The active components in garlic essential oil are easily degradable, which limits its application in the food industry. Vegetable oils (VOs) were used to improve the stability of garlic essential oil (GEO) emulsion. The volatile compounds of GEO and its mixtures with vegetable oils (VOs), including corn oil (CO), soybean oil (SO), and olive oil (OO) indicated that GEO-VO mixtures had a higher percentage of Diallyl disulfide and Diallyl trisulfide than pure GEO. Adding an appropriate amount of VOs promoted the GEO emulsion (whey protein concentrate and inulin as the wall materials) stability in order of CO > SO > OO. Evaluation of the encapsulation efficiency, controlled release, and antimicrobial activity of GEO-VO microcapsules showed that the GEO was successfully entrapped and slowly released with active antibacterial activities on both E. coli and S. aureus. Collectively, these results implied that VOs, especially for 20% CO, improved the stability of GEO emulsions and the encapsulation efficiency of GEO microcapsules. The mechanism might be related to (1) the regulating effect of density difference between oil and water phases on prevention to gravitational separation, (2) the promotion to the compatibility of GEO and VOs to inhibit the phase separation caused by Ostwald ripening.

Depression is a mental illness that affects the normal lives of over 300 million people. Unfortunately, about 30% to 40% of patients do not adequately respond to pharmacotherapy and other...

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<p><em>This study investigated the factors affecting the profitability of contract broiler chicken farmers in the poultry belt in Sri Lanka. One hundred contract (Buy Back) broiler producers in Kurunegala, Puttalam, Kalutara districts were randomly selected.</em><em>The cost and return analysis of different sizes of out grower broiler producers were analyzed using the   profit function approach Quantitative variables such as feed conversion ratio (FCR), mortality (% per flock), input quantity and average body weight (kg/bird), involvement in broiler farming (hours/month) were used in the analysis.</em><em> </em></p><p><em>The investigated farmers were receiving a </em><em>profit of 73.73 ± 3.54 Rs./bird.  The other parameters were; average body weight of 1.9982 ± 0.035 kg/bird, flock mortality of 3.564 ± 0.324 %, and the FCR of 1.8038 ± 0.017. Regression analysis revealed that most important factors significantly (p-0.05) affecting profit in this study were the feed conversion ratio, input quantity, body weight and flock mortality. The contracting company provided inputs such as day old chicks (DOC), Transport, and incentives such as transport incentives, bird return incentives to improve the productivity, extension services to improve quality of production. FCR and Body weight are depending on the quality of feed and environmental conditions. Therefore, it is advisable to increase the input quantity to get optimum profits and to reduce the operational costs.<br /></em></p>