Rice (Oryza sativa L.) has been cultivated as an important cereal crop for more than 9,000 years and more than half of the world’s population depend on rice as it is their primary source of energy. Almost 30% of the current world cereal production is represented by the rice alone. It is estimated that the world’s population will reach 9.1 billion by 2050 i.e. 34 percent higher than today and for ensuring an ample amount of food and nutrition to such large population, global consumption of cereals will need to increase from 2.6 to 2.9 billion tonnes by 2027. On the other hand, the impacts of climate change in agriculture are expected to be negative, threatening the global food security. Besides, agriculture and global food security will be severely affected due to the COVID-19 pandemics as its after-effects are yet to be ascertained. The world needs an introduction of a new “Green revolution” in agriculture to increase crop production for food security and biofuel, because conventional breeding method have not brought much of gains not keeping its pace with the world population growth. Hence, the current study was done to review the various ongoing approaches and possible ways of designing a rice with enhanced productivity and photosynthetic capacity. One of the ways to increase yields, photosynthetic capacity accompanied by an increased Water Use Efficiency (WUE) and Nutrient Use Efficiency could be to introduce C4 traits into rice. Besides, genetic engineering using CRISPR-Cas9, molecular breeding, developing ideotype, heterosis breeding, developing apomictic rice, nitrogen fixing rice, use of nanotechnology as well as precision farming are the probable future approaches for designing a rice with high productivity. However, there are challenges and limitations in developing such rice and further research in this matter could help us get closer to developing the future rice.

It is stated that concrete, which is the basic building block of most of the buildings built today, is the most consumed the construction material in the world after water. cement is that is the main ingredient of concrete, has significant share because of the cost of concrete, the use of various additives as a cement substitutes is the subject of many studies. However, it should firstly be determined to what extent the additives used to affect the concrete properties. In this study, it was tried to determine to what at level the use of the ash of rice husk as a cement substitute changed some concrete properties. Within the scope of the study, the usability of the raw form of rice husk as aggregate in concrete was evaluated and thus an effective method in the disposal of rice husk, which is a agricultural waste, was tried to be determined. The study results show that the addition of both ash of rice husk and rice husk aggregate significantly alter almost all properties of concrete. These changes are at different levels for different characteristics. As a result of the study, it was determined that as the amount of foam increased, the flow diameter increased, while the addition of rice husk decreased the flow diameter. It was determined that the addition of rice husk decreases the depth of water penetration depending on time, the porosity of the samples with the high level of rice husk addition increases, and the compressive and flexural strength decreases.

In this study, wheat flour was substituted with the following ratios of the raw (RCBH) and leached (LCBH) cocoa bean hull (CBH) in pound cakes (PC) (CBH/wheat flour ratios: 20/80 (20%), 30/70 (30%) and 40/60 (40%)), respectively. The proximate composition and the content of bioactive compounds in the cake samples for each weight ratio of RCBH and LCBH and in the hulls were evaluated. Fiber, ash, total antioxidant activity (TAA) and total phenolic compound (TPC) contents increased with the CBH content in the cakes. No significant difference was found in the specific volume among the cake samples. Based on the results of the textural analysis, all cake samples showed higher hardness, lower springiness and cohesiveness than those of the control cake. Regarding to the color of the crumb and crust, the 40% LCBH and RCBH cakes presented the lowest L*, a* and b* values. According to the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), it was observed that the properties with respect to the cell uniformity, adhesiveness, sweetness, oiliness and humidity of the 20LCBH and 20RCBH cakes can be distinguished clearly from the other flour substituted cakes.

Colour is an essential parameter at product quality control stages, and finally, it is necessary for the consumer marketing decision. It is possible to damage the products during the process from collection to storage. Also, it is a well-known condition, cold environmental conditions protect fruits from deformations negative effects, but most of the time, most of the consumers keep the fruits at room temperature in open packs during the consumption process. Also, this condition affects the product storage time. In this study, it is aimed that to determine the behaviours of the fruits in room temperature and humidity conditions. For this aim the colour change of the damaged pears were determined, in another term, colour change value from red to green and yellow to blue at the damaged pears were determined with lightness values by using image analysis technique and analysed with data mining methods. For this purpose, 100 “Akça” pear and 100 “Deveci” local pear cultivar used for experiments. Fruits were equally damaged by using a pendulum mechanism. The damaged fruits were kept at room temperature. Colour change areas on fruits were evaluated with X-rite Ci60 spectrophotometer, and the hardness of fruits was measured by using a fruit penetrometer. The colour (L, a, b) and ΔE values were analysed for the fruit cultivars. The relationship between fruit hardness and colour change were also demonstrated. The predictions were done supervised machine learning algorithms (Decision Tree and Neural Networks with Meta-Learning Techniques; Majority Voting and Random Forest) by using KNIME Analytics software. The classifier performance (accuracy, error, F-Measure, Cohen's Kappa, recall, precision, true positive (TP), false positive (FP), true negative (TN), false negative (FN) values were given at the conclusion section of the research. The best prediction were found at the Majority Voting method (MAVL) 98.458 % success given with 70% partitioning.

Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) is one of the important antioxidants, which naturally present in seminal plasma of fish. On the other hand, whether its effect may improve sperm quality following cryopreservation process still remains its uncertainty. Thus, the present study aimed to analyse the effect of different extenders supplemented with different ascorbic acid concentrations on post-thaw motility and fertility of frozen-thawed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) sperm. Selected sperm samples were pooled and diluted at 1:3 ratios with two different extenders (E) composing such as (E-1) 300 mM glucose, 10% egg yolk and 10% DMSO and (E-2) 0.6 mM sucrose and 10% DMSO. Each extender was supplemented with vitamin C at 1, 5 and 10 mM concentrations. Following dilution, the sperm was loaded into 0.25 ml straws and frozen in liquid nitrogen vapour. The straws were then plunged into liquid nitrogen for storage. Fertilization was carried out using the dry fertilization technique. Highest post-thaw motility (50±5.77) and fertilization (56±1.00) results were obtained with the extender-1 (E-1) containing 10% DMSO concentration. In conclusion, the present study indicated that addition of ascorbic acid to the extenders improved rainbow trout sperm motility resulting higher fertilization of the eggs.

The chemical composition of essential oil, which is isolated by hydrodistillation of aerial parts of Thymus zygioides growing wild in Turkey, have been determined by GC and GC/MS. Essential oil yield on a dry weight basis of aerial parts from T. zygioides was 0.45%. A total of twenty two constituents were identified by GC-MS analyses, the main components representing 92.3% the oil was identified as limonene (24.11%), cis-linalool oxide (22.91%), eucalyptol (8.65%). 3-octonol (7.04%), nerol (4.47%) geranyl acetate (3.19%), carvacrol (2.74%), linalyl propanoate (2.95%) and sabinene (2.23%). The essential oil of T. zygioides was characterized by its high content of limonene (24.11%).

Bu araştırmanın amacı Giresun ilinde kırsal ve kentsel alanda yaşayan halkın tıbbi bitki kullanım alışkanlığının belirlenmesidir. Bu amaca yönelik soruları içeren anket formu hazırlanmıştır. Araştırma sonuçlarına göre tıbbi bitki kullanım alışkanlığını %15,2 erkek, %30,4 kadın katılımcı sürekli kullanırım, %35,9 erkek, %18,6 katılımcı ise ihtiyacım olunca kullanırım şeklinde tanımlamıştır. Hem erkek hem de kadın katılımcıların %48,2’sinin tıbbi bitkileri hastalık tedavisinde ve sağlıklarını sürdürmek için kullandıkları belirlenmiştir. Erkeklerin %25,4’ü, kadınların %25,9’ü tıbbi bitkileri aktar + marketten temin ettiği, erkek bireylerin %50,5’inin kadınların %48,7’sinin basın yayın yoluyla yapılan haberlerin bitkilerle tedaviye ilgilerini artırdığı, tıbbi bitkilerle ilgili bilgi edinme yöntemlerinin erkeklerde %31,9, kadınlarda %34,3 oranında büyüklerimden + arkadaşlarımdan + basın-yayın yoluyla kombinasyonunda yoğunlaştığı, en çok kullanılan tıbbi bitkinin erkeklerde (%5,6) ve kadınlarda (%5,5) nane bitkisi olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca erkeklerin %9,5’inin kadınların %9,1’inin en çok tıbbi bitkilere başvurdukları hastalığın soğuk algınlığı olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır. Bitkisel ilaçların tatlandırılması için erkeklerin %10,7’si şeker + bal + limon kombinasyonunu tercih etmiş, kadınların ise %10,7’si herhangi bir tatlandırmaya ihtiyaç duymadığını belirtmiştir. Tıbbi bitki hazırlamak için kullanılan materyalin cinsine erkelerin %30,4’ünün dikkat etmediği bu oranın kadınlarda %13,6 olduğu, kadınların %33,0’ının ise materyal olarak cam + porselen kullandığı belirlenmiştir. Erkeklerin %29,6’sının kadınların %33,0’ünün tıbbi bitkilerini mutfak dolabı + buzdolabında muhafaza ettiği, ambalaj olarak ise %24,9 oranında erkek bireylerin, %26,7 oranında kadın bireylerin naylon ambalaj + cam ambalaj kullandığı tespit edilmiştir.

However, irrigation practice is poor in Ethiopia, increases agricultural production and productivity. The study was conducted in Haramaya district, Eastern Ethiopia. The object of this study is to see contribution of small scale irrigation towards increasing agricultural production, and identify the factors that affecting the use of small scale irrigation. From the district, three peasant associations were purposively selected each from different agro ecological classifications. Sampling size of 116 households was interviewed and Secondary data were also collected from the office. Three different types of irrigation were identified; Surface irrigation type using furrow method of irrigation is the most common irrigation type in the study area, which accounts about 66.5%. The study indicated that, water scarcity, lack improved seed, and disease outbreak and drought were among the major constraints of irrigation practices in the study area. Therefore practicing water harvesting and supplying improved technologies provide extended service regularly for farmers should be practiced in the future.

This work reports the survival status of Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella Typhimurium in homemade fig and mulberry vinegar. Each pathogen was separately inoculated in vinegar samples at approximately 7 log CFU/mL. The survival status of pathogens was examined at 20°C for 0, 15, 30 and 60 min, and 4, 8 and 24 h. The residual populations after 24 h were below detection limit for all species assayed. S. Typhimurium was much more sensitive to mulberry vinegar ( 6 log reduction in 30 min) than it is to fig vinegar ( 6 log reduction in 24 h). L. monocytogenes had an overall quite different behaviour, being the most sensitive species to fig vinegar ( 6 log reduction in 4 h) while being the most resistant one to mulberry vinegar ( 6 log reduction in 24 h). The total phenolic content of fig vinegar (767 mg GAE/L) was higher than mulberry vinegar (557.5 mg GAE/L). The results exhibited that antimicrobial activity of vinegar is mainly related to the contact time, test pathogen and physicochemical properties of vinegar.