Quality determines the shelf life as well as selling price of fresh fruit or vegetable and therefore, quality monitoring and testing of fresh commodities have paramount importance in their postharvest handling and supply chain management. Most of the methods used to assess fruits and vegetables quality are destructive in nature. Nowa-days, various mechanical, optical, electromagnetic, and dynamic non-destructive methods are gaining importance due to ease in operations, faster turn over and reliability. Some of the non-destructive techniques (NDT) are currently being used in laboratories, research institutions and food packaging and processing industries, whereas, some methods are still at developmental stage. Various NDT with respect to their principle and applications such as impact test, electronic nose, time-resolved reflectance spectrometry, near infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, X-Ray, ultra sonic, acoustic impulse response method, electrical conductivity methods etc., are discussed in this review.

Bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.), one of the valued vegetable crops in India, is severely affected by yellow mosaic disease caused by two begomoviruses, tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus (ToLCNDV) and bitter gourd yellow mosaic virus (BgYMV). The symptoms are yellowing, distortion of leaf, puckering, and malformed fruits. Increased incidence of the disease and appearance of symptoms even in young emerging seedling stage were suggestive of seed transmission of the viruses, which was examined in detail. To study the seed transmission, two sources—seeds of elite hybrids H1, H2, H3, H4, and Co1 procured from a seed market; and seeds from infected plants in the farmer’s field were tested. Detection of the virus by DAS-ELISA using polyclonal antibody indicated embryo infection up to 63%, 26%, 20%, and 10% in hybrids H1, H2, H3, and H4, respectively, for market-procured seeds. In PCR analysis with primers specific for ToLCNDV and BgYMV, infection by ToLCNDV was as high as 76% and mixed infection was 24%. In contrast, in seeds derived from field-infected plants, the percentage detection was less. Grow-out tests with market-procured seeds revealed no transmission for BgYMV compared with 5% transmission for ToLCNDV. Whether seed-borne inocula could serve as an inoculum for new infection in a field and further progress of the disease was investigated in a microplot study. The study clearly revealed variation in seed transmission between different sources, lots, cultivars, and viruses. The virus present in symptomatic and asymptomatic plants was easily transmitted by whitefly. In another microplot experiment, the potential of seed-borne virus as inoculum was proved. There was 43.3% initial seed transmission in the microplot, increasing to 70% after release of 60 whiteflies.

A study was carried out to analyze the different volatile compounds in bioprimed chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) seedlings of 15 and 30 day old. A common compound found in two stages of chilli seedlings was hydroxylamine, dimethoxydimethyl silane, hexadecanoic acid, 15-methyl- methyl ester. Majority of the compounds in bacterized seedlings had antimicrobial activity. The results on GCMS analysis revealed that, root exudates collected from 15 and 30 days old bacterized seedlings with B. amyloliquefaciens VB7 and polymer coating released more number of volatile compounds (65 and 20 compounds respectively) than control (5 and 15 compounds respectively). The root exudates of 15 day old seedling released more volatile compounds (65 nos) than 30 days (20 nos) old seedling.

Changes occurring in seed during aging are very significant for determining seed quality, i.e. seed longevity. An experiment was conducted in Department of Seed Science and Technology, TNAU, Coimbatore to standardize suitable seed dry dressing treatments, using near nano size botanicals that can alleviate the deleterious effect of accelerated ageing and to improve the enzyme activities of soybean aged seeds. Five days aged seeds were treated with 1 h ball milled fenugreek seed powder, leaf powders of ashwagandha, tea and noni @ 2 g kg -1 with 60 min. shaking and evaluated for enzyme activities and field emergence (naturally and artificially aged seeds). Among the treatments seeds treated with fenugreek seed powder has the highest dehydrogenase activity (OD 10 min -1 ), protein (%), oil content (%), catalase activity, peroxidase activity (OD 10 min -1 ) (µg H 2 O 2 mg -1 min -1 ) with minimum values of electrical conductivity (dSm -1 ), free fatty acid (%), lipid peroxidation (OD value), lipoxygenase activity (g mol s -1 mg -1 ). Field emergence (%) was also higher in fenugreek seed powder treated seeds (2 g kg -1 with 60 min).

to find out the effect of grass-fodder cowpea mixtures and row ratio on the growth characters of fodder grasses and fodder cowpea in open and in partial shade. The experiments were laid out in RBD with three replications, comprising of two grasses [G 1-Hybrid napier (Suguna), G 2-Guinea grass (Harithasree)], two fodder cowpea varieties (V 1-COFC-8 (open and shade), V 2-UPC-622 (open), UPC-618 (shade) and three grass legume row ratios (R 1-1:1, R 2-1:2, R 3-1:3). The results indicated the superiority of the grass legume mixture of hybrid napier cv. SUGUNA with both the fodder cowpea varieties in the grass legume row ratio of 1:3 with respect to yield and quality of fodder crops in open and shaded experiments.