In this study, sterol and fatty acid compositions with the other quality criteria (free fatty acids, peroxide value, total chlorophyll and carotenoid content) of olive oil samples obtained from Halhalı, Gemlik and Sarı Hasebi varieties through two phase mechanical method (crushing, kneading and centrifuge) was determined. Oleic, palmitic, linoleic, stearic, palmitoleic, linolenic and arachidic acids were the determined as the main fatty acids in olive oil samples. It was determined that oleic acid contents of oil samples ranged between 66.25-76.14% and Sarı Hasebi had the highest oleic acid content. Sterol and fatty acid compositions of olive oil samples showed significantly statistical differences according to varieties. It was determined that the total sterol contents of oils ranged between 1025 and 1686 mg/kg and varieties with the highest and lowest total sterol content were Gemlik and Sarı Hasebi. Apparent β-sitosterol contents (β-sitosterol, Δ-5-avenasterol, Δ-5-24-stigmastadienol, klerosterol, sitostanol) were between 92.96 and 94.63%. Varieties with the highest and lowest apparent β-sitosterol contents were oils which belong to Halhalı and Sarı Hasebi varieties respectively. β -sitosterol (83.08-88.21%), Δ-5-avenasterol (4.82-6.97%) and campesterol (2.28-3.43%) were identified as the main sterol components. Erythrodiol + uvaol contents of olive oils varied between 2.28 and 3.43% and these values were within the limits established by Turkish Food Codex.

A study was conducted to analyze factors influencing adoption of wheat technology packages by smallholder farmers in Gurawa, Meta and Habro districts in eastern Ethiopia. The analysis was based on a household survey data collected from 136 randomly selected households. A Two-limit Tobit model was used to elucidate factors affecting adoption of technology packages measured based on an index derived from five components of wheat technologies which included row planting, pesticide application, use of improved varieties, and application of inorganic fertilizers, namely, Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) and Urea. Among the variables included in the model, variation in district, gender, age of the household head, education status of the household head, farm size, distance to market, distance to FTC (Farmers’ Training Centers), cooperative membership, dependency ratio, and annual income of the households were found to significantly affect the adoption of wheat technology packages. Policy makers, planners and development practitioners should give due attention to these determinants to support smallholder farmers in wheat production and enhance gains derived from it.

The development in science  technology and the researches made in the health field showed that nutrition increases the effectiveness of medical treatment as well as maintaining the human health and singularly effective in the treatment of certain diseases. In recent years, the importance of nutritional elements called ‘Functional foods’ has increased. Functional foods provide physiological benefits and can reduce the risk of chronic diseases beyond their nutritional benefits. One of these functional compounds is conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) isomers which have significant effects on human health and previously have been demonstrated in the researches carried out on people and animals. CLA’s attracted more attention after detection of its body fat accumulation reducing, antidiabetic, immune system enhancing, arteriosclerosis reducing, bone mineralization increasing effects.

Alkali grass grows in waterlogged, saline and alaline soils. The main problem in these soils is minerals at toxic level. The toxic ions are chloride, sodium and boron. A number of techniques have been investigated for removing toxic metals from the soil. Today, the cost-effective and environmentally technique is phytoremediation, using hyperaccumulator plants. Alkali grass (Puccinellia ciliata Bor) is suggested as a hyperaccumulator plant by the combination of more favourable characteristics with salt and waterlogging tolerance, high biomass value and convincing nutritive value for adverse environmental conditions. For this reason, we collected alkali grass and soil samples from five different locations in Aydın-Muğla highway, Turanlar and Sınırteke villages in Germencik-Aydın. In the soil analysis, we observed that K accumulation varies between root, shoot and panicle at least whereas Na and B shows more variation on whole plant portions among locations. Intense aerenchyma development on the root tips of Puccinellia plant was observed and it is determined as radial lysogenic aerenchyma formation. Average plant height and dry matter values were between 47.2-74.4 cm and 15.61-80.85 g/plant according to locations. The highest plant height value was obtained from the first location whereas the highest dry matter yield was detected in the fifth location. In conclusion, plants from fifth location can be regarded as fodder plants in these areas. Our results indicated that alkali grass can be effective for phytoextraction of sodium and boron from contaminated sites.

Organic agriculture approach started with coming up the adverse effect’s of chemical and genetic inputs on human health and natural environment in time, it has been also continued by raising the importance nowadays. Organic agriculture production amount of Turkey was 331.361 tons in 191.785 ha areas, although it was reached up to 1.627.106 tons (391% increased) in 379.042 ha (98% increased) areas. Black sea region has nearly 18.000 ha area (4.7%) of organic agriculture areas of Turkey. The region has organic agriculture potential with regard to regional land structure and qualification of produced products. In 2010, organic agriculture production was 31.960 tons in 88.322 ha areas, although it was 119.425 tons (274% increased) in 18.061 ha (80% decreased) areas in 2016. In recent years, Rize (57%), Tokat (14.6%), Ordu (7.5%), Gümüşhane (4.9%) and Samsun (3.8%) are leading provinces in the region in terms of organic production quantities. Tea (67.927 tons: 57.7%), hazelnut (11.785 tons: 9.9%), apple (11.253 tons: 9.4%), pear (5.207 tons: 4.4%), maize (4.705 tons: 3.9%) and alfalfa (4.301 tons: 3.6%) are major organic products of Black Sea region. At present study, current situation of organic plant production and potential in the Black Sea region were presented.

Discretization is a data pre-processing task transforming continuous variables into discrete ones in order to apply some data mining algorithms such as association rules extraction and classification trees. In this study we empirically compared the performances of equal width intervals (EWI), equal frequency intervals (EFI) and K-means clustering (KMC) methods to discretize 14 continuous variables in a chicken egg quality traits dataset. We revealed that these unsupervised discretization methods can decrease the training error rates and increase the test accuracies of the classification tree models. By comparing the training errors and test accuracies of the model applied with C5.0 classification tree algorithm we also found that EWI, EFI and KMC methods produced the more or less similar results. Among the rules used for estimating the number of intervals, the Rice rule gave the best result with EWI but not with EFI. It was also found that Freedman-Diaconis rule with EFI and Doane rule with EFI and EWI slightly performed better than the other rules.

In this study, the changes in % yield, dry matter, ash, lipid, protein content, water activity, pH, total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N), total viable aerobic count (TVC), yeast and mold count, lactic acid bacteria (LAB), colour parameters and sensorial properties were analysed in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) exposed to either salt only or two different salt-sugar mixture treatments. For this purpose, three groups were formed. For the first, second and third group, fish samples were treated with only salt (S), salt and sugar blend (WS) and salt and brown sugar blend (BS), respectively. Then, the samples were vacuum packaged and stored at +4°C for 3 months. Overall, salt treatments, liquid smoking and cooking as well as storage generally caused remarkable changes in the parameters of interest. However, except for the sensory analysis, not a remarkable change was seen when the three groups were compared among themselves. The results of experienced panelists suggested that group BS samples had superior appearance, taste, odor and texture and therefore expected to be more preferred by the potential consumers.

Kayısı, güzel renk, tat ve aroması, yüksek A vitamini ve diyet lifi içeriğiyle yaz mevsiminde sevilerek tüketilen meyvelerin başında gelir. İlkbahar geç donlarının neden olduğu kayıplar, farklı iklim koşullarına zayıf adaptasyon, sofralık kayısılarda raf ömrünün kısa olması, şarka ve monilya hastalığının yol açtığı zararlar bugün kayısı yetiştiriciliğinde karşılaşılan en önemli sorunlardır. Son yıllarda tüketici tercihlerinde yaşanan hızlı değişimlere birlikte renk, tat, aroma ve irilik bakımından farklı özelliklere sahip yeni kayısı çeşitlerine talep artmıştır. Kayısı ıslah çalışmalarının önemli bölümü kuzey yarımkürede yoğunlaşmış olup 74 çeşit ile ABD ve 70 çeşit ile Fransa en fazla kayısı ıslahı yapılan ülkeler olarak dikkat çekmektedir. Bu süreçte Türkiye’de ise sadece on bir kayısı çeşidi tescil ettirilmiştir. Bu çeşitlerden yedisi tanesi (Alata Yıldızı, Çağataybey, Çağrıbey, Dr. Kaşka, Şahinbey, Dilbay ve Eylül) melezleme ıslah yöntemiyle, diğerleri ise seleksiyon yoluyla geliştirilmiştir. Alkaya kayısı çeşidi hem sofralık hem de kurutmalık değerlendirmeye uygundur. Eylül ve Mihrialibey geç, diğer çeşitler ise erkenci ve orta mevsim olgunlaşma özelliğine sahiptir. Bu makalede, ülkemizde bugüne kadar yapılan kayısı ıslah çalışmaları gözden geçirilerek bu çalışmalardan elde edilen sonuçlar kısaca özetlenmiş, tescil edilerek üretime sunulan yeni kayısı çeşitlerinin önemli özelliklerine yer verilmiştir.

In this study, material that we call mulch textile was investigated as compared with conventional polyethylene mulch nylon and mechanical and chemical control that are widely used in farmer’s conditions to weed control in newly established citrus orchards. Two different thickness of polyethylene mulch, three different thickness of mulch textiles, mowing and herbicide (glyphosate) applications were made in newly established mandarin orchard in a three-year-period (2004-2005-2006). Effects of the applications on density and coverage of weeds and height, stem thickness and leaf area of cultural plants were investigated. According to general evaluation of results of the study, mowing 23.4%, chemical control 88.4%, polyethylene mulch 99.6%, mulch textiles 100% controlled weeds than weedy control. At the most increase of height, stem thickness and leaf area of mandarin was obtained from herbicide and mulch treatments. It was determined that soil temperature and moisture are preserved by mulch applications.

Dünyada artan nüfusun sağlıklı ve dengeli beslenmesi amacıyla tarımsal üretimde konvansiyonel üretim biçimi yaygın olarak yapılmaktadır. Ancak bitkisel ve hayvansal üretimde verimi artırmak ve hastalıklarla mücadele etmek amacıyla kullanılan kimyasal maddeler su ve toprağa geçerek insan ve hayvan sağlığını etkilemektedir. Günümüzde Avrupa Birliği (AB) ülkeleri, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri (ABD), Japonya, Kanada ve Avustralya gibi gelişmiş ülkeler başta olmak üzere dünyadaki tüketiciler çevreye zarar vermeyen, insan ve hayvanlar üzerinde olumsuz etki yapmayan tarım ürünleri tüketim yönünde taleplerde bulunmaktadırlar. Koyun ve keçi yetiştiriciliği hem ülkemizde hem de dünyada organik hayvansal et ve süt üretiminde tüketicilerin taleplerini karşılamada önemli rol almaktadır. Dünyada 2012 yılında organik sertifikalı sığır, koyun ve domuz sayısı sırasıyla; 4,6, 5,6 ve 1,0 milyon baştır. Avrupa Birliği (AB)’inde bulunan 28 ülkenin 2015 yılında organik sertifikalı sığır, domuz, koyun, keçi ve tavuk sayısı sırasıyla; 3,7, 0,978, 4,5, 0,718 ve 31,6 milyon baştır. Türkiye’de organik hayvancılıkta en önemli oransal artış keçi yetiştiriciliğinde gerçekleşmiş (%652,1), bunu sırasıyla kanatlı (%187,7) ve koyun (%22,3) yetiştiriciliği izlemiştir. Türkiye’de 2015 yılında üretilen organik süt üretiminin %2,6 koyundan ve %6,3’ü keçilerden, organik kırmızı et üretimini ise %38,2 koyundan ve %1,6 keçiden sağlanmaktadır.