Here we examine the effects of extracts of Poria cocos mycelium fermented with freeze-dried plum powder (PPE) on the α-melanocyte stimulating hormone (α-MSH)-stimulated melanogenesis in cultured murine B16 melanoma cells (B16 cells), relative to the effects of Prunus extract. We found that an extract of Prunus fermentation showed significant inhibition of melanogenesis and tyrosinase activity with no effect on cell proliferation and was more active compared to Prunus extract alone. Furthermore, we confirmed that medium containing 3% Prunus was the optimal culture substrate for fermentation with Poria cocos. These results provide evidence that Prunus fermentation extract affects skin whiting in murine B16 melanoma cells (B16 cells). Prunus contains rutin, oxalic acid, succinic acid, and fumaric acid, which help in digestion and fatigue recovery. The rutin of Prunus mume is reported to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. Also, Prunus extract has a tyrosinase inhibitory activity for skin whiting through its antioxidant activity. Therefore, we believe the Prunus extract for Poria cocos fermentation can be provided as a potential mediator to induce skin whiting.

Modern people who value healthy eating habits have shown increasing interest in plum (Prunus mume) fruits, primarily owing to their nutritiousness and proven efficacy. As consumption increases, it becomes important to monitor work to prevent Prunus mume fruits from falling out. Moreover, determining the growth status of Prunus mume is also crucial and is attracting increasing attention. In this study, convolutional neural network (CNN)-based deep learning object detection was developed using RGBD images collected from Prunus mume farms. These RGBD images consider various environments, including the depth information of objects in the outdoor field. A faster region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN), EfficientDet, Retinanet, and Single Shot Multibox Detector (SSD) were applied for detection, and the performance of all models was estimated by comparing their respective computing speeds and average precisions (APs). The test results show that the EfficientDet model is the most accurate, and SSD MobileNet is the fastest among the four models. In addition, the algorithm was developed to acquire the growth status of P. mume fruits by applying the coordinates and score values of bounding boxes to the depth map. Compared to the diameters of the artificial Prunus mume fruits used as the experimental group, the calculated diameters were very similar to those of the artificial objects. Collectively, the results demonstrate that the CNN-based deep learning Prunus mume detection and growth estimation method can be applied to real farmlands.

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Purpose: Porcine proliferative enteropathy (PPE), caused by the obligate intracellular bacterium Lawsonia intracellularis, is a widely distributed disease throughout the world causing substantial economic loss. In order to diagnose PPE rapidly, the rapid kit was developed and tested. Methods: In this study, a rapid kit was developed to screen the PPE rapidly at the pig farm. Also, occult blood test with fecal occult blood (FOB) kit was done for detecting the blood in pig feces which might be the evident of hemorrhagic PPE. For developing the kit, we tested fecal samples of PPE infected pigs diagnosed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. Results: With the developed rapid kit, Lawsonia intracellularis was detected in high density emulsion of ileum. On the other hand, the test result of detecting Lawsonia in feces showed too high non-specific response. In addition, nevertheless the FOB test result showed that blood evident could be founded in pig feces, the diagnosing result was not fit to PCR test result, which shows blood in pig feces could be from not only hemorrhagic PPE but also many reasons. Conclusions: To deal with the PPE effectively, it will be better for farmers to screen the PPE in earlier stage with easy and rapid diagnosing tool on farm. This study found out that the rapid kit could detect the Lawsonia intracellularis and hemoglobin in pig feces. However, the non-specific response to negative samples of PPE was too high to use at a pig farm. Further research is needed for lowering the non-specific response with the rapid kit.