The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of different concentrations of inulin and pectin as fat substitutes on the chemical composition, texture, and sensory acceptance of frankfurter sausages. Six treatments were evaluated to test fat replacement: control (T0); low fat control (T1); low fat with 15% inulin (T2); low fat with 30% inulin (T3); low fat with 7.5% inulin and 7.5% pectin (T4); and low fat with 15% inulin and 15% pectin (T5). The addition of fibers increased the yield (T3 and T5; 98.96%), and the color parameters were slightly reduced (T3). Moisture (61.14%) and ashes (6.96%) of sausages with inulin and pectin were higher (T5), while shear force, hardness, fracturability, gumminess, and chewiness (T3 and T5) were slightly lower than those of the control. The addition of inulin (T2) increased the sensory acceptance of the sausages (5.75). Fat can be replaced with inulin and pectin in frankfurter sausages to produce healthy and functional products.

The inclusion of natural ingredients to preserve meat and meat products has increased in recent years. This study evaluated rosemary (REO) and garlic essential oils (GEO) as well as chipotle pepper oleoresin (CPO), alone or in combination, as preservatives on beef hamburgers (BH). Six treatments were evaluated: T1 (control, without additives), T2 (GEO 1%), T3 (REO 1%), T4 (CPO 0.5%), T5 (GEO 1% + CPO 0.5%) and T6 (REO 1% + CPO 0.5%). The microbiological quality, physicochemical characteristics, sensory evaluation, and lipid oxidation of hamburgers were evaluated. REO, GEO and CPO limited the growth of aerobic microorganisms, S. aureus, Salmonella spp., B. thermosphacta, moulds and yeasts, lactic acid bacteria and coliforms (p < 0.05); however, this effect depended on time. Furthermore, lipid oxidation decreased significantly (p < 0.5) in all treatments, except for T5 (GEO 1% + CPO 0.5%). Regarding sensory acceptance, consumers preferred BH with GEO in terms of colour, odour, flavour and overall appearance (p < 0.05). It is concluded that REO, GEO and CPO, alone or in combination, improve microbiological quality and inhibit the lipid oxidation of BH.

A key step in the processing of satellite imagery is the radiometric correction of images to account for reflectance that water vapor, atmospheric dust, and other atmospheric elements add to the images, causing imprecisions in variables of interest estimated at the earth’s surface level. That issue is important when performing spatiotemporal analyses to determine ecosystems’ productivity. In this study, three correction methods were applied to satellite images for the period 2010–2014. These methods were Atmospheric Correction for Flat Terrain 2 (ATCOR2), Fast Line-of-Sight Atmospheric Analysis of Spectral Hypercubes (FLAASH), and Dark Object Substract 1 (DOS1). The images included 12 sub-scenes from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and the Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensors. The images corresponded to three Permanent Monitoring Sites (PMS) of grasslands, ‘Teseachi’, ‘Eden’, and ‘El Sitio’, located in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. After the corrections were applied to the images, they were evaluated in terms of their precision for biomass estimation. For that, biomass production was measured during the study period at the three PMS to calibrate production models developed with simple and multiple linear regression (SLR and MLR) techniques. When the estimations were made with MLR, DOS1 obtained an R² of 0.97 (p < 0.05) for 2012 and values greater than 0.70 (p < 0.05) during 2013–2014. The rest of the algorithms did not show significant results and DOS1, which is the simplest algorithm, resulted in the best biomass estimator. Thus, in the multitemporal analysis of grassland based on spectral information, it is not necessary to apply complex correction procedures. The maps of biomass production, elaborated from images corrected with DOS1, can be used as a reference point for the assessment of the grassland condition, as well as to determine the grazing capacity and thus the potential animal production in such ecosystems.

Beet has been used as an ingredient for functional foods due to its high antioxidant activity, thanks to the betalains it contains. The effects of the addition of beet extract (liquid and lyophilized) on the physicochemical characteristics, color, antioxidant activity (AA), total betalains (TB), total polyphenols (TP), and total protein concentration (TPC) were evaluated on stirred yogurt. The treatments (T1-yogurt natural, T2-yogurt added with beet juice, T3-added extract of beet encapsulated with maltodextrin, and T4-yogurt added with extract of beet encapsulated with inulin) exhibited results with significant differences (p < 0.05). The highest TB content was observed in T2 (209.49 ± 14.91), followed by T3 (18.65 ± 1.01) and later T4 (12.96 ± 0.55). The highest AA was observed on T2 after 14 days (ABTS˙ 0.819 mM TE/100 g and DPPH˙ 0.343 mM TE/100 g), and the lowest was found on T1 at day 14 (ABTS˙ 0.526 mM TE/100 g and DPPH˙ 0.094 mM TE/100 g). A high content of TP was observed (7.13 to 9.79 mg GAE/g). The TPC varied between 11.38 to 12.56 µg/mL. The addition of beet extract significantly increased AA in yogurt, betalains being the main compounds responsible for that bioactivity.

La radiación gamma puede ser utilizada como agente mutagénico para inducir variabilidad genética en especies vegetales. No obstante, antes de comenzar un programa de mejoramiento mediante mutagénesis, es necesario establecer la dosis de irradiación adecuada. El objetivo fue determinar la dosis letal media (DL50) y de reducción media del crecimiento (RC50) en pasto garrapata (Eragrostis superba Peyr.). Para ello, se irradió semilla con dosis de 0 (tratamiento testigo), 100, 200, 300, 450, 600, 900, 1400, 2000 y 4000 Gray. Las variables evaluadas fueron porcentaje de germinación, índice de velocidad de germinación, longitud de plúmula, longitud de radícula, rendimiento de forraje, producción de semilla, proporción hoja-tallo e índice de concentración de clorofila. Los datos se analizaron por regresión y comparación de medias con la prueba de Dunnett. Con la ecuación de regresión resultante se calculó la DL50 y RC50 para cada variable. Con estos valores se obtuvo una media ponderada, donde la DL50 se ponderó con 30 % y las RC50 con 10 %. En general, todas las características evaluadas se vieron afectadas por la irradiación (P<0.05), y su comportamiento se ajustó a modelos lineales y cuadráticos (P<0.05), lo cual permitió determinar la DL50 y las RC50. Para el mejoramiento genético del pasto garrapata, se recomienda utilizar la ponderación de ambos parámetros, la cual se obtuvo a los 2,486 Gy. Los resultados de este estudio permitirán la implementación de programas de mejoramiento genético por mutagénesis en pasto garrapata.