The foraging activities of insect visitors on cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) were studied. The insect visitors in decreasing order of abundance were: Formica sp.>Apis mellifera>Apis cerana>syrphids≥Apis dorstata. The activity of insects was peaked at 08.00-09.00 am. The foraging behaviour of A. mellifera was also studied. The bees spent significantly more time per flower during morning hours (sec/flower) and foraged significantly fewer flowers (7.9 flowers/min) compared to evening hours. There were significantly more nectar foragers (6.03/m²/10 min) than pollen foragers (5.16/m²/10 min). Most pollen foragers were observed during morning hours (6.59/m²/10 min) whereas nectar foragers were most active during noon hours (6.63/m²/10 min). Highest fruit set was observed in hand pollination (70.68%). Percentage of misshapen fruits was maximum in without honey bee pollination (24.35%). Without honey bee pollination resulted in significantly lowest percentage of healthy fruits (75.25%). Hand pollination ranked highest among the three forms of pollination in respective of fruits (985.13 g), number of seeds per fruit (425.22), fruit diameter (27.1 cm), fruit length (26.7 cm) and weight of 1000-seeds (28.64 g).

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Seeds of rice were treated with Garlic (Allium sativum) clove extract @ 1:0, 1:1, 1:2 dilutions in water, allamanda (Allamanda cathartica) leaf extract @ 1:1, 1:2, 1:3 dilutions in water and Provax-200 @ 0.3% for controlling seed borne fungi, where the seed samples of three rice varieties viz. Katharee, Gutee Aus and Kalijira were collected from farmer’s storages of Bangladesh. The seed germination under control ranged from 64 to 77%, where treatments resulted up to 100% germination. The identified seed borne fungi of rice were Bipolaris oryzae, Curvularia oryzae, Fusarium oxysporum, F. moniliforme, Nigrospora oryzae, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger and Penicillium sp., where prevalence of Bipolaris oryzae (7.5%) and Fusarium moniliforme (8.3%) were the maximum. All the treatments significantly reduced the seed borne fungi up to 100% over the control, where Provax was found best and was statically similar to garlic (1:1) extract against seed borne pathogen of rice.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/agric.v10i1.11064The Agriculturists 2012; 10(1): 46-50

Carambola is an excellent source of vitamin C (vit‐C) and possesses many nutritious properties. This research was directed to moisture sorption isotherm, air drying kinetics, and vit‐C degradation throughout blanching, storage, and drying of carambola. Fresh carambola contained 91.44% moisture and 24.2 mg/100 g vit‐C. The monolayer moisture content was 7.3 g/100 g solid according to Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller (BET) equation. The drying process (cabinet dryer) at different temperatures and sample thickness exposed that more the temperature, higher the drying rate at a constant thickness. Furthermore, drying rate was declined at a constant temperature with the rise of sample thickness. The samples pretreated with citric acid showed the lowest drying time and vit‐C degradation in blanching. The influence of drying temperature and duration on the retention of vit‐C was also analyzed. The activation energy (Ea) of the vit‐C loss was 9.24 kcal/g‐mole. Higher the exposure at a constant temperature, more the reduction of vit‐C content as per first‐order reaction kinetics. During room temperature storage of whole carambola in 3 and 12 days showed 13.7% and 41.2% loss of vit‐C, respectively. Vit‐C degradation was lower for blanched than non‐blanched samples in refrigeration storage, while this change was relatively lower for both in frozen storage. Scanning electronic microscopic (SEM) studies were conducted to evaluate the effects of temperature and pretreatment on the surface morphology of dried carambola. Practical applications Carambola grows abundantly in Bangladesh. Nevertheless its availability and nutritive significance, it is not so utilized and popular in the fruit market. This yields postharvest difficulties for chemical and microbial spoilage due to its perishability. Therefore, drying of this fruit is an utmost operative and cost‐effective process. Thus, it will be accessible in off‐season and can be used for the development of new products with these dried fruits. The present investigation explores the physical and chemical properties of carambola to reveal its prospective in fruit processing. Presented information and results of this research can assist the food technologist in implementing the drying method and storage condition of carambola.

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