acidity

Potato with the scientific name (Solanum tuberosum. L.) is a plant that is cultivated as an important crop in all countries and is known as a source of carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins in the human diet. This is a native product of South America and its origin is from Peru. In the food industry, this product is transformed into various products such as baked potatoes, fried potatoes, potato chips, potato starch, dry fried potatoes, etc.Due to the increase in expectations for food products with high quality and safety standards, accurate, fast and targeted determination of the characteristics of food products is necessary. In the apple-potato product, quality assessment after the harvest stage is necessary to provide a reliable and uniform product to the market, because potatoes, like many other products, have uneven quality and processing during the harvest stage. - Be At the same time, the safety and desirability of food play an important role in the food industry and are directly related to people's health. In addition, a huge part of potatoes used in the processing industry is stored, so considering the importance of this food item and the demand of the people throughout the year, it is possible to meet the needs of the applicants only through long-term storage with optimal conditions was responsible. Potatoes for the processing industry must have some requirements such as low sugar content, high dry matter and specific weight, high antioxidants, light skin colour and no sprouting.The complexity of the reflectance spectrum of food makes it difficult to analyze them with conventional analytical techniques such as gas chromatography. However, sensory analysis by experts is a costly process and requires trained people who can only work for a relatively short period. A near-infrared spectrometer can detect the spectrum of reflected light by estimating its concentration or determining some of its inherent properties.The quality assessment of agricultural products includes two main methods, quality grading systems based on the external characteristics of agricultural products and quality grading systems based on internal quality assessment, which has gained outstanding points in recent years. In the meantime, several methods have been invented so far for the qualitative grading of agricultural products based on the assessment of their internal properties in a non-destructive way, and only some of them havebeen able to meet the above conditions and have been justified in terms of technical and industrial aspects.Meanwhile, spectrometry can be highly efficient in determining the quality of cultivars. Spectroscopy is a type of system that has a different structure and approach from other methods (image processing, neural network, etc.) and can perform classification and determination of digit quality.With increasing expectations for food products with high quality and safety standards, the need for accurate, fast and targeted determination of the characteristics of food products is now necessary. Because manual methods do not have automatic control, they are very tiring, difficult and expensive, and they are easily affected by environmental factors. Today, spectroscopic systems are non-destructive and cost-effective and are ideally used for routine inspections and quality assurance in the food industry and related products. This technology allows inspection works to be carried out using wavelength data analysis techniques and is a non-destructive method for measuring quality parameters. In this research, using spectrometry and chemometrics methods, changes in acidity and SSC of potato were investigated over time.

In each treatment period (in total 5 periods were considered and the intervals of periods were determined as one week), unripe walnut samples in addition to ripe samples (in the last period) were taken from one of the orchards around Ardabil (located in Shahrivar village) was prepared, tested and data collected.A spectroradiometer model PS-100 (Apogee Instruments, INC., Logan, UT, USA) was used to acquire the spectrum of the samples. This spectroradiometer is very small, light, portable, has a single-wavelength sputtering type with a resolution of 1 nm and a linear silicon CCD array detector with 2048 pixels that covers the spectral range of 250-1150 nm (Vis/NIR) well. Also, there is the ability to connect the optical fibre to the PS-100 spectroradiometer and transfer the data to the computer to display and store the acquired spectra in the Spectra Wiz software through the USB port. To create optimal light in contrast mode measurements, an OPTC (Halogen Light Source) model halogen-tungsten light source, which can be connected to an optical fibre, was used. This light source has three output powers of 10, 20, and 30 watts, which were used in this research. Also, a two-branch optical fibre probe model (Apogee Instruments, INC., Logan, Utah, USA), which includes 7 parallel optical fibres with a diameter of 400 micrometres, was used in counter-mode measurements. After providing the necessary equipment, the optimal spectroscopic arrangement was designed and implemented to facilitate the experiments and minimize the effect of environmental factors during the spectroscopic process.To measure SSC, liquid refractometer model BPTR100 (Middle East System Control Company, brand name Prisma Tech, made in Iran) available at Mohaghegh Ardabili University is used. For this, first, some water is taken from the samples and after pouring it into the microtube, we allow it to reach the ambient temperature, and then it is placed on the refractometer and the amount of sugar is read in terms of Brix.For this purpose, a laboratory pH meter, which is also called a pH meter, was used. The pH meter is actually a potentiometer consisting of an ion-selective glass electrode that selectively responds to the activity of hydrogen ions in the solution and measures the potential difference between the external solution (sample) and the internal solution (reference electrode solution). The pH-sensitive part is made of a special thin glass membrane that is at the bottom of the electrode.

In this research, in order to estimate the amount of acidity and SSC of potato-potato and the amount of wavelength absorption in 5 different periods of storage (two-week periods), reflectance spectroscopy was performed in the wavelength range of 400 to 1100 nm. After removing the noises by PCA analysis, to improve the spectrum, different pre-processings were applied and their effects were investigated. The appropriate model was determined using the partial least squares (PLS) method. Important wavelengths were selected based on the regression coefficient of the best model. Based on PLS analysis, the best results were obtained with Savitzky-Golay smoothing preprocessing. As a result, it seems that the non-destructive method of ultraspectral imaging was able to detect the amount of SSC in potatoes, but no acceptable result was obtained in the case of acidity.

One of the most commonly used methods for estimating environmental conditions using plants is the use of Elenberg Indicator values. However, due to objections to the Elenberger system (including caution in its use outside Central Europe), in this study, inaddition to EIVs, three calibration methods (weighted averaging, species response curves by using HOF models, adjusting the original EIVs with respect to a measured gradient using the HOF models) were used to calculate indicator values (IVs) of species in a Hyrcanian forest for two environmental factors (soil reaction or acidity (R) and nitrogen (N)). Also, two bioindication methods WA1 (cover-weighted average) and WA2 (cover-weighted average based on reciprocal squared tolerance values) were used to predict mean R and N values using EIVs, IVs and cover of species for each releve. Then, the regression of the mean values of environmental factors against the measured environmental values in each releve was performed. In general the performance of bioindication methods for soil acidity and nitrogen varied from 1.35- 32.5% and 3.6- 36.7% of the explained variance, respectively. In addition, calibration methods (especially the weighted average method) resulted in better results compared to Elenberg values.

Roselle )Hibiscus sabdariffa  L.) is a new medicinal plants can be used as a suitable plant in cropping pattern. Recently, due to different uses has been considered by farmers. In order to evaluate the effects of sowing date and intra-row on leaf area index, dry matter accumulation and physiological characteristics of roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa L (.the field experiment was conducted split plot in a randomized complete block design with three replications in agricultural research field of Jiroft university during 2013 and 2014 growing season. Main plots were sowing date at five levels of 11th and 30th March, 14th April, 5th and 22th May and intra-rows were spaced of 100, 75 and 50 cm as sub plot. Based on two years data combined analysis, the results indicated that delayed sowing date reduced leaf area index, dry matter accumulation, sepal yield, seed yield and biomass yield. The highest sepal yield and seed yield was obtained at 11th March, with 990 and 1338 kg/ha, respectively. The lowest sepal yield and seed yield was obtained at 22th May, with 594 and 766 kg/ha respectively. Sepals yield increased at 50 cm intra-row space to 75 and 100 cm intra-row space 24% and 61% respectively, also seed yield increased 9.5% and 20% respectively. Sowing date had significant effect on sepal antioxidant, acidity, vitamin C, seed protein and seed oil. The percentage highest of antioxidant activity sepals (90.17%) belonged to the 5th May. Intra-rows space had not a significant effect on physiological characteristics. Roselle sowing date date in the first half of March to mid of May with intra-row space of 50 cm, seems to be appropriate by the good climatic conditions of Jiroft region.

Salicylic acid is one of growth regulator that has important role in regulation physiologic process in plants. Current investigation for studying effect of salicylic acid spraying on qualitative and quantitative characteristics in Rishbaba grape at grape orchard in 2013- 2014, performing in randomized complete block design with 4 repelication. The treatment in experiment was 150 mg/lit concentration of salicylic acid in 4 growth stages includes: vegetative growth, 50% of flowering, complete sour grapes, and three weeks before harvest. The results shows that applying salicylic acid increased cluster number in tree, cluster length, berries number in cluster, length and width of berries, average weight in 100 berries, juice volume, total sugar in fruit, titratable acidity and single seed weight in Rishbaba cultivar than control. Percentage of total soluble solids did not increase than control. In general, results of this research show that 150 mg/lit concentration of salicylic acid spraying has positive effect on improved growth stages and grape production.

Cyanobacterium Nostoc sp. can be considered as an interesting microorganism for the ability of excretion buffering compounds. With respect to possible applied potential of this strain, this ability has been studied under limited irradiance. Soil samples were collected from paddy-fields during one year. At the first step, different acidities (pHs 5,7,9) were studied under limited carbon dioxide condition. Results showed that in all treatments, organism tends to enter logarithmic phase of growth until third day, but acidic condition cause sharp decline on growth after this. Highest specific growth rate belong to alkaline condition (pH 9). For the next step, two alkaline condition near to pH 9 (pHs 8.5 and 9.5), were selected to compare. Results showed that specific growth rate was significantly less than pH 9, and even continuous aeration couldn’t be able to enlarge specific growth rate. Pigment composition can be rearranged at different acidities and phycobilisome systems cause viability and growth under acidity fluctuations and limited irradiance in addition of low carbon dioxide concentration. Ammonium liberation showed the highest rate at pH 5 and day two too.