In this paper, we report an experimental result regarding the effects of audible sound on the growth of Escherichia coli (E. coli). Standardized E. coli suspensions of fixed concentration were used for inoculation throughout the experiment in nutrient agar (NA) and nutrient broth (NB). First, the samples were incubated at 37ºC for three hours in a water bath-shaker for NB and in a conventional oven for NA. The samples were then transferred to an acoustic chamber JedMark LV-1 with given sound treatment at controlled temperature of 24±2ºC for five hours for NB and 16 hours for NA. Three different tonal frequencies were selected for sound treatment in this experiment which is 1 kHz, 5 kHz and 15 kHz. The growth of E. coli was assessed by their cell number through indirect viable cell counts (E. coli on NA) and direct viable cell counts (E. coli on NB), after the incubation with sound in the acoustic chamber. We found that all selected frequencies were able to promote the growth of E. coli. In particular, the tonal sound of 5 kHz gave significant increase in cell number of E. coli for both growth media.

Antioxidant and phytochemical compounds of fruits can vary widely depending on many factors such as processing and maturity stage as one of the major contributors. Therefore, this study investigated the antioxidant activity and phytochemical attributes of fresh and freeze-dried Lepisanthes fruticosa fruit extracts at eight different maturity stages. The freeze-dried extracts were obtained by lyophilisation using a freeze-dryer. In general, antioxidant activity and phytochemical contents of both fresh (FLF) and freeze-dried (FDLF) extracts showed a decrease with fruit maturation. Among the eight maturity stages developed for L. fruticosa, the lower maturity (unripe) stages exhibited the strongest potential, with stage 1 being the most notable. The FDLF fruit extracts were found to be significantly (P < 0.05) stronger radical scavenger than FLF extracts at all maturity stages tested. The IC 50 values of FDLF for the eight maturity stages were more effective, with stage 1 showing the lowest IC 50 (1.57 mg/ml). Total phenolic content of FDLF was also significantly (P < 0.05) higher than FLF at all eight stages tested, with the highest also being shown at stage 1 (15848.96 ± 401.82 mg/100 g). On the contrary, FLF extracts displayed significantly (P < 0.05) higher total flavonoid content than FDLF at almost all stages except for 2, 3 and 6. The highest content was shown in stage 1 with 37.35 ± 0.77 mg/100 g. These findings showed that antioxidant activity and phytochemical content of L. fruticosa fruits were significantly affected by processing and maturity. The obtained results are important for the promotion of use of L. fruticosa fruit extracts as a natural antioxidant in functional food production in the future.

The study presents the performance and potential of an evaporative-cooled storage system for the short-term storage of fruit vegetables during transportation. The evaporative cooler, storage unit, power supply, control panel, and real-time data monitoring system are the components of the evaporative-cooled storage system. In this study, the system performance was assessed in terms of the cooling profile of the storage unit (temperature and relative humidity profiles), and postharvest quality of the selected fruit vegetables (chili, tomato, and long bean) for the fresh market. Three storage treatments for the selected fruit vegetables were investigated, i.e., evaporative-cooled storage unit (T1), ambient room (T2), and cold room (T3). The average temperature inside the storage unit was T3 < T2 < T1. T1 demonstrated RH of > 90 %, in agreement with recommended RH for vegetable storage. Post-five-hour storage treatments, vegetables stored under T1 exhibited the least weight loss as compared to T2 and T3. The application of an evaporative-cooled storage system provided potential to preserve fruit vegetable postharvest quality during transportation.

Starfruit (Averrhoa carambola L.) is an important fruit for Malaysian export and great attention has been made to improve starfruit fruit quality at Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI). The current study used next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies to develop starfruit simple sequence repeat (SSR) from 2 varieties namely B11 and B17 using Illumina HiSeq. The pre-processed reads were de novo assembled to generate approximately 75,000 and 74,000 scaffolds respectively. Total genome size for B11 and B17 were around 345 Mbp and 342 Mbp based on K-mer distribution analysis. In-silico microsatellite mining of each variety has identified more than 17,000 SSR in B11 and B17 respectively. Dinucleotides were the most abundant, accounting for more than 70% of all SSR and repeat motif GA (49%) was most common. A total of 239 SSR primer pairs were designed from contigs larger than 350 nucleotides and tested for amplification. The 30 polymorphic SSRs were used to DNA fingerprint of 12 starfruit hybrids. Polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.1411 to 0.6838, with an average of 0.3919. The Unweighted Pair-Group Method for Arithmetic Averages (UPGMA) dendrogram clustered 12 starfruit accessions into 2 groups.