LA) was produced to construct the genetic linkage maps. The first almond linkage map developed prior to the commencement of this project failed to produce the eight linkage groups similar to the basic chromosome number of almond (x = 8) and many large gaps were also observed on the linkage groups. Therefore, more markers were needed to saturate the maps. Microsatellite markers are considered one of the best choices for mapping studies. 195 microsatellite markers isolated from Prunus species were obtained from published papers or by personal communication. Polymorphism was revealed by three different methods, and in general, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) compared to the fluorescent labelled marker detection using an automated DNA sequencer or agarose gel electrophoresis, showed the most efficient and cost effective method of genotyping. A subset of 54 markers which produced reliable and easily interpretable polymorphic bands was selected to screen the whole mapping population. Microsatellites originally isolated from almond species showed the highest rate of amplification and polymorphism followed by peach microsatellites and the least informative markers were isolated from cherry. It seems that the level of transportability and usefulness of microsatellite markers is related to the genetic distance of the closely related species. Almond and peach belong to the same subgenus (Amygdalus) and other Prunus species are classified in Prunophora subgenus. The nut, or kernel, is the commercial part of the almond tree, thus to improve the quality of fruit an understanding of environmental influence, heritability and correlation of traits is required. Pomological and quality characters such as: shell hardness, kernel size, shape, taste, pubescence, colour, and percentage of doubles were measured during three consecutive years (2005-2007) on the total mapping population, but data analysis (ANOVA) was performed only on trees that survived for all three years. Most of the traits showed high broad-sense heritability and kernel shape showed the highest heritability of H² = 0.92 suggesting high genetic control of this trait. Occasionally larger kernels than either parent were found in the progeny indicating potential for improvement of this trait even with smaller kernel size parent that encompass many desirable characters. High correlation was also found between the in-shell and kernel weight (r = 0.74), kernel length / kernel width (r = 0.67), kernel weight to kernel length (r = 0.78) and kernel width (r = 0.80). This correlation estimation pointed out in this study indicates that the improvement of one character may result the progress in another trait. Neither of the parents in the mapping population had bitter or obvious slightly bitter taste but slightly bitter kernels were observed among the progeny. Amygdalin was assumed to be responsible for bitter taste in almond; therefore we measured the amount of amygdalin in sweet and slightly bitter kernel progeny by HPLC. However, the results showed that amygdalin exists in sweet kernels as well. Although the average amount of amygdalin in slightly bitter kernels (20.34 mg kg⁻¹ FW) was higher than sweet kernels (3.67 mg kg⁻¹ FW), some sweet kernels had higher amounts of amygdalin suggesting the impact of other components on slightly bitter kernel. The highest variability within the traits was observed in the percentage of double kernel, which showed the highest standard error. Strong environmental effects, particularly low temperature at pre-blossom time is speculated to produce much higher double kernels. Three genetic linkage maps, one for each parent and an integrated map were constructed by the addition of 54 new microsatellite markers to the previous dataset. All the data was scored and coded according to the coding system necessary by JoinMap3 which was used for map construction. 131 markers including microsatellite, ISSR, RAPD, SCAR and S-allele markers were placed on the integrated map covering 590.7 cM with the average density of 4.5 cM/marker. The minimum number of six microsatellite markers was placed on linkage group 8 and the linkage group 1 which is the longest linkage group has 14 microsatellite markers. Comparative mapping study with other Prunus maps, especially with the highly saturated reference map showed complete synteny and minor changes in the order of four markers on linkage groups compared with Prunus reference map. The conservation of molecular marker order observed in this study supports the idea of looking at Prunus genome as a single genetic system and practical application of this similarity would be in cross-transportability of microsatellite markers from well developed linkage maps to the less studied species in Prunus. Ten microsatellite loci placed on our map have not been reported before and could be used to improve the density of other Prunus maps, especially the reference map. This study contributed to the better understanding of the mode of inheritance and environmental effect on morphological traits and the effect of amygdalin on kernel taste. The most saturated microsatellite based almond linkage map developed in this study can serve as a framework for future almond breeding program in Australia and benefit Prunus improvement programs internationally. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1348850 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, 2008

Bibliography: leaves 169-185.

abstract: Type 2 diabetes affects approximately 7.3% of Americans, leading to debilitating and life-threatening comorbidities. Estrogen and testosterone levels have been linked to inflammatory and oxidative stress markers, as well as glucose and insulin concentrations. The present study was designed to determine the link between sex differences, glucose control, and inflammation and oxidative stress related to daily almond ingestion among subjects with type 2 diabetes. Subjects were randomized to an intervention group, which received 1.5 oz. almonds daily for 12 weeks, or to the matched control group, which maintained their current diet. No significant differences were found in changes in glucose control in response to ingestion of almonds. However, CRP was significantly reduced by an average of 36.2% in those that received almonds daily (p = 0.017). Although not significant, women randomized to the intervention group appeared to have improvements in insulin resistance compared to women with no dietary change. Results suggest that the addition of almonds to the diet may be an effective intervention for managing inflammation associated with type 2 diabetes. The addition of almonds to the diet is a low cost intervention that is easily implemented into daily lifestyle. Due to the small sample size, additional studies are needed to determine the impact and mechanisms of almond ingestion in subjects with type 2 diabetes. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Nutrition 2014

Flour has been identified as the source of Salmonella related recalls and outbreaks in past years. Flour is not usually heat treated and can cause issues when eaten raw, such as in the consumption of cookie dough and batters. Alternative flours like almond flour have been used in some bakery products. Alternative cooking techniques like air frying have increased as well due to their ease of use. The objective of this research was to study the effectiveness of air fryer technology on the inactivation of Salmonella in brownies formulated with all-purpose and almond flour. The aw and pH decreased significantly (p ≤ 0.05) over time within treatments, and there was no difference (p > 0.05) found across the two treatments. The brownie formulated with almond flour had a much higher fat content than that of the almond flour, but the all-purpose flour brownie had a much higher moisture content than that of the almond flour brownie. After 20 minutes of air frying at 176.7 °C, Salmonella counts were reduced in brownies formulated with all-purpose flour and almond flour by 5 log CFU/g and 6 log CFU/g, respectively. This study validated that air fryer technology is able to eliminate Salmonella in brownies formulated with all-purpose flour and almond flour when cooked for 20 minutes. This study assures that consumers can inactivate Salmonella in brownies formulated with all-purpose flour and almond flour when cooked for 20 minutes in an air fryer.