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Olive fruit dehydration is always done locally in non-industrial ovens. This technology poses concern about the quality and safety of the end product. Most of the problems involved in this empirical technology may be solved by a proper control of process parameters. Olive fruits of fourteen Italian cultivars underwent hot air dehydration in mild conditions in a tangential airflow cabinet dryer. At the start, at regular intervals and at the end of the process, sampling was performed to calculate dehydration curves and quality loss. Pre-treatments such as blanching in hot brine, piercing of the skin and salting after blanching were applied. The drying kinetic is strongly affected by pre-treatments and olive characteristics: fruit size, flesh to pit ratio, dry matter. Results showed that mild drying temperature led to slow drying kinetics, even if pre-treatments reduced drying timeto a certain extent. Blanched olives showed, in general, the highest polyphenols content. The fastest drying was measured in the pierced olives, but the best taste was achieved for the salted product.
Accurate prediction of insect development and emergence is essential for effective pest management, but can be quite challenging. Pesticide application must be timed precisely to maximize effectiveness and minimize the number required. Temperature-dependent development of the cotton whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, B biotype was examined on two host plants (cotton and eggplant) at three temperatures (20 °C, 25 °C, and 35 °C). Developmental rate was faster on eggplant than cotton, however it did not alter for egg and pupal stages on both hosts, but for nymphal stage it did. The statistically estimated lower developmental threshold (T0) for the total development (egg — adult) of B. tabaci was 11.94 °C and 12.33 °C on cotton and eggplant, respectively. Based on lower threshold estimation, the average heat units (dd’s) required for total development on cotton and eggplant were 299.1 and 313.3, respectively. Field data obtained from both leaf samples and yellow sticky traps for each host plant during growing seasons 2012 and 2013 were linked to lab estimation of heat units. Daily heat units (i.e., 299.1 and 313.3 dd’s) were accumulatively counted to test their accuracy in matching the field peaks of the target pest as a predictive tool. On both host plants, our estimation for thermal units (degree-days) from lab estimation is adjusted that of field populations with deviation ranged from zero to four days either before or after the apex. However, there were some false estimations which did not intersect with the peaks of abundance. This may be because the overlapping generations sometimes creates false peaks. The accumulative counts of thermal units were more correlated to yellow sticky trap catches than leaf sample data. Accordingly, degree-days could be recommended to use as a predictive tool for Bemisia flight activity in the field.
the treated plants in the field during their foraging time ( Gomes et al., 2020 ). In the recent year, new generations of pesticides have been adopted in controlling piercing-sucking insects in the agricultural field. Sulfoxaflor is one of the most
their toxicity were revealed against piercing insects in low ranges of temperature ( Boina et al., 2009 ; Mansoor et al., 2015 ; Jiang et al., 2019 ; Etheridge et al., 2019 ). In this respect, our objectives were directed to evaluate how long β
