Strawberries are an economically important crop partly because they are very popular with consumers. Strawberry growers and breeders would benefit from knowing which cultivars and fruit traits consumers would prefer. The objectives of this study were to (1) determine consumer preference for the fruit of once-fruiting and repeat-fruiting strawberry cultivars available to grow in the Mid-Atlantic to help growers select the most suitable strawberry cultivars based on their marketability, critical sensory quality attributes, and physicochemical measurements; and (2) identify interrelationships between sensory attributes and physicochemical measurements to determine which approaches might result in breeding strawberries consumers will find most appealing. Strawberries from 10 cultivars were harvested and evaluated by a trained sensory panel and instrumentally. ‘Flavorfest’ fruits were rated highest of all 10 cultivars, and ‘Albion’ fruits were rated highest of the repeat-fruiting cultivars. Overall quality was correlated with sweetness and strawberry flavor and aroma, but not sourness. Separation of cultivar means for sweetness was better using an instrument to measure, rather than the panel evaluation. Overall appearance was correlated with visual freshness and glossiness. Light orange-red strawberries (higher L* and b*) appeared fresher and more appealing to the panels than darker more purple-red strawberries. Evaluations of strawberry fruits for berry size, juiciness, and texture were less straightforward.

The influence of carbon, nitrogen and pH on polygalacturonase (PG) activity produced by Penicillium expansum were investigated. P. expansum mycelial growth was greatest on lyophilized lyophilised fruit tissue and the highest PG activity occurred in apple pectin medium. Nitrogen source influenced PG activity and was highest with ammonia while the greatest mycelial mass was supported by glutamate or glutamine. PG activity and mycelial mass peaked 5 five days after inoculation as polyuronide content decreased and the pH and ammonium levels increased in apple pectin medium. A single active PG isozyme with an isoelectric point of ∼7.6 was produced in apple pectin medium and a partial cDNA clone was obtained that was most homologous to the pggII gene from Penicillium. griseoroseum. The results from this study indicate that P. expansum can modulate the activity of PG in response to nutrient sources and ambient pH through signalling pathways that modulate nutrient acquisition, uptake and metabolism.

As awareness of climate change increases, diverse initiatives such as subsidies for remanufactured products and take-back programs for end-of-life products have been taken to conserve energies and materials. This paper explores how the subsidy program affects manufacturer’s take-back activity in a closed-loop supply chain and also analyzes how a coalition between a retailer and a remanufacturer affects the equilibrium decisions. Major findings of this paper reveal that (i) when a take-back program is implemented, the government imposes a high penalty on products that are not collected, thereby encouraging manufacturers to collect more used products, (ii) implementing a take-back program in conjunction with a subsidy program results in a greater reduction in environmentally negative impacts and an enhanced social welfare compared to implementing them separately, and (iii) a coalition between a retailer and a remanufacturer results in lowering the penalty imposed to a manufacturer, which leads to lowering the quantity of the collected and remanufactured products.

Bacillus amyloliquefaciens KCTC18343P(=MBE1283) isolated from Makgeolli, Korean traditional rice wine, strongly inhibits the growth of food and plant pathogens. A complete genome sequence of B. amyloliquefaciens KCTC18343P is presented in this report. The genome is 3,979,925 bp in size and harbors 3856 genes. The BioProject has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank. The GenBank accession numbers are PRJNA301202 for the BioProject, NZ_CP013727 for the chromosome, and NZ_CP013728 for the plasmid.

We develop a nonoverlapping domain decomposition preconditioner for the $C^0$ interior penalty method, a discontinuous Galerkin method, for the biharmonic problem. The preconditioner is based on balancing domain decomposition by constraints (BDDC). We prove that the condition number of the preconditioned system is bounded by $C (1+\ln (H/h))^2$, where $h$ is the mesh size of the triangulation, $H$ is the typical diameter of subdomains, and the positive constant $C$ is independent of $h$ and $H$. Numerical experiments are also represented to corroborate the theoretical result.