Nature Ecrogrow

Job’s tears is native to tropical Asia where it grows in forest margins and swamps and has been introduced throughout the tropics . Cultivated soft-shelled forms are grown as a cereal in northeastern India and southeastern Asia, though it has been replaced now by rice and maize on a large scale . Forest dwellers in northeastern India gather the hard fruits of wild forms and bring them to tribal and village markets where they are sold for ornamental purposes, contributing to the local economy of the forest villages . The hard-shelled form also grows along the eastern coast of India, where it is found as a weed in rice fields. It seems possible that Job’s tears is also mentioned in historical sources, but the translations of the concerning text fragments refer to wheat instead. In his enumeration of the wheat varieties, Theophrastus mentions a variety that grows not far from Bactria and produces kernels that grow as large as olive stones. Pliny includes this Greek reference in his description of wheat varieties, but this time the size is even equated to that of the ear of a cereal. Together with barley , rice , and millet , Job’s tears is native to this area, and it is the only one that comes into consideration when a large kernel is concerned. The glossy bract varies both in size and shape, and it may reach the length of a small olive,container raspberries although most specimens are smaller. So far, sub-fossil remains of Job’s tears have only been found at Berenike and in India.

Although fruits are actually found on many sites in India, they have only been published from eight sites, including early historical Ahichchtra and Balathal. Other plant remains that have been used as beads in ancient Egypt include seeds of grape , accessory fruits of the sycamore fig , seeds of rosary pea , unripe fruits and female flowers of the date palm , endocarps of the Egyptian plum , leaves of grasses , fruits from Polygonum senegalense Meis., and possibly pierced tubers from earth almond . The stone fruit from olive that has been previously described as a bead is now considered as a gnawed specimen.The balsam tree is a member of the incense-tree family . Some species of Boswellia produce frankincense, which is also traded as incense, and include the olibanum tree , whereas some members of the genus Commiphora produce myrrh. Usually, C. myrrha Engl. is considered as the tree from which common or hirabol myrrh is obtained, although this is doubted by Wood . Scented myrrh is produced by C. guidottii Chiov. and is also known under a variety of names, including bissabol, habak hadi, perfumed bdellium, scented bdellium, coarse myrrh, East Indian myrrh, false myrrh, perfumed myrrh, sweet myrrh, and opopanax . Whereas frankincense and myrrh are produced as solid resins, some of the Commiphora species produce balsams, which are aromatics that remain liquid. One of these species is C. gileadensis, whose distribution in Egypt is restricted to the Gebel Elba area . The balsam can be obtained from three different parts of the tree: the dried fruits , the dried wood , and the bark from which an unguent is collected .

Judging by the many sub-fossil fruit fragments, it is assumed that balsam was probably available as carpobalsamum in Berenike. According to Pliny , the quality of opobalsamum was better than that of carpobalsamum and xylobalsamum, its price comparable to that of the best-quality frankincense. Theophrastus , on the other hand, states that the fruit is more fragrant than the gum, the latter probably extracted from the stem and thus similar to Opobalsamum. Carpobalsamum was used in the production of the Egyptian perfume metopium, which constitutes an oil extracted from the seeds of bitter almonds , mixed with some other plant materials . The balsam extract was also used for making ointments, such as the balm of Gilead, which is also called Mecca balsam and opobalsum . In more than 60 different samples from Berenike, fruits and seeds have been found from Commiphora gileadensis. The only other member of this genus that is native to Egypt is C. quadricincta Schweinf. ex Engl. This species is characterized by four longitudinal wings along the fruit stone, as is indicated by its Latin name. C. quadricincta has only been recorded in 1929 from the Hailab area and also from the Red Sea coastal area more to the south. Because of this, identifying the sub-fossil specimens as C. quadricincta is not plausible. The aromatic fruits C. gileadensis were probably frequently imported from the Gebel Elba area, where this tree is still quite abundant together with acacia trees. Because C. gileadensis is native to both sides of the Red Sea, it is also possible that the fruits were sometimes imported from more remote trade centers on the East African coast and the Arabian Peninsula. Both the presence of the fruits and seeds and their morphology exclude the possibility that we are dealing with the Indian bdellium tree .

The Periplus Maris Erythraei mentions the export of bdellium from northwest India, so the presence of fruits and seeds is not in keeping with this kind of commodity. Moreover, the fruits of the Indian bdellium tree are two-celled, whereas the specimens from Berenike are without exception one-celled, being quite similar to those from the balsam tree. Today, the Bisharin nomads who live in the Gebel Elba area do not exploit the balsam tree for its balsam or fragrant fruits . The same is also true for Yemen: the branches are used here instead as firewood . Two other records of the balsam tree from Egypt have been published, although both undated and only one with a reference to a site, namely, Thebes. Additionally, several resins are recorded that belong to Commiphora .The Egyptian plum has fruits of about 2 cm in diameter. Only the outer, soft layer of the fruit is edible, comparable with, for example, plums and cherries. The edible pulp is so mucilaginous that it is also used as birdlime. According to Pliny , the fruits were also used in Egypt for making wine, and Theophrastus states that cakes are made from the stoned fruits. Also the seeds can be eaten, but this has not been practiced by the inhabitants of Berenike and Shenshef. The calyx is persistent, and this explains why it is sometimes found in addition to the fruit stones. The genus was formerly mentioned as Sebestena, and the old name is still in use in the name of the New World species Cordia sebestena L., the geiger tree. Dried fruits of C. myxa and C. latifolia Royle are still offered in spice markets as sapistan . They are used as a medicine for chest complaints and inflammations of the urinary tract . Despite the well-documented archaeobotanical record of C. myxa from Egypt, it is thought to be a native of the Indian subcontinent. Its exotic status in Egypt is supported by the cultivated specimens grown in gardens and the absence of naturalized specimens. Most probably, C. myxa had been introduced at an early stage into western Asia and northeast Africa, which is expressed in several of its common names. Theophrastus , for example, states that the tree grows in abundance in Thebes. Classical writers refer to it as ἡ κοκκυμηλέα [plum] or “myxis” , although there is some confusion by Pliny with respect to the plum , which is common to Europe. The English translation of Theophrastus adds “sebesten” and “Egyptian,” whereas “Indian cherry” is used in India . Stone fruits of this species are well represented in early and late deposits from Berenike and also in late deposits from Shenshef. Occasionally, whole fruits have been found. The fruit also occurs at other Egyptian sites, dated to the pharaonic period, such as Saqqara, Deir el-Medineh, and Thebes. The stone fruit from Saqqara, dated to the Third Dynasty, shows that the tree was introduced and cultivated in Egypt from at least as far back as the Old Empire . Thus, berries of C. myxa may have been imported to Berenike from the Nile Valley or the Mediterranean area, but also long-distance supply from India may not be ruled out. Because the berries are susceptible to fermentation,draining pots only fresh ones may have been available from Egypt proper. Indian berries may have been dried or pickled, methods that are still in use.In addition to Cordia myxa, C. sinensis has also been found at Berenike and Shenshef. Recently, the latter species has been split into two distinct species: C. sinensis Lam. and C. nevillii Alston . C. Sinensis, which grows in moist habitats, is widespread in Africa, though its distribution in Egypt is limited to the southern part and one location in Sinai. In Egypt, only its presence in the Gebel Elba area may be considered as indigenous, whereas in other parts of the country it only grows in gardens. C. nevillii, on the other hand, is adapted to more-arid conditions and has a Somalia-Masai distribution in Africa, the Gebel Elba area in which it is found being an isolated northern outpost. Drar collected plants of both species from Gebel Elba .

According to Drar , who uses the old name C. gharaf Ehrenb. ex Ascherson for both species, Cordia grows, but is not common, in the higher reaches of the rocky gorges of the Gebel Elba. Both species have edible fruits that are about half the size of those of C. myxa. According to Schweinfurth , the berries of C. sinensis are of a better taste than those of C. myxa. It is most likely that the fruits from Berenike and Shenshef were imported, at least partly, from the nearby Gebel Elba area. Additionally, the fruits might have been traded from Ethiopia and Eritrea, where substantial populations of both species occur. Both species are also found in the coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent, including Sri Lanka. The trees are also valued for their wood. In the Gebel Elba area, the Bisharin nomads make walking sticks from the branches, which are also products of trade. For that reason, each tree is assigned to a specific family or clan . As far as generative features are concerned, both species can be distinguished by their accrescent calyx but not from their fruits. As only fruits were found in Berenike and Shenshef, the identification is made to the level of a combined taxon. Consequently, previous records of C. sinensis from Abusir and Thebes may refer to C. nevillii as well.Coriander is a garden herb with a quite unpleasant smell. Ripe and dry fruits, however, acquire a pleasant smell and are therefore more in demand than the young plants or the leaves in the use of seasonings. Because the ripe fruits easily scatter from the plant at this late stage of development, harvesting the fruits is therefore very precise work . Coriander probably originates from the eastern Mediterranean, where the oldest finds are recorded from Greece, Jordan, and India. The oldest Egyptian find originates from predynastic Adaïma . Coriander fruits are still much appreciated in Egypt, where the plant is cultivated in the Mediterranean coastal area, the Nile Valley, the oases of the Libyan Desert, and the Sinai . Also, this condiment was in great demand by the Romans, and it was imported in large quantities from Egypt. Pliny states that in his time the best coriander came from Egypt. Coriander is mentioned, for example, in many recipes of Apicius, who lived in the time of Augustus-Tiberius, who collectively reigned from 27 BC–AD 37. The predominant use of coriander’s fruits in preference to its leaves explains why this plant is often found in archaeobotanical research. Fruits and seeds of coriander were scattered in small numbers over several samples, which is especially true for those of Berenike. Coriander is one of the plants that could have been locally cultivated in well-protected and irrigated kitchen gardens. Besides its use as a condiment for flavoring foods and beverages, coriander is also used in medical treatments. It is recommended, for example, by Pliny for all kinds of complaints, such as the treatment of various skin disorders, the retardation of the menstrual period, and as an antidote to snake poison.

Plant remains may become charred by accidental fire, for example, during cooking. They also may be the result of deliberate fire, for example, in the case of burning rubbish and offering food in religious ceremonies. The preservation of organic materials is also affected by salts. The proximity to the sea results in relatively high salt concentrations, and even salic horizons are present in the soil around Berenike. Salt has certain conserving properties for organic remains, as it dehydrates microorganisms responsible for decay, but it also may cause damage as a result of mechanical stress resulting from crystallization and hydration . The latter effect is especially perceptible at the level where the salic horizon is present. For the reconstruction of trade routes, it is important to know the possible areas of origin. Unfortunately, the assignment of a certain plant species to a particular area of origin is problematic. The main reason is, that during Roman times, many cultivated plants were introduced to new areas via old land and sea routes. Long before the Greek and Roman conquests of Egypt, transoceanic trade between India, the Arabian Peninsula, and East Africa had already been established. It is suggested that via such old trade routes African species were introduced into India, such as Lablab purpureus, Vigna unguiculata, Sorghum bicolor, and Pennisetum glaucum . Conversely,plant bench indoor species from the Indian subcontinent found their way to Africa. Scientific names may, in this respect, be misleading.

Those of sesame and tamarind , for example, suggest an Indian origin for both species, whereas this is probably only true for the former one. The unraveling of the migration and trade routes is especially complicated in the area under consideration as it is linked to the Near East where domestication started some 10,000 years ago. Information on the origin and expansion of a certain species can be derived from a variety of sources, in which evidence from archaeobotanical research, plant geography and ancient written sources all play an important role. If necessary, these sources will be discussed to determine the possible trade routes.The genus Abrus belongs to the Leguminosae and contains twelve tropical species. The best-known member of this genus is the rosary pea . The seeds of this species are normally red with a black eye around the hilum. This is interpreted as an imitation aril, but it is puzzling why birds would eat this hard seed because it does not provide any nutrition . Besides the scarlet seeds, entirely white seeds and black seeds have been reported from India. Although India is frequently mentioned as the geographical origin of this genus, its probable origin is Africa, where most species of Abrus are found . Seeds of the rosary pea are used in several ways. Besides its application as a stimulant and its use in medicinal preparations , the rosary pea is also valued for its ornamental properties. In India its seeds have a tradition of being used as weights by goldsmiths, as beads in rosaries and necklaces, and for the decoration of objects such as baskets . Their use in weighing precious metals is attributed to the seeds’ uniform size and weight.

Each seed has a weight of 0.1 g. Because the seed coat is extremely hard and glossy, it is not possible to tamper with the seeds. Nevertheless, some variety in seed weight exists, and it happens that heavier seeds are used for buying and lighter ones for selling . Seeds are not edible because they contain the poisonous protein abrine. The consumption of a few pounded seeds is lethal. Poisoning by rosary pea is also recorded from drinking tea in which several seeds have been immersed for a while. In Egypt the seeds of rosary pea are also used as an additive in mixtures of incense and are offered on markets all over Egypt. An incense sample bought in November 1996 at the Khan al-Khalili bazaar in Cairo contained seeds or fruits from the following plant species: Abrus precatorius, A. cf. fruticulosus, Coriandrum sativum, Phalaris paradoxa, Trigonella foenum-graecum, Nigella sativa, and Senna holosericea. The use of rosary pea seeds in Egyptian incense is also mentioned by Kamal . Additionally, unmixed seeds of the rosary pea are offered for sale . Such supplies together with coins are often used to scatter over bridal couples. In both instances, it is believed that the rosary pea seeds protect against the evil eye. One of the Arabic names, “Any-al afrit,” refers to this belief. It holds that certain people have the power to bring misfortune that could affect other people, cattle, or even houses. The evil eye can only be effective if it strikes the victim’s eye at first glance. A protection against the evil eye can either be offensive or defensive in character. An example of the first approach is the hand of Fatimah, which is used as an amulet. The use of rosary pea seeds in, for example, incense mixtures can be classified among the second approach.

It was also possible, though with some difficulty, to buy an incense from Morocco at the Khan al-Khalili bazaar whose special purpose is protection against the evil eye. Contrary to normal incense samples, this gives off a ghastly smell. That completely black seeds of Abrus sp. can also be used for religious purposes is evidenced by the presence of two such seeds in the well-hidden, covered hole at the back of a Yao wooden statue, which originates from either China, Thailand, or Laos. Together with a piece of animal skin, metal, a paper fragment with text, and bark, these seeds allowed the statue to become gifted with a soul. A similar use is applied to wild rue , a plant species indicative of disturbance. According to Horne , in Iran, the fruits are, among other things, worked into wall hangings and burned as a deterrent to the evil eye. The specimens from Berenike are completely black, just as the ones that originate from grave no. 35 in the mortuary temple of Seti 1 in the necropolis of Thebes and the four seeds stored in the Louvre, which are not further specified . The seeds from the temple of Seti 1 are threaded on a string and have been identified by Schweinfurth. The suggestion by Germer that at the time of Schweinfurth’s identification the red color was still visible, seems very unlikely as it implies that the discoloring of the seeds only started after more than 3,000 years. It is more likely that, taking its use as a bead into consideration, Schweinfurth assumed that he was dealing with the decorative rosary pea. Another possibility is that we are dealing with an African species, in which the following ones come into consideration: A. precatorius ssp. africanus Verdc. , A. somalensis Taub. , A. schimperi Bak. , A. pulchellus Thw. , A. bottae Defl ers , and A. fruticulosus Wall. ex Wight & Arn. . Seeds of these species are greenish or black and lack the decorative red color of the rosary pea and are only rarely seen at Egyptian markets. With respect to the seeds from Thebes that have been used as beads,greenhouse rolling racks it would make sense that they belong to the rosary pea indeed. Although there was no direct trade during the New Kingdom with India, it is possible that we are dealing here with indirect trade via the east coast of Africa south of the Sahara. Because the specimens of Berenike are not pierced, and thus do not indicate a decorative feature, it might well be that these seeds belong to one of the African species. That these seeds were used as gold weights in Berenike is merely speculative as it implies that precious metals were traded at Berenike, an assumption, however, of which no clear evidence is present up to now.In addition to its valued wood, Nile acacia is exploited for its reddish gum, which exudes spontaneously from the trunk and principal branches and is stimulated by artificial incisions. Additionally, it is exploited for its bark, which contains high concentrations of tannin and can be used for both tanning and dying, and for the pods that serve several purposes. Young pods can be eaten as a vegetable, and roasted seeds serve as a spice. Although green, unripe pods contain even 50 percent more tannin than the bark of the tree, its concentration is halved when the pods are ripe . At Berenike, the Nile acacia is only represented by ripe pods. Although bark and unripe fruits contain more tannin than the ripe fruits, obviously only ripe fruits were processed. The reason is a practical one. Harvesting the bark would kill the tree, whereas unripe fruits are difficult to pound. In fact, ripe pods are still offered for sale in large quantities in spice markets for tanning purposes.

The following procedure was described and partly demonstrated by an Ababda woman. First, pods are pounded with a stone on a piece of cloth or plastic . The pulverized fruits are mixed with water in a proportion of 1 k fruit to 10 L of cold water. A skin is then soaked in this mixture for two days. Next, the hairs are removed by hand. Then the skin is soaked again in a qarad mixture for about another week. Finally, the skin is sun-dried, after which it is suitable for all kinds of processing. Other Acacia species that can be used for tanning are A. oerfota Schweinf. and A. etbaica Schweinf., both well represented in the Gebel Elba area . Pod segments and seeds of the Nile acacia have been found in Egypt from predynastic times onward. Today, the Nile acacia grows in the Nile Valley; the desert west of the Nile, including the oases; and in the Sinai. According to Zahran and Willis the Nile acacia probably also once grew in the southern areas of the Egyptian Red Sea coast. Its exploitation, rather than ecological factors, would have been responsible for its absence in this area today. As only fruits have been attested from the late habitation period, the most likely option is that they were imported from the Nile Valley or at least from a remote distant place. In a reverse situation, namely that the fruits found were only from early deposits, over exploitation of a nearby population could be considered.Twisted acacia can easily be distinguished from Nile acacia by its fruits, even if only small fragments are preserved. The former has small, spirally twisted fruits, which are only slightly constricted between the seeds and bear a clear veining pattern. Nile acacia, on the other hand, is characterized by more or less glabrous pods, which are deeply constricted between the seeds. Another difference concerns the spines that are present on the branches. Twisted acacia has both long straight spines and small curved spines, whereas Nile acacia has only long straight ones. Both straight and curved spines were found in the samples of Berenike and Shenshef. It has not been tried to distinguish between the two subspecies of twisted acacia, namely, ssp. tortilis and ssp. raddiana Brenan, which were formerly treated on a species level. The twisted acacia is a common species that grows in the midstream part of almost every wadi branch around Berenike. Leaves, young shoots, and especially fruits provide a valuable, nutritious forage for all domestic animals . Trees are browsed by passing camels and sheep as well as goats that eat the pods that fall onto the ground. Drar states that Ababda nomads pull down ripening fruits with long, hooked sticks. Another way of harvesting could have been cutting off whole branches that were fed to animals. The disadvantage of this kind of exploitation is, however, that it reduces the tree population, which in this arid environment cannot be compensated by regeneration. Today, the Ababda nomads mainly exploit A. tortilis by harvesting dead branches to make charcoal. Wood of A. tortilis has a high calorifi c value and is the leading supplier of charcoal. Exceptionally, fresh branches are cut to make the skeleton of small houses that are covered by skins or, as is practiced nowadays, by mats and cloth. The presence of seeds, fruits, and spines in many loci of Berenike cannot be explained unambiguously.

The first two sources refer to the major phytogeographical districts only, whereas the grass monograph uses a detailed subdivision. Because of this, the assignment of some grasses that are recorded for the Isthmic Desert remains problematic and should be added either to the Sinai district or to the Eastern Desert. The number of these grass species is low, however, and therefore has no significant influence on the calculations . In each phytogeographical district, plants have been divided into three classes. The second class shows the number of species also recorded from the Eastern Desert and Red Sea coastal strip. For the Eastern Desert this second class refers only to the number of plants also found in the Red Sea coastal plain, and for the Red Sea coastal plain the case is vice versa. The third class represents plant species found in the concerning region and other regions but excluding the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastal strip. Four phytogeographical districts are characterized by a reasonable number of indigenous plants, which give them their individual status: the Mediterranean coastal strip , the Nile region , the Gebel Elba , and the Sinai . In the other four districts, these percentages vary between 2 to 5 percent, indicating that on a presence/absence analysis the flora in these districts does not differ much. The flora of the Sinai comprises no less than 61 percent of the Egyptian flora. This high percentage, together with the rather high number of indigenous plant species,blueberry pot size reflects the variety of habitats in this district and may also justify a further subdivision of the Sinai phytogeographical district as has been published elsewhere .

The Mediterranean area, where plant growth is favored by the relatively large annual precipitation and mild temperatures in winter and summer, represents 49 percent of the Egyptian flora. Although the Egyptian deserts are characterized as hot and hyperarid, the desert flora is quite rich and diverse in plant numbers. Remarkably, the number of species in the Western Desert is considerably smaller than that of the Eastern Desert. With 39 percent, the number of species in the mountainous area of the Eastern Desert is more than twice as much as that of the Western Desert and almost equals the species richness of the Nile Valley and Delta. Even the number of species recorded for the small coastal plain bordering the Red Sea is considerable: 15 percent. The proximity to the sea, the variation in environmental conditions, and the effective concentration of rainwater in the wadi system seem to be favorable factors in this respect. The flora of the coastal plain is, for the most part, also present in the Red Sea mountains. At least 800 plant species occur in both these landscapes. Of these species, 32 percent is present in both areas and only 3 percent is unique for the coastal plain . The small percentage that is specific for the coastal plain can be attributed to the presence of salt marshes, an ecosystem that is characterized by its limited number of species. Certain species of the flora of the Red Sea mountains and the coastal plain are also present in the other phytogeographical districts. This is also true for the Gebel Elba area, where the Sudanian flora penetrates into the north. A group of large mountains, including the Gebel Elba, is located near the sea and causes much orographic rain. This is especially true for the north and northeast flanks, where even several moss species and ferns are quite abundant on the higher latitudes. A total of 443 different vascular plant species have been recorded for the Elba mountains, and its botanical richness is in marked contrast with that of the mountains north of this area. The barren Red Sea mountains north of lat 23° N have only a limited plant cover.

On rock surfaces where some soil has accumulated and in the many small affluents through which the runoff water drains into the main wadi beds, short-lived plants are present in particular. Most of the vegetation is, however, concentrated in the wadi branches and consists of both ephemeral and perennial vegetation. The number of flowering plants in a particular wadi is estimated by Schweinfurth at 60 to 100 species. The vegetation in these wadis also penetrates the coastal plain close to the Red Sea, where it is finally replaced by a salt-marsh vegetation. These salt marshes can be quite small, as is the case in the delta of Wadi Gimal, or may penetrate inland for several kilometers. Plant growth in wadis is determined by the catchment area as well as the thickness and composition of the wadi filling. Small, shallow wadis are dominated by drought-tolerant plant species. Broad and deep wadi beds on the other hand, which are filled with sand deposits and are fed by a large mountainous area, act as natural reservoirs for large quantities of water. In such deep wadis, only the upper layers dry up completely. Remarkably, perennials with long roots can reach the deep water table and are able to survive in these restricted environments year round. Trees, such as Acacia tortilis, are mainly found in the transitional zone between the elevated terraces and the central part of the wadis and along the convex sides as this fringe optimizes the availability of groundwater and protection against erosive flood waters. Smaller perennial species, such as Chrozophora plicata and Cornulaca monacantha, that have successfully established themselves in the central part of the wadi are often badly damaged by previous floodings. The thick, woody stems indicate that such specimens have a considerable age. The terraces of the coastal plain support almost no vegetation: only ephemeral vegetation is present, this being dependent on rainfall.To facilitate a better interpretation of the sub-fossil record of wild plant species from Berenike and Shenshef, a small-scale inventory of the recent natural vegetation has been made.

This inventory of the vegetation is based on plants collected around Berenike, Kalalat, Khesm Umm Kabu, Hitan Rayan, Shenshef, and Qariya Mustafa ‘Amr Gama and on the description of 16 relevés located at Berenike, Kalalat, and Shenshef . A relevé is a vegetation sample which is deliberately chosen as being a uniform and representative sample of the plant community being described . It is stressed that, apart from the descriptions of the relevés, these inventories are biased by differences in the duration of the visits paid to these sites. A short visit will certainly result in an incomplete inventory, as many plants are relatively small in size due to an adaptation to moisture shortage in particular and may easily be overlooked if they are present in low frequencies. Gisekia pharnaceoides may serve as an example. This plant species is the only member of the Gisekiaceae in Egypt and is recorded for the Eastern Desert and the Gebel Elba area . Several specimens of this prostrate annual were found around Fort Kalalat and measured sometimes hardly more than 1 cm , whereas in the wadis of Gebel Elba this plant species is considerably larger. Under more favorable conditions, the stems may reach a length of 10 to 40 cm . The possibility that this particular plant species has been overlooked at other sites cannot be ruled out. The Roman settlements that have been less-intensively investigated are Khesm Umm Kabu, Hitan Rayan, and Qariya Mustafa ‘Amr Gama. The first two settlements were visited twice and the last one only once. In all of these locations, most of the plants that have been recorded originate from the wadi branches. Berenike, Shenshef, and Kalalat have been visited during all excavation seasons. Berenike was visited during the excavation seasons from 1994 to 1998, making it possible to look at the vegetation from late December until early March. The inventory covers the salt-marsh vegetation and the vegetation in the branches of Wadi Mandit west of Berenike and Wadi Umm el-Mandit south of the site. The inventory of the vegetation in the surroundings of the watering station Kalalat is based on the plant species that grows inside the fort and on the sand that has accumulated along the outside of the external walls. Additionally,plant raspberry in container plants from the wadi branches around the watering station and on the fl at coastal plain were listed. A thorough study of the plants around Shenshef could be made because one of the visits lasted for two weeks and took place after heavy rainfalls. Plants were collected from the main wadi branch and its affluents, from the slopes of the mountains, and from the terraces occupied by the former settlement . The completeness of the inventory is also affected by the time of the year. Although all sites were visited during the excavation seasons, which lasted from late December to early March, and the life cycle of most annuals coincide with this relatively mild part of the year—due to lower temperatures and availability of water— plant species may still have been missed because they had not yet germinated or were already withered. Identification of very young plants, lacking characteristic features of flowers and fruits was, however, still possible in most cases by using leaf characteristics and by looking at the germinated seed or fruit still attached to the root, which was easily gathered from the loose sand.

This last method proved to be successful especially with respect to grasses with a resistant fruit coat, such as Centropodia forsskalii, Aristida spp., and Stipagrostis spp. All Egyptian members of both last genera can easily be identified to the level of species on the basis of their fruit characteristics . Some other young plants lacked such characteristic features, such as Fagonia spp., and could therefore not be identified beyond the genus level. Finally, the sampling is further distorted by differences in the vegetation between years, which in turn are related to variations in precipitation. This seasonal phenology is witnessed in nonsaline ecosystems of the deserts . Some plant species, such as Arnebia hispidissima and Zilla spinosa, were observed every season, though in varying density, whereas others, such as Senna italica and Cleome amblyocarpa, were infrequently present in the same wadi branches.The plant composition in the relevés is summarized in Table 2.1. Although the size of the relevés is relatively small for a desert environment, the number of species is surprisingly high. It varies from 5 to 19 with a mean value of 13. Also the plant cover can be reasonable high as it varies from 10 percent to 85 percent. It has to be realized, however, that these inventories were made after heavy rainfall, resulting in exceptionally rich vegetation, which found its expression in both plant cover and in the proportion of ephemeral species. Ephemeral species have a short life cycle and need water only during a part of the year. The distinction between ephemerals and perennials is not exclusive, as some perennials such as Zilla spinosa, Pulicaria undulata, Farsetia ramosissima, Citrullus colocynthis, and Trichodesma africanum can also behave as ephemerals if there is a shortage of water. Common ephemeral species are Zygophyllum simplex, Lotononis platycarpa, Triraphis pumilio, Eragrostis ciliaris, Arnebia hispidissima, and Astragalus vogelii. Zilla spinosa is a perennial species that is present in most relevés, though mostly at a young stage of development as perennial species tend to develop more slowly. Z. spinosa is absent in the vicinity of the sea. The diversity of grasses is striking. A total of 16 species has been recorded, of which 15 grasses are also present in the relevés. With the exception of Rostraria pumila, which grows as a small grass in a wadi branch near the watering station Kalalat, all these grasses are C4-species. Such species are adapted to arid conditions by a different photosynthetic pathway and a regulation mechanism that minimizes evaporation. The distribution of the C4-grass species seems to be influenced primarily by temperature . In the southern part of the Eastern Desert C4-grasses make up 81 percent of the species, in the Red Sea coastal zone 93 percent, and in the southerly located Gebel Elba area even 95 percent. The high proportion of C4-grass species in the vicinity of the Roman installations corresponds quite well with these percentages. Most grass species become reasonably tall and produce a substantial amount of biomass for grazing, such as Aristida spp, Stipagrostis spp., Dichanthium foveolatum, Cenchrus ciliarus, and Panicum turgidum. In years with limited or no autumn rain, those species are heavily grazed .

Total DNA was isolated using an EDNA HiSpEx Tissue Kit , following the manufacturer’s protocol. This method is non-destructive, allowing slide mounting and morphological examination of the specimen after extraction. After DNA extraction, two separate gene regions were amplified using PCR: the conserved 28S-D2 domain of the large rRNA subunit and the cytochrome c subunit I of mitochondrial DNA . Post DNA extraction, specimens were transferred into 70% ethyl alcohol to prepare for slide mounting. Specimens were cleared in 5% NaOH for 12 h, processed through an alcohol dehydration series, placed in clove oil, and slide mounted in balsam . Specimens were identified to species using the online and interactive key of the “Thrips of California” . A representative from each haplotype generated from DNA analysis for this work was slide mounted and placed at the University of California, Riverside Entomology Research Museum as vouchers, and their collection numbers are included in Table 6-1. Representative species-specific sequences are deposited in GenBank. A BLASTN 2.2.19 search was used to compare sequences to existing Scirtothrips and Neohydatothrips sequences deposited in GenBank. Sequences were initially aligned manually in Bio-Edit version 6.0.7 . The COI sequences were all of equal length and contained no stop codons, with the first position equal to codon position one,blackberry container making alignment simple. The 28S-D2 included six ambiguous regions that were variable enough to make alignment difficult.

The six regions were coded as single multi-state characters in the analysis, or INNASE coding . This mixed alphabetical and numeric multi-state coding was treated as unordered and combined with the other data. Parsimony analyses using 1,000 random addition sequences and random starting trees were done on 1) the complete molecular data set , 2) molecular data with only 28S-D2 and 3) molecular data with only COI. All analyses were performed using PAUP 4.0* , with the complete matrix verified using TNT with a new technology search . Bootstrap values were generated in PAUP 4.0* using 1,000 BS replicates with two random heuristic searches for each replicate. Maximum Likelihood analyses and associated bootstrapping, were conducted on the complete molecular data set with RAxML v.7.2.7 via the CIPRES Science Gateway . Two gene partitions were included , and data were analyzed with 1000 rapid bootstrap replicates. None of the specimens collected from citrus in Texas were Scirtothrips; all thrips in the vials collected from multiple types of citrus were Frankliniella occidentalis and were therefore not included in any analyses for Scirtothrips citri or near citri. All specimens from California and Arizona keyed to Scirtothrips citri. The distinguishing features for S. citri include: 1) both sexes fully winged, 2) body mainly yellow without dark markings, 3) antennae 8-segmented with segments III – IV having forked sensorium and segments III-VIII grey, 4) head wider than long with ocellar triangle and postocular region having closely spaced sculpture lines, 5) three pairs of ocellar setae present with pair III close together between the anterior margins of the hind ocelli, 6) pronotum with closely spaced sculpture lines and the posterior margin with four pairs of setae, 7) metanotal posterior half with irregular longitudinal reticulations and median setae originating behind the anterior margin, 8) first vein of the forewing with three setae on the distal half , the second vein with three widely spaced setae and the posteromarginal cilia wavy, 9) abdominal tergites III – VI with median setae close together, tergites II – VIII with lateral thirds covered in closely spaced rows of fine microtrichia, these microtrichial fields had four discal setae, the posterior margin had a fine comb and the lateral discal microtrichia extended medially and lastly 10) abdominal sternites were without discal setae and the posterior margins were without a comb of microtrichia .

Morphological differences from the above on specimens from Florida , Mexico and Nicaragua could not be found and all were keyed to S. citri. The Florida citrus thrips collected from Mimosa sp. did not fit well into the Thrips of California key. The metanotal median setae arising at the anterior margin are in contrast to that of S. citri, where the metanotal median setae arise behind the anterior margin. All other characters appeared to be in congruence with S. citri. The thrips collected from Mimosa in Miami, Florida were keyed to Scirtothrips near citri. The specimens from Turkey were keyed to Scirtothrips citri using the Thrips of California key. Relationships were largely congruent among all analyses with the following exceptions: the group ‘Turkey_Hatey_citrus1_5’ in the combined tree and in the 28S-D2 alone tree as a sister group to the S. citri clade but these were placed without support along with S. aff dorsalis . This group switched positions, depending on the type of analysis. Results regarding S. citri will be discussed in terms of the combined parsimony analysis. The parsimony analysis of the complete molecular data set, including ambiguous region coding, resulted in 114 most parsimonious trees . The overall = consensus solution of all of the trees had no significant areas of conflict and collapsed with strong support for branches and monophyly of the groups. Further, analyses based upon exclusion of one gene region at a time resulted in trees with the following monophyletic groupings 1) Arizona and California, 2) Mexico-Nicaragua and 3) Florida . The group collected from Miami, Florida was sister to Scirtothrips bounites Mound & Marullo in all analyses. The RAxML analysis resulted in a single tree with a final Ln likelihood of -9,623.28. The parsimony and RAxML analyses both produced similar trees for the specimens collected in Arizona, California, Florida , Mexico and Nicaragua.

Clades Arizona and California, Mexico-Nicaragua, Florida and Florida , while morphologically indistinguishable, are highly molecularly divergent differing by 10-40 base pairs. The analyses conducted on molecular data confirmed that Scirtothrips citri in the Americas is not a single species but a complex of at least three molecularly divergent groups . The parsimony and maximum likelihood analyses both produced similar trees for the specimens collected in Arizona, California, Florida , Mexico and Nicaragua with the specimens collected from Turkey switching positions, depending on the type of analysis. Arizona and California specimens were morphologically identified using the Thrips of California key as ‘California’ citrus thrips and the Quincy , Mexico and Nicaragua specimens also keyed out as ‘California’ citrus thrips but this is not surprising as the key was developed for the known thrips found in California. The Miami citrus thrips collected from Mimosa sp. did not fit well into the Thrips of California key, which is again not surprising. Our molecular results suggested the specimens collected from Mimosa in Miami are S. bounites, although these specimens were identified as S. citri by a collaborator . To our knowledge, S. bounites has not been found in California to date but was collected from mango in Mexico . This suggests that without any consistent morphological differences, a cryptic species complex is likely present. The specimens collected from Turkey were morphologically keyed to S. citri but were grouped differently based on parsimony analyses of the two gene regions separately. The Turkey specimens in the 28S-D2 alone analysis were placed as the sister group to the overall ‘Scirtothrips citri’ clade however, in the COI alone analysis, the Turkey specimens are grouped within the Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood clade. These specimens do not share S. dorsalis specific characters such as microtrichia covering the sternites and straight wing cilia. In the parsimony and maximum likelihood combined gene region analyses,planting blueberries in a pot the Turkey specimens are placed as the sister group to the overall ‘Scirtothrips citri’ clade. The Turkey specimens did not appear to be different than S. citri morphologically and were included in the analysis because the group may be a new/related species to the ‘Scirtothrips citri’ clade. A comparison of bootstrap values between the individual gene trees suggests that 28S-D2 is driving the backbone of the combined tree. There is a need for further research into the relationships between the groups of S. citri presented here. Based on our molecular data, citrus thrips in California and Arizona are clearly different than those found in Quincy and Mexico-Nicaragua but morphological data suggests they are the same. These conflicting pieces of information illustrate the fact that morphological identifications may not be accurate enough especially when dealing with some organisms of economic importance. For example in a hypothetical situation, if specimens were detected and incorrectly morphologically identified as a species of economic concern but actually are a part of a non-economic clade, not distinguishing these groups could have serious import/export implications. Utilizing molecular markers for species identification and separation could be an immensely useful tool if/when morphological identifications are unclear. There are a few instances of cryptic species investigations with thrips and the development of molecular keys for many different types of thrips pests have aided in our understanding that thrips populations from various areas, or thrips collected from different host plants, are not necessarily all the same species, even if morphological analysis suggests this is the case.

Between 1994 and 2001 a joint expedition of the University of Delaware and Leiden University conducted eight seasons of excavations at the Ptolemaic-Roman emporium of Berenike on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. It was a great opportunity to work in an area that is usually closed for research, because it is part of Egypt’s border area with Sudan and is protected by the military. The Berenike Project was created as an interdisciplinary research effort involving a large number of archaeological specialists, who discussed their findings and interacted both on and off the site. Since many of the specialists were present on-site at the same time, preliminary results and conclusions could be shared and discussed often while excavations were in progress. This valuable collaborative effort could then be shared with those conducting the actual excavations. The annual reports on the excavations and specialists’ results have been published in six volumes, while the seventh, and last, is in preparation . These reports provide comprehensive interpretations and conclusions that have emerged over the years. At the end of this phase of fieldwork, however, it is time to publish an overview, and in the coming years several specialists will produce final reports. Although such final publications concentrate on specific artifact or material groups, they have the benefit of ongoing discussions among various Berenike team members. The result, in each case, will be a specialist’s report rooted in a broad basis of multidisciplinary insights . As the present volume amply demonstrates, the archaeobotanical research at Berenike provides essential information for our understanding of the subsistence patterns of the inhabitants, as well as the long-distance trade. The occurrence of exotic plant remains at Berenike changed through its history, with clear peaks in the first/second and fourth centuries CE. The results of the archaeobotanical research, therefore, provide extremely important information that supplements, complements, and, in some cases, changes the image that emerges from the ancient written sources. The variety of plants traded was larger than expected. Analysis of the well-preserved archaeobotanical remains found in our excavations at Berenike also indicates the regions with which the traders were in contact and when. This book will not only be interesting for archaeologists and archaeobotanists, but the comparison with written “classical” sources provides a fascinating read for historical and classical scholars as well. In some cases the Berenike finds provide evidence to propose new translations for Greek or Latin botanical terms, and correct current interpretations. Perhaps the most important result of the archaeobotanical research conducted at Berenike is the attested correlation between the harbor function, where goods were transferred from ship to caravan, and the amount and variety of goods that can be recorded. The items lost, purchased, or pilfered over the centuries at Berenike represent a micro version of the goods that were in demand throughout the Roman Empire as a whole. To research the imports used in Rome effectively, it is effective to start the investigation at the periphery of her empire: at Berenike, the harbor town through which many of these products once passed.

Citrus thrips are adapted to hot and dry environments and thus, they are less likely to have evolved natural tolerance to fungi, whereas, avocado thrips thrive in a very wet environment where exposure to fungi is more likely. The differences may be due to different habitat adaptations and the different origins of the two thrips species . We find it interesting that two congenerics have such widely different habitat preferences and this may explain differences in fungal tolerance. Differences were seen when citrus thrips and avocado thrips were placed on leaves of their associated host plants, then placed separately in sealed zip-lock bags where the moisture that condensed in the bags was lethal to citrus thrips but not to avocado thrips. Thus, it is possible that avocado thrips, due to their adaptation to living in cool and wet climates , have a higher tolerance to fungal pathogens, as they may encounter them more frequently than citrus thrips, which prefer a hot and drier climate . Many researchers have investigated alternatives to traditional insecticides such as biopesticides, i.e. natural or organismal methods of controlling pest populations. The utilization of entomopathogens against thrips is not a new concept; entomopathogenic fungi, such as, Metarhizium anisopliae Sorokin , Neozygites parvispora Remaudière & Keller , Verticillium lecanii Viegas , and Paecilomyces fumosoroseus Brown & Smith have also been used in laboratory and greenhouse trials with much success,large plastic pots for plants whereas field trials have shown limited successes.

However, various strains of B. bassiana have been shown to effectively control western flower thrips on greenhouse ornamentals and peppers , and several reports indicated that F. occidentalis, Thrips palmi Karny and T. tabaci Lindeman were successfully controlled under field or laboratory conditions . In conclusion, both citrus and avocado thrips can be infected by B. bassiana but high doses may be required, especially for avocado thrips. These high doses are difficult to obtain outside the laboratory and application of such doses would be costly. We believe B. bassiana is not a sufficiently effective alternative to traditional insecticides to warrant further study with avocado thrips, particularly because the commercially available strain GHA gave poor control on avocado thrips, but it may have potential against citrus thrips in an integrated pest management program. Further studies are warranted to determine if GHA could be used in field control of citrus thrips. Citrus thrips, Scirtothrips citri , has been recognized as a major pest of California citrus since the 1890s and is also known to scar mango fruits . Historically, highbush varieties of blueberries could only be grown in regions too cold for citrus production . However, breeding efforts to cross the northern highbush blueberries with several other Vaccinium species led to the development of heat-tolerant highbush blueberry varieties . This has enabled the establishment of a blueberry industry in the San Joaquin Valley, a region where both citrus and citrus thrips flourish . The known host range of citrus thrips has broadened and in recent years, they have become a significant pest of blueberries planted in the San Joaquin Valley of California .

Citrus thrips feed on blueberry foliage during the middle and late portions of the season causing distorted, discolored, and stunted flush growth and poor development of fruiting wood required to obtain the subsequent crop. Repeated pesticide applications of the few effective and registered pesticides to reduce thrips populations pose a concern regarding pesticide resistance management, and this issue is relevant not only to the blueberry industry but also for the 108,665 ha of California citrus which has experienced repeated documented cases of pesticide resistance in citrus thrips populations . Currently, there are no integrated pest management plans available for control of citrus thrips in blueberry, probably due to the recent nature of this crop-pest association. With a limited number of pesticides available for thrips control and the frequency of insecticide resistance shown by thrips, populations should be monitored carefully, treatments limited to populations of economic concern, and applications timed optimally . Appropriate cultural practices and conservation of natural enemies should be practiced in concert with the use of pesticides only on an as-needed basis. Understanding citrus thrips’ life history in the blueberry system to determine where and if susceptible stages could be exploited, is one of the first steps in the development of alternative methods to the use of traditional insecticides. In citrus, citrus thrips pupation occurs on the tree in cracks and in crevices, however, the majority of thrips drop as late second instars from trees to pupate in the upper layer of leaf litter below trees and move upward onto the plant after adult eclosion. Propupae and pupae are rarely seen, move only if disturbed, and do not feed.

Pupation in the upper layers of the soil surface may create the ideal interface for control using the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana Vuillemin due to this vertical movement of the citrus thrips. However, blueberry plants have much different plant architecture than citrus trees and citrus thrips pupation behavior has yet to be studied on blueberries. In the U.S., pressure is increasing to move away from broad-spectrum insecticides and focus on alternative methods of control. Earlier work with B. bassiana determined that the commercially available strain, GHA , was the most effective of six strains tested in laboratory trials against citrus thrips . The goal of this study was to determine if this strain of B. bassiana could be utilized effectively against citrus thrips in California blueberry production. To achieve this objective, several factors of importance to fungal efficacy were evaluated before commencement of our field trial: 1) location of citrus thrips pupation in commercial blueberry plantings, 2) field sampling locations and methods, 3) fungal formulation and timing of application, and 4) density of product used and method of thrips infection. We then conducted a field trial evaluating the potential utility of the GHA strain of Beauveria bassiana in commercial blueberries for citrus thrips management as a possible alternative to the use of traditional insecticides. Because of the complex arrangement and number of blueberry canes arising from the rhizome of commercial blueberry plants, we first evaluated movement of second instar citrus thrips on potted single cane blueberry plants in the laboratory. Known numbers of late second instar citrus thrips were released onto the leaves of potted blueberry plants in the lab. Paper sprayed with Tangle Trap sticky coating was placed a) at the base of the plants with a ring of sticky tape around the base of the stem and partially on the stem of the plant to capture any insects crawling down, and b) extending from the base of the plant horizontally outward above the pot surface to ensure complete coverage of the area covered by the plant canopy . This experiment was replicated on a single potted plant over time on 7 dates . Data were analyzed using Fisher’s exact test using SAS 9.2 . At our planned field trial site that would later be used in the B. bassiana trial, pupation emergence cages were used to sample insects moving off foliage towards pupation sites and later emerging out of the soil after pupation. Cages were made from Schedule 40 white PVC pipe with a diameter of 10.2 cm with cages cut to a height of 5.1 cm. The cage was then topped with a double-sided sticky card cut to fit, which was fixed into place with two elastic bands. Four lines of four cages were pushed into the soil to a depth of approximately 1 cm immediately adjacent to each other at the base of a blueberry plant and oriented in a cardinal plane to determine which direction showed the most thrips activity. The four adjacent cages in a particular plane were used to assess thrips movement in the understory of the blueberry plant in each directional. The study was replicated on 5 plants on a single date and conducted just prior to the commencement of the field trial. Data were analyzed with a nested ANOVA using SAS 9.2. In a greenhouse trial, Mycotrol O ® was applied directly to the soil surface as raw spores and compared to the same product colonized onto millet seed,plant pots with drainage also using soil application. Millet seed colonization used the Stanghellini and El-Hamalawi method as described below. The colonized millet seed, when allowed to imbibe water and incubate in the laboratory, can support 1.0 x 106 conidia/seed . Based on Stanghellini et al. with modification, we held the GHA colonized millet seed in containers such that the seed mat was at a depth of no greater than 2.54 cm.

The seeds were wet with the consistency of very thin slurry and were gently stirred three times per day for four days to ensure they imbibed water properly so that mycelial growth and sporulation would occur. Sporulation was confirmed by slide mounting random sections of mycelia and checking for condia formation under the microscope. Once spores were initially observed, the seed was held an additional three days so that sporulation could continue before use of the colonized seed in the field study. Mycotrol O® was applied in the maximum recommended field rate for high thrips levels of 2.84 L of material in 378.5 L of water. The colonized millet seed was tested in the greenhouse to determine if late second instar citrus thrips would become infected if they crawled over or through the seed when it was placed at the base of a laurel sumac seedling. A single small laurel sumac seedling, about ~10 cm tall, was placed into each of ten, 9.5 x 9.5 x 18 cm styrene cages with 6 cm diam air holes on all four sides that were covered with ultra fine mesh screening . Small holes were made in the bottom of the container and covered with pebbles to allow for drainage, then soil was added to a depth of 7.62 cm and the top of the container was covered with a removable lid. The base of each plant was completely surrounded by either B. bassiana colonized millet seed or with uncolonized seed . A minimum of 20 late second instar thrips were released onto the leaves of each plant, and were left until enough time had passed for the thrips to molt to the propupal stage. The seedling was then cut at the soil line and examined for pupating thrips; the removable lid of the cage was sprayed with Tangle Trap sticky coating to collect any emerging adults after 5 days so infection could be measured. The study was replicated on 5 dates . Data were analyzed using 1-way ANOVA with time as a factor and means were separated using Tukey’s Least Significant Difference test using SAS 9.2. To determine the optimum number of colonized millet seeds needed for close to 100% infection when thrips were seeking pupal refuges off the plant, varying amounts of colonized seed were evaluated in a greenhouse trial based on the size of the seed once it had imbibed water and sporulation had occurred. After water inhibition, nine seeds completely filled one square cm of soil surface. There was a 0.5 cm buffer area around all sides of the cage, which was kept clear of seed to provide a 9 x 9 cm grid of seed on the soil surface below the plant. All but two leaves were plucked from the seedling. Small holes were made in the bottom of the container, which was covered with pebbles to allow for drainage. The 9 x 9 cm2 grid was created from wire screen and differing amounts of sporulating seed or seed alone were placed on the light imprint made from the wire screen on the soil surface. Two replicate seedlings per treatment were set up per date in a complete block design . Plants were watered every third day. A minimum of 20 late second instar thrips were placed onto the leaves of the plant, and were left until enough degree-days had passed for the thrips to molt to the propupal stage, typically about 5 days. The seedling was then cut at the soil line and examined for pupating thrips; the removable lid was sprayed with Tangle Trap sticky coating to collect any emerging adults after another 5 days.

Although anthocyanin content was not affected, anthocyanin composition was modified by treatments from mid-ripening to harvest . Berry skins of ST and LRST grapevines showed a lower 3’4’5’/3’4′ ratio leading to increased proportion of cyanidins and peonidins in detriment of malvidins which was the most abundant anthocyanin found in berry skins . During the monitored period, different canopy management practices modified berry flavonol content . The berries from LRST grapevines showed the greatest berry skin flavonol content, while, at harvest, the flavonol content of LR, ST, and LRST was similar and greater when compared to the UNT content. Not only canopy management practices modified flavonol content but they also affected their composition. The LRST treatment had a higher proportion of kaempferol and quercetin from midripening to harvest and lower of proportion of myricetin after veraison . As expected, berry IBMP content decreased throughout ripening with all the canopy management practices tested in this study . However, we found the significant differences among treatments after veraison and at harvest. The LRST treatment resulted in the lowest IBMP content from mid-ripening to harvest. Correlation analysis between the monitored variables at harvest revealed a strong relationship between canopy architecture variables and berry flavonol content . Moreover,drainage for plants in pots canopy porosity was strongly correlated to the kaempferol proportion in berry skins . On the other hand, a lower yield due to canopy management practices was related to decreased IBMP and increased flavonol content .

Finally, a strong relationship was found between TSS and TA with the leaf to fruit ratio . Finally, a higher solar exposure estimated as the kaempferol proportion was strongly correlated with decreased anthocyanin berry contents and yield .Analysis of labor operations cost of canopy management practices indicated that the most expensive canopy management practices was the LRST where growers received a 53% lower income per hectare. Thereby, productivity data provided evidence that the cost of producing a kg of anthocyanin and removing a µg of IBMP was 10-fold greater in LRST compared to UNT per ha .Yield components were mainly affected by shoot thinning practices, decreasing the number of clusters and yield per vine leading to unbalanced vines according to the previous studies . Yield per meter of row is increased quasilinearly with the increase in shoot density per meter of row as indicated by previous studies . The lack of effect of LR on yield was corroborated by several studies when a late leaf removal was applied. Moreover, Yu et al. and Cook et al. reported that grapevines may produce more leaves than required, especially in warm climates, therefore, the increase in canopy gaps and the diminution of external leaf layers did not elicit decreases in yield as they were not severe enough reductions to the functional leaf area. The RI between 5 and 10 is considered optimum for vine balance . Therefore, RI and leaf area to fruit ratio data reported with the grapevines subjected to shoot thinning were under cropped that led to lower yields. In our study, Cabernet Sauvignon vines were not able to modulate their vegetative biomass in response to canopy management practices applied. Previous studies showed that pruning mass values up to 1 kg/m of row were considered optimal under warm climate . In our experiment the pruning mass per meter of all treatments ranged from 0.5 to 0.7 kg/m without differences between treatments. Moreover, although the shoot counts were obviously different between treatments, we did not find differences in the pruning mass, that suggested lower lateral expansion and/or reduced shoot diameter with an increasing number of shoots as previously reported Brillante et al. . Consequently, we found that the mass of each shoot ranged from 28 and 25 g in UNT and LR, respectively, to 45 and 42 g in ST and LRST, respectively, corroborating work by Brillante et al. .

Martınez-Lüscher et al. reported negligible variation of berry mass of Cabernet Sauvignon due to higher solar exposure under irrigated viticulture. Similarly, berry masses remained unaffected by a higher solar exposure of the cluster due to canopy management practices unless they were directly exposed to sunlight where berries may suffer dehydration as previously reported by Mijowska et al. . This has been attributed to the effect of the higher temperatures with subsequent increases in berry transpiration that affected cell division and elongation . Under our experimental conditions, shoot thinning treatments hastened berry ripening by enhancing the TSS to ca. 2.5°Brix and decreasing must titratable acidity by 0.6 g•L−1 at harvest. Thus, overexposure has been related with higher pH due to the elevated temperature that berries overcome and the subsequent organic acid degradation . Nevertheless, Wang et al. recently suggested that changes on the source-to-sink ratio induced by shoot thinning might have more influence on berry maturity than the change in the microclimate they reported.Cultural practices have been related to increased anthocyanin content . However, in agreement with other studies , under our experimental conditions, berry anthocyanin content did not increase due to LR, ST or LRST. Similarly, anthocyanin content was not affected by mild exposure in berries collected from the commercial vineyardeither. Increasing exposure was detrimental for anthocyanin content as the overexposed berries were subjected to higher temperatures that may have impaired their accumulation . The anthocyanin berry content at harvest is the result between synthesis and degradation rates. It was reported anthocyanin synthesis may be up-regulated by greater exposure . Therefore, ST and LRST increased the anthocyanin content at mid-ripening because of the increasing solar exposure . Additionally, it was recently highlighted that some members of the dihydroflavonol reductase and UFGT genes required for anthocyanin biosynthesis were moderately up-regulated in LR treated berries leading to increases of anthocyanin content at mid-ripening . However, at harvest, no significant effect of canopy management practices on anthocyanin content was found, and this result is corroborated by Pastore et al. who reported no beneficial effect due to higher cluster exposure in warm climates.

Although cultural practices may induce different cluster temperatures by increasing exposure, we did not find a clear relationship between exposure and cluster temperature when kaempferol proportion are low suggesting that results of this work were mainly explained by different exposures. Nevertheless, under elevated temperatures, a down-regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis and enhanced rates of degradation have been reported . Those authors suggested that high temperature induced anthocyanin degradation by enhancing the expression of VviPrx31 and consequently the peroxidase activity. Likewise, overexposed berries with kaempferol proportions greater than 10% were subjected to higher temperatures that dramatically decreased anthocyanin content. Matus et al. reported that flavonol content increased by two-fold in exposed berries compared to non-exposed. Our results corroborated this finding partially, depending on the level and duration of exposure, canopy position of the berries, and orientation of the vineyard. Therefore, when flavonol proportion was below 10% of kaempferol, flavonol content increased; but would decrease after this inflection point due to degradation. Matus et al. further indicated that this increase in flavonol may be driven by the up-regulation of MYB12 and flavonols synthase 4 due to the greater exposure suggesting that FLS4 could be a target of MYB12 in grapevine. Accordingly, Sun et al. found that increased accumulation of flavonols in light exposure berries, were accompanied by the up-regulation of several genes of the FLS gene family suggesting that they may be functionally redundant in response to light signal. During the experiment conducted in the 2019 growing season, the kaempferol proportion increased in LR and ST treatments,growing raspberries in pots but largest increase was measured when ST and LR were applied concurrently. Likewise, the higher the degree of exposure degree a greater kaempferol accumulation was observed during the 2017 growing season. The increase in kaempferol in total proportion of flavonols was accompanied with a concomitant decrease of quercetin and myricetin proportions. These results are corroborated with our previous work performed on Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. , and by others on Cabernet Sauvignon, Nero d’Avola, Raboso Piave, and Sangiovese in Italy . We previously reported the proportion of kaempferol was a feasible tool for accounting the solar radiation received by berry due to the greater canopy porosity and this corresponded to the 1930 W·m−2 of global radiation accumulated at the research site in Experiment 3. On the other hand, the higher proportion of quercetin derivatives in detriment of myricetin derivatives found in LR vines has been related to down regulation of F3’5’H family genes . Previous work on red grapevine berries, indicated that IBMP content decreased with greater solar exposure due to the canopy management practices during berry ripening . In our work, the lowest IBMP content was measured in LRST berries. Our results indicated a negative and linear relationship between leaf to fruit ratio and IBMP content. Conversely, the relationship between kaempferol proportion and IBMP was not significant. Therefore, our data suggested that the decrease of IBMP content was better explained by changes in the source-sink balance rather than differences in solar exposure. Likewise, Koch et al. provided evidence that solar exposure affected IBMP content to a greater extent when canopy porosity was enhanced before fruit set and not during berry ripening corroborating our results.

The lower berry IBMP content was explained by a diminution of the accumulation rates rather than increased rates of degradation due to canopy management practices and restriction of applied water between fruit set and veraison in a warm climate.Vineyard-fl oor management strategies, such as weed control and cover-cropping, have wide-ranging impacts both inside the vineyard, in terms of crop management and productivity, and outside the vineyard, in terms of runoff and sediment movement into streams and rivers. The increasing importance of water-quality issues statewide, including in Monterey County where the Salinas River drains into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, highlights the need for management strategies that limit environmental impacts. Growers are interested in alternative weed-control practices and cover crops, but they need information in order to balance benefits with the economic realities of wine-grape production. We established a 5-year experiment in a commercial vineyard in Monterey County with the intent of identifying effective practices that can be integrated into the cropping system without negatively affecting winegrape production. The vineyard floor consists of two zones: the rows, a 2- to 4-foot-wide swath underneath the vines, which are managed primarily to control weeds by herbicide applications or cultural practices ; and the middles, interspersed between the rows, which are vegetated by cover crops or resident vegetation in the dormant season, and are tilled or left untilled in spring. Growers manage weeds in rows to reduce competition for water, nutrients and light , and to prevent tall-statured weeds such as horse weed  from growing or climbing into the canopy, where they interfere with harvest. Growers transitioning to more sustainable production systems need information on how management practices affect the physical properties, health, organic matter and water retention of soil. We monitored soil microbial activity for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and soil microbial biomass, since weed control and cover-cropping can affect populations of beneficial soil microbes in annual crops . Many California growers are also willing to plant cover crops because they protect soil from nutrient and sediment loss in winter storms , suppress weeds , harbor beneficial arthropods , enhance vine mineral nutrition and increase soil organic matter . Competition between vines and cover crops for soil moisture in spring, when both are actively growing, can lead to severe water stress and reduce grape production . However, wine-grape production is distinct from other cropping systems because water stress may be imposed to enhance wine composition ; this practice has been studied mostly in high-rainfall regions of California. The vineyard production region of Monterey County, in contrast, has low rainfall , and growers must weigh the benefits of cover crops with the possible need to replace their water use with irrigation. In addition, growers must decide on the type of vegetation to utilize in the middles. Resident vegetation is cheap and generally easy to manage. Cover crops can provide specific benefits such as nitrogen fixation or high biomass production and vigorous roots . There are many choices for cover crops in vineyard systems, ranging from perennial and annual grasses, to legumes . Each species has strengths and weaknesses, as well as associated seed and management costs.

However, for the control condition, results indicated that there was a significant difference between the explicit high and low blendedness groups on the harmony versus conflict IAT measure, t=-2.16, p=.034 . Similarly to the overall pattern of results, this result suggested that Mexican American participants who explicitly self-identified as being high in blendedness, implicitly self-identified weaker with harmony compared to those explicitly low in blendedness. Results further indicated that there were no other significant differences among the other three means analyses . In all, Study 2 offered an examination of BII through assessments of thoughts that cannot be consciously controlled. In particular, results indicated that the experimental manipulation did not work across both measures of BII. The overall effects for both the harmony vs. conflict IAT and the blendedness vs. distance IAT showed that the Mexican American participants implicitly self-identified stronger as being harmonious and blended biculturals relative to being more conflicted and distant biculturals. When examining the findings in regards to explicit and implicit BII, a mixed pattern of results begins to emerge. In particular, an explicit attachment to blendedness seems to account for a weaker implicit Self + Harmony association. This argument is corroborated by both correlational analyses which showed that the more Mexican American participants explicitly self-identified as being a blended bicultural,25 liter square pot the less they implicitly self-identified as being a harmonious bicultural and means analyses which indicated that Mexican American participants who explicitly self-identified as being high in blendedness showed an implicitly weaker self-attachment to harmony compared to those explicitly low in blendedness.

What is interesting is that both types of analyses were attenuated by the control group, which was void of any experimental manipulation influence. What is also interesting is the lack of correlations between the harmony vs. conflict IAT and the battery of explicit acculturation and outcomes measures. This was not the case for the blendedness vs. distance IAT. This IAT showed at least two significant correlations. In essence, the more Mexican American participants implicitly self-identified as being a blended bicultural, the less they explicitly prefer the separation strategy and the less they explicitly identify with U.S. culture. Taken together, these results showed the usefulness of using IAT methodology to examine the underlying dynamics of bicultural identity at an implicit level. However, a thorough discussion is needed to explain these data in light of theory which will be addressed in the following section. Study 1 examined differences in the strength of identification with both ethnic and mainstream cultures among multi-generational Mexican American college students using IAT methodology. That is, the extent to which Mexican American participants implicitly endorsed Berry’s four acculturation strategies using a 3 IAT design. In all, the results form Study 1 showed the usefulness of the 3 IATs design to examine implicit acculturation. Given that the Self + Mexican association was stronger than the Self + American association across all three IATs suggests that the Mexican American participants implicitly showed a stronger preference for the separation strategy relative to the other three acculturation strategies. This finding is particularly interesting given that using this type of methodology yields findings not only for an implicit bicultural identity as Devos found, but also for other acculturation strategies such as the separation strategy.

Another goal of Study 1 was to examine the differences between how familiarity and experiences may foster associations between the self and cultures. Recall that perhaps familiarity with the broadly defined cultures itself rather than identification with the cultures accounted for the obtained results found in Devos’s study. Devos studies did not include a battery of acculturation and outcomes measures in order to examine the familiarity versus experiential accounts and provide a more comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the acculturation experiences. However, the present research did undertake such an endeavor. Results from Study 1 showed that all three IAT measures were correlated with a variety of explicit acculturation and outcomes measures. For instance, the less Mexican American participants implicitly self-identified with American culture relative to Korean culture, the less proficient they were in using English, the more proficient they were in using Spanish, the more affirmation, belonging, and commitment was felt towards their Mexican identity, the less acculturative stress they encountered such as linguistic and work, the more they self-identified with their Mexican culture, and the less these participants were open to experiences. Furthermore, the stronger Mexican American participants implicitly self-identified with Mexican culture relative to Korean culture, the older the participants, the less they explicitly self identified with mainstream culture, and the more depressed they felt. In all, these patterns of results seem to go beyond the familiarity account and show that cultural experiences do help foster associative links between the self-concept and culture. Study 2 went beyond the realm of Study 1 and examined the underlying dynamics of bicultural identity at an implicit level. That is, the extent to which Mexican American bicultural college students implicitly negotiates or integrates their dual cultural identities into their self-concept. Overall, results indicated that the experimental manipulation did not work across both measures of BII.

Results for the implicit data further indicated that Mexican American participants implicitly self-identified stronger as being harmonious and blended biculturals relative to being more conflicted and distant biculturals. However, when examining the findings in regards to both explicit and implicit BII, a mixed pattern of results emerges. A very interesting find for Study 2 showed that an explicit attachment to blendedness seems to account for a weaker implicit Self + Harmony association. This argument is corroborated by both correlational and mean analyses. Though these results seem contradictory, they actually illuminate a very impressive and unexpected find. A further examination into these findings suggested that these results are not contradictory, but perhaps reflect a contrast between the implicit and explicit self-concepts among individuals varying in BII. Although the main experimental manipulation failed to work as a priming technique, the IAT may have served as a priming tool to elicit such an effect. In particular, the harmony vs. conflict IAT may have worked as a means of priming the Mexican American bicultural participants by exposing them to words that ignited the negotiation of their dual cultural orientations across two levels of awareness.According to social cognition research on priming, words can also be used to prime individuals in order to elicit a certain response . In the case of Study 2, Mexican American bicultural participants may have been primed with the pre-tested synonym words that represented the harmony vs. conflict dimension of BII and elicited a contrast effect. That is, the words that the bicultural participants were exposed to initiated the negotiation process of their dual cultural identities and subsequently resulted in a discrepancy between their implicit and explicit self-concepts. In essence, the explicit attachment to blendedness seems to account for a weaker implicit Self + Harmony association. Correlational analyses showed that the more Mexican American participants explicitly self-identified as being a blended bicultural, the less they implicitly self-identified as being a harmonious bicultural and means analyses further indicated that Mexican American participants who explicitly self-identified as being high in blendedness showed an implicitly weaker self-attachment to harmony compared to those explicitly low in blendedness. It is important to note that both of these analyses were attenuated by the control condition, which was void of the experimental manipulation influence . What was also interesting is the lack of correlations between the harmony vs. conflict IAT and the battery of explicit acculturation and outcomes measures. Finally,gallon pot when comparing the means of the harmony vs. conflict IAT to the blendedness vs. distance IAT, results suggested that Mexican American participants implicitly showed a significantly stronger self-attachment to harmony relative to the self + blendedness association. Social cognition literature provides some possible explanations for understanding why contrast effects occur. If a prime is perceived as incompatible with the target’s self concept then contrast effects emerge . For instance, priming participants with Albert Einstein which is often viewed as extremely different from most peoples’ self-concept led participants to fewer correct answers on a knowledge test versus being primed with a professor which led to more correct answers on the same test . In all, primes that are considered different from and inconsistent with the target’s self-concept in turn lead to contrast effects .

This literature is consistent with the three major implications of the self-concept. First, information about the self concept is processed faster and more efficiently, especially consistent information . Second, one retrieves and remembers information that is relevant to one’s self-concept. Third, one will tend to resist information in the environment that is inconsistent with one’s self-concept . Results from Study 2 suggest that any incoming cultural information that is in congruent with the biculturals self-concept may result in a contrast effect. When considering the influx of cultural information that affects a biculturals self-concept, it is important to remember the underlying mental processes in which cultural information is processed. Perhaps the incoming cultural information led the Mexican American biculturals to engage in the negotiation of their two cultural orientations at two distinct levels of awareness. Research on dual-systems model would support this notion. According to research on dual-systems model , cultural information can be processed implicitly, impulsively or associative versus explicitly, reflective, or propositionally. Cultural information that is processed implicitly or associatively is believed to represent the implicit self-concept and process information by the spread of activation between concepts that are associatively linked. The implicit self-concept reflects automatic responses which result from the particular associations that are triggered automatically when a person encounters a relevant stimulus . On the other hand, cultural information that is processed in the form of propositions is believed to represent the explicit self-concept and process information through introspection. The explicit self concept is best considered as evaluative judgments about the self-concept which stem from the processes of propositional reasoning . There are several important aspects of associative processes that underlie the implicit self-concept which are important to consider. First, pattern activation refers to the notion that the activation of particular associations in memory is dependent on the comparative fit between: 1) the preexisting structure of associations in memory and 2) the particular set of external input stimuli . In the case of Study 2, the comparative fit between the external stimuli and the implicit self-concept may have been strong enough to trigger the negotiation process between the participant’s dual cultural identities. Second, associative evaluations are best characterized as automatic affective reactions when a person encounters a relevant stimulus . Recall that the harmony vs. conflict dimension of BII is affect driven, thus is makes sense that it served as a relevant stimulus to activate the negotiation process in the participant’s implicit self concept. Third, associative processes are void of truth values, unlike propositioning reasoning, which means that they are often not personally endorsed by the individual . Therefore, if implicit evaluations can be activated regardless of whether a person considers these evaluations as accurate or not, then it is quite possible for inconsistencies to exists between the implicit and explicit self-concepts. In all, research on the dual-systems model helps to explain the obtained results found in Study 2. In particular, individuals varying in BII were exposed to cultural information that ignited the negotiation process of their dual cultural orientations within the self-concept, thus creating a contrast effect between their implicit and explicit self concepts. Collectively, the results of Study 2 and the research on culture, the self concept, and dual-systems model, have important theoretical implications for BII. Recall that BII is an individual difference variable that underlies the dynamics of bicultural identification. Research on BII theory showed that cultural harmony is more affect driven and interpersonal component of the bicultural experience, whereas cultural blendeness captures the more perceptual and performance related aspects of the bicultural experience. Thus, when a bicultural individual high on cultural blendedness perceives his or her self as apart of a combined culture, his/her self-concept is placed in proximity to both cultures and orientations . On the other hand, when a bicultural individual high on cultural harmony states that his/her ethnic and mainstream cultural identities are quite compatible, he or she is expressing rapport and compatibility between each cultural orientation and membership . To advance BII theory, the inherent properties that characterize each pair of BII dimensions can be further understood in regards to the dual-systems model. That is, the harmony vs. conflict dimension of BII tends to capture elements of the implicit self concept of the bicultural experience.

Southern California’s Coachella and Imperial Valleys are major production regions for a wide variety of winter vegetables. Fields in these valleys are typically fallowed during the summer due to high temperatures that preclude the production of most vegetables. Recently, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, in conjunction with Riverside County Cooperative Extension, the Indio USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland, developed a cover crop mulch production system for this region using cowpea , a warm-season legume. This system relies on the use of large, bush-type cultivars. The cowpea is seeded into preshaped soil beds in June and August. When the cover crop is chopped and converted into a mulch, the above ground biomass can be as much as 2,542 pounds per acre , providing a surface matte that has been shown to control weeds, reduce parasitic nematodes, and provide for vegetable yields comparable to the current bare soil production system. This cover crop mulch production technique has also resulted in increased soil carbon, which is an important management goal of producers in the region.With the increase of cross-cultural contacts worldwide, new types of ethnic/cultural identities start to develop and take shape for individuals. Most of this research has examined the cross-cultural influences on identity by asking individuals to consciously answer questions using self-report measures. What is less known is to what extent cross-cultural contact influences identity outside of conscious awareness?

Thus, the present research examined to what extent individuals implicitly incorporate cross cultural knowledge and/or experiences into their self-concept. Due to the limitations of self-report measures in measuring the self-concept,black plastic planting pots the current research used the Implicit Associate Test  to assess implicit representations of the self-concept. The IAT’s main purpose is to measure the relative strength of automatic associations between mental representations of concepts. In particular, Study 1 examined differences in the strength of identification with both ethnic and mainstream cultures among multi-generational Mexican American college students. That is, the extent to which Mexican American participants implicitly endorsed Berry’s four acculturation strategies using a 3 IAT design. Study 2 went beyond the realm of Study 1 and examined the underlying dynamics of bicultural identity at an implicit level. That is, the extent to which Mexican American bicultural college students implicitly negotiates or integrates their dual cultural identities into their self-concept. A phenomenon known as Bicultural Identity Integration The findings across both studies are consistent with Devos and with the image rising from modern research on acculturation and bicultural identity that individuals often find themselves immersed into multicultural surroundings and define themselves along numerous cultural boundaries and incorporate into their self-concept knowledge about a variety of cultures. An important innovation of the present research provided evidence for acculturation strategies and the integration of bicultural identities into the self-concept through assessments of thoughts that cannot be consciously controlled. That is, the results of both studies clearly demonstrated that at least under certain circumstances, cultural knowledge and/or experience can implicitly be incorporated into the self-concept.

In today’s world it is nearly impossible to avoid the technological marvels that influence our daily lives. For instance, a typical night for any American might consist of playing online poker with 5 people from various cultures from around the world, watching a news broadcast of events unfolding in the Middle East, receive a telemarketing phone call from a center in India, and playing video games on a Japanese Nintentdo WII system. Not to mention the internet, texting, instant messaging, email, and cell phones all allow us to directly communicate and interact with individuals in other cultures that are half way around the world. As technology grows, cultures from around the world that were once isolated from each other are now interacting with one another. Technology is just one of many effects of globalization. Other effects of globalization include economic and financial , political , ecological , legal , and cultural . Of particular interest are the cultural impacts of globalization. For instance, seeing a McDonald’s in Delhi or a Starbucks Coffee located in Beijing’s Forbidden City are blazing symbols of the wonders of globalization. Global brands such as McDonalds and Starbucks Coffee are considered icons and carriers of American culture, whereas the Forbidden City and Delhi are considered symbols and carriers of Chinese and Indian cultures. The key premise about the cultural impacts of globalization is that it brings diverse cultures together. This type of multicultural environment can potentially allow for individuals to define themselves along multiple ethnic or cultural boundaries. The truth about globalization is that it offers a much more mixed, complex picture that contributes to a rich tapestry of multicultural experiences and identities for individuals. Globalization-based acculturation has led individuals from more and more countries to become multicultural. Historically, globalization was driven by factors such as colonization and slavery with the intent of creating a homogenized society.

In contemporary times, globalization-based acculturation serves the same purpose but is driven by other issues such as immigration, speed of travel and communication, and transnationalism. The difference is that although globalization is nothing new, it is more pervasive today than ever before. There is no doubt that as globalization advances in the twenty-first century, intercultural contact is increasingly becoming a worldwide norm consequently having an affect on the individual. With the increase of cross-cultural contacts worldwide, new types of ethnic/cultural identities start to develop and take shape for individuals. Chen, Benet Martinez, and Bond argue that globalization-based acculturation stresses identity issues as a central psychological outcome of globalization for individuals who define themselves along multiple ethnic or cultural boundaries. As a result, the cross-cultural influence on identity has received a good amount of attention in psychology over the two past decades . Most of this research has examined the cross-cultural influences on identity by asking individuals to consciously answer questions using self-report measures. What is less known is to what extent cross-cultural contact influences identity outside of conscious awareness? In fact, recent advances in the field of implicit social cognition argue that self-related processes frequently occur outside of conscious awareness or control . Thus, the present research examined to what extent individuals implicitly incorporate cross-cultural knowledge and/or experiences into their self-concept. As such, by understanding the basic social cognitive principles that underline the cultural dynamics of globalization on identity will help to advance the psychological research on culture and psychology. The cultural dynamics globalization has brought about in the world today is met with both support and criticism. Globalization is a complex phenomenon and has many different meanings. One widely accepted definition refers to globalization as a process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures become integrated through a globe spanning network of communication and exchange . Proponents of the cultural impacts of globalization believe that it is a profoundly enriching process that opens minds to new experiences, removes cultural barriers, strengthens the cultural diffusion of human rights, and accelerates cultural change. Proponents further believe that globalization will bring about a multicultural global environment in which people from different nations and cultural backgrounds will be able to freely share their ideas and practices and respect, appreciate and accept those who are of different origins In contrast, critics of the cultural impacts of globalization argue that it will destroy local cultures and undermine people’s sense of community and ethnic/cultural identity. As a result, people will resist the shifting cultural dynamics of globalization and will ignite cultural movements to preserve local culture. Critics are particularly worried about the impacts global brands have on local cultures, such as the McDonalds in Delhi or the Starbucks Coffee shop located in Beijing’s Forbidden City . Globalization-Based Acculturation to Psychological Acculturation Whether one is a critic or proponent of the cultural impacts of globalization,black plastic pots for plants one notion that both sides can agree on is the widespread cultural influence globalization has at both a macro and micro level. This widespread globalization influence is often referred to as acculturation which according to Berry exists at two levels: 1) a group/cultural level and 2) an individual/psychological level . Group acculturation refers to changes that occur within a society or culture when two different groups come into direct continuous contact . After such contact, changes in cultural patterns within either or both cultural groups become apparent. Psychological acculturation refers to changes that take place in an individual as a result of continuous and direct participation in a culture-contact situation .

Thus, a linkage is sought between the acculturation of an individual’s group and the psychological acculturation of that individual. In the past, there has been debate as to how to conceptualize psychological acculturation; is the construct unidimenisional or bidimensional? There is a growing consensus that psychological acculturation is not a linear process of assimilating and acquiring the host society’s values and behaviors at the expense of giving up one’s original cultural or ethnic identity . Bidimensional models of acculturation suggest that identifications with different cultural orientations are not mutually exclusive . The bidimensional model refers primarily to immigrant and ethnic minorities who are engaged in maintaining or preserving ethnic cultural identity and are also motivated or allowed to identify with the host culture . When these two dimensions traverse they form four distinct acculturation strategies: 1) Assimilation depicted as a strong identification with the host culture while weakly identifying with one’s own ethnic culture, 2) Separation referred to as strong identification with one’s own ethnic culture while weakly identifying with the host culture, 3) Marginalization characterized by weak identification with both cultures, and 4) Integration described as strong identification with both cultural orientations . Bidimensional models of acculturation have been shown consistently to be more advantageous than unidimensional models across an array of domains . Psychological Acculturation and Social Cognition There has been a wealth of research in the field of psychological acculturation . Much of this research has relied exclusively on the use of questionnaires to examine acculturation at a conscious level, i.e., people consciously dwelling on their acculturation experiences when asked via questionnaire methodology. However, due to the fact that globalization is a constant influential force in our daily lives, the question arises: “to what extent is psychological acculturation experienced out of reflective conscious awareness?” Some acculturation researchers state that advancements within the social cognition framework may benefit research on issues such as acculturation . Furthermore, the dynamic constructivist approach may lead to fresh insights about the psychology of acculturation . To get a better idea of how psychological acculturation can benefit from the social cognition perspective it is important to define social cognition and understand how it works. Social cognition refers to how people interpret, analyze, and remember information about the social world . It is concerned with how people process social information and apply this information to social situations. One central concept within the social cognition literature is “schemas”. Schemas are defined as generalized knowledge mental structures about the physical and social world, and how people interact with others in particular situations and with different kinds of people . To best illustrate how schemas work, it would be useful to compare them to a building under construction. That is, imagine the infrastructure of an unfinished building as a generalized mental structure that provides the framework to fill in the gaps of information derived from the surrounding social environment. Individuals use schemas to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. They allow for individuals to have certain expectations and prior knowledge so that they can navigate daily life. Schemas which are often learned through experiences and socialization provide a sense of prediction and control and help guide attention. In essence schemas functions so as to allow for individuals to have an active construction of social reality . Schemas are organized in memory as associative networks of concepts. In social cognition, concepts represent persons, groups, and attributes. These associative networks are bidirectional relationships between pairs of concepts and are variable in strength. In the associative networks, similar concepts are clustered together. Strength of association is reflected as when a particular concept is activated and related concepts are activated as well.

For ancestors, GC was iteratively estimated by MK between each ancestor and cultivars within a focal population, starting with the ancestor with the largest MK estimated from A, deleting that ancestor, re-estimating the coancestry matrix , selecting the ancestor with the largest MK estimated from the pruned coancestry matrix , deleting that ancestor, re-estimating the coancestry matrix, and repeating until every ancestor had been dropped. We compiled GC, B, and do estimates for every founder and non-founder in the pedigree database . We identified four F. chiloensis, five F. virginiana, and 40 F.  ananassa founders in the genealogy of the California population . Cumulative GC estimates for the California population were 1.8% for F. chiloensis, 12.7% for F. virginiana, and 85.5% for F.  ananassa founders. Four of the nine wild octoploid founders of the California population were founders of the historic Ettersburg population that supplied genetic diversity for private and public sector breeding programs in California . The wild octoploid founders with the largest GCs were three F. virginiana ecotypes: “New Jersey Scarlet” , “Hudson Bay” , and “Wasatch” . Wasatch is the F. virginiana subsp. glauca donor of the PERPETUAL FLOWERING mutation that Bringhurst et al. transferred into F.  ananassa . The Wasatch ecotype appears in the genetic background of every day-neutral cultivar developed at the UCD.Similarly, we identified 26 F. chiloensis, 24 F. virginiana,plant pot with drainage and 490 F.  ananassa founders in the genealogy of the Cosmopolitan population . Cumulative GC estimates for the Cosmopolitan population were 4.6% for F. chiloensis, 14.1% for F. virginiana, 79.9% for F.  ananassa, and 1.4% for other founders.

Similar to what we found for the California population, the wild octoploid founders with the largest GCs were “New Jersey Scarlet” and “Hudson Bay” . The next largest GC was made by FC_071 , an F. chiloensis ecotype of unknown origin found in the pedigrees of Madame Moutot, Sharpless, Royal Sovereign, and other influential early cultivars . A significant fraction of the alleles found in F.  ananassa populations have flowed through a comparatively small number of common ancestors, each of which have contributed unequally to standing genetic variation . The most important ancestors are described as “stars” in the lexicon of SNA, and are either locally or globally central . Globally central individuals reside in the upper-right quadrant of the B  do distribution , where B is the mean of B and do is the mean of do—8.7-8.9% of the ancestors that were classified as globally central . Locally central individuals reside in the upperleft quadrant of the B  do distribution —11.8- 12.1% of the ancestors were classified as locally central . “Tufts,” “Lassen,” “Nich Ohmer,” “Howard 17,” and “Fairfax” were among the biggest stars, along with several other iconic, mostly heirloom cultivars, and all were either locally or globally central . Stars are “gatekeepers” that have numerous descendants , transmitted a disproportionate fraction of the alleles found in a population , have the largest number of interconnections in the pedigree, and are visible in sociograms as nodes with radiating pinwheel-shaped patterns of lines . Several of the latter are visible in the sociograms we developed for the California and Cosmopolitan populations. Stars have the largest nodes in the sociograms . We estimated and compiled GC statistics for every ancestor in the California and Cosmopolitan populations . The twenty-most prominent and historically important ancestors of the California and Cosmopolitan populations are shown in Table 2.

They include several iconic and well known heirloom and modern cultivars, e.g., “Tioga,” “Douglas,” and “Royal Sovereign” , in addition to “unreleased” germplasm accessions preserved in the UCD Strawberry Germplasm Collection, e.g., 65C065P601 . The latter is the oldest living descendant of the aforementioned F. virginiana subsp. glauca “Wasatch” ecotype collected by Royce S. Bringhurst from the Wasatch Mountains, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah . The “Wasatch” ecotype is a founder of every day-neutral cultivar in the California population and many day-neutral cultivars in the Cosmopolitan population with alleles flowing through 65C065P601 and the UCD cultivar “Selva” . GC statistics were ordered from largest to smallest and progressively summed to calculate the cumulative GCs of ancestors and the number of ancestors needed to explain p% of the genetic variation in a focal population, where p ranges from 0 to 100% . The parameter n100 estimates the number of ancestors needed to account for 100% of the genetic variation among k cultivars in a focal population . n100 estimates were 153 for the California population and 3,240 for the Cosmopolitan population. The latter number was significantly larger than the number for the California population because the Cosmopolitan population includes pedigrees for 2,499 cultivars developed worldwide, whereas the California population includes pedigrees for 69 UCDcultivars only . Within European countries, n100 ranged from 25 for Belgium to 342 for England . Within the United States, n100 ranged from a minimum of 367 for the southern region to a maximum of 444 for western and northeastern regions. Predictably, np increased at a decreasing rate as the number of GC-ranked ancestors increased . Cumulative GC estimates increased as nonlinear diminishing-return functions of the number of ancestors .

The slopes were initially steep because a fairly small number of ancestors accounted for a large fraction of the genetic variation within a particular focal population. Across continents, regions, and countries, eight to 112 ancestors accounted for 50% of the allelic variation within focal populations . The differences in np estimates were partly a function of the number of cultivars within each focal population. When np was expressed as a function of k, we found that the proportion of ancestors needed to explain p% of the allelic variation in a focal population was strikingly similar across continents, regions, and countries, e.g., the Western US population, which had the largest n100 estimate , fell squarely in the middle when expressed as a function of k . Breeding speed and pedigree-informed predictive breeding in cultivated strawberry SNAs of the pedigree networks shed light on the speed of breeding and changes in the speed of breeding over the past 200 years in strawberry . We retraced the ancestry of every cultivar through nodes and edges in the sociograms . The year of origin was known for 71% of the individuals. These edges yielded robust estimates of the mean selection cycle length in years . S was calculated from thousands of directed acyclic graphs, which are unidirectional paths traced from cultivars back through descendants to founders . Collectively, cultivars in the California population visited 27,058 PO edges, whereas cultivars in the Cosmopolitan population visited 155,487 PO edges. The selection cycle length means and distributions over the past 200 years were strikingly similar across continents, regions, and countries—S was 16.9 years/generation for the California population and 16.0 years/generation for the Cosmopolitan population . These extraordinarily long selection cycle lengths are more typical of a long-lived woody perennial than of a fast cycling annual ; however, the speed of breeding has steadily increased over time . By 2000, S had decreased to six years/generation in the California population and 10 years/generation in the Cosmopolitan population . The genealogy does not account for lineages underlying what must have been millions of hybrid progeny screened in breeding programs worldwide; e.g., Johnson alone reported screening 600,000 progeny over 34 years at Driscoll’s . Cultivars are, nevertheless, an accurate barometer of global breeding activity and the only outwardfacing barometer of progress in strawberry breeding. When translated across the past 200 years of breeding,pot with drianage holes our selection cycle length estimates imply that the 2,656 cultivars in the genealogy of cultivated strawberry have emerged from the mathematical equivalent of only 12.9 cycles of selection . Even though offspring from 250 years of crosses have undoubtedly been screened worldwide since 1770, 15.5 years has elapsed on average between parents and offspring throughout the history of strawberry breeding . Because genetic gains are affected by selection cycle lengths, and faster generation times normally translate into greater genetic gains and an increase in the number of recombination events per unit of time , our analyses suggest that genetic gains can be broadly increased in strawberry by shortening selection cycle lengths. Genome-informed breeding and speed breeding are both geared towards that goal and have the potential to shorten selection cycle lengths and increase genetic gains .

We reconstructed the genealogy of strawberry to inform the curation of a historically important germplasm collection, forensically identify the parents of individuals without pedigree records, authenticate the parents of individuals with pedigree records, shed light on the domestication history of strawberry, and retrospectively examine where we have been and how we got there. The reconstruction was greatly facilitated by the availability of outstanding SNP genotyping platforms , the development of an extensive DNA profile database to complement the pedigree database , and the application of robust and highly accurate diploid exclusion analysis methods for parent identification and pedigree authentication. We provided an open-source R code to support future parentage analyses in agricultural species. Our backward-facing genealogy study, in retrospect, yielded unexpected insights about the complex hybrid ancestry and breeding history of cultivated strawberry that should inspire future generations and guide where we should go from here. Our critical examination of historical selection cycle lengths was meant to be provocative and perhaps inspire the implementation of strategies for increasing breeding speed and accelerating the improvement of strawberry. We suspect that improvements can be achieved, at least in part, through changes in breeding schemes and the application of pedigree-informed predictive breeding methods. The open-source pedigree database we compiled should find broad utility in predictive breeding schemes and can be easily expanded and modified for specific breeding problems, other populations, and future analyses. Because of the depth and completeness of the pedigree records commonly available in strawberry, pedigree best linear unbiased prediction has the potential to increase genetic gains and enhance selection decisions, especially when combined with genomic prediction . The pedigree database we assembled will facilitate the application of pedigree-BLUP and identity-by-descent prediction of alleles and haplotypes , in addition to providing a solid foundation for expanding the genealogy over time.We are grateful to Clint Pumphrey, the manuscript curator of the special collections and archives of the Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University . Clint assisted the first author with acquiring and researching the laboratory notebooks and other records of Royce S. Bringhurst , a former faculty member and strawberry breeder at the UCD . The documents and photos associated with the collection yielded extensive pedigree records that were crucial for reconstructing the genealogy of the UCD Strawberry Breeding Program. We are equally grateful to Phillip Stewart, a strawberry breeder at Driscoll’s , for sharing copies of the UCB, pedigree records of Harold E. Thomas , a former faculty member and strawberry breeder at UCB from 1927 to 1945. Those pedigree records greatly increased the completeness and depth of the database for the early years of the University of California Strawberry Breeding Program. The authors thank Thomas Sjulin, a former strawberry breeder at Driscoll’s , for sharing the public pedigree records he assembled over his career. SJK and GSC thank Robert Kerner for the computer forensic analyses that recovered several hundred pedigree records for UCD individuals from an obsolete electronic database, thus preventing the loss of those records for perpetuity. They were critical for integrating the UCD genealogy with the global genealogy for cultivated strawberry. SJK especially thanks Rachel Krevans, Matthew Chivvis, Jake Ewert, and Wesley Overson for their integrity, friendship, and steadfast support.Table grapes have become an important fresh commodity in Brazil for both internal market and exportation. Over the period of 2000–2016, Brazil presented an increase of ∼150% in table grape production, reaching around 970,000 MT in 2016 . The northern region of Paraná state is one of the main areas of table grape production. The mild winter and subtropical conditions of this region permit two crops of grapes per year, which allow Brazilian growers to time their production to coincide with market windows of other countries and compete for more advantageous prices. However, in these subtropical regions, berry ripening and harvest often occur during the rainy season, which is not ideal for Vitis vinifera cultivars because excess rain and moisture compromise the overall quality of the berries . Therefore, Brazilian table grape production is starting to incorporate American and/or hybrid grape cultivars that are better adapted to warm and rainy climates.

Arguably, absolute microbial population densities are more important than the relative proportion, because these determine the absolute production rates and concentrations of metabolites and signals of microbial origins. Rates of production of fermentation products need to be measured as an index of microbial community function. Further research into the characterization and metabolic activity of the gut microbiota may provide the key to the influence of the environment on colonic health and disease. Integrating the gut microbiome data with clinical nutritional assessment, food consumption monitoring, and host phenotyping measurements in future investigations are needed to focus on the identification of metabolic impacts that mediate the effect of diet on gut microbiota as well as their synergistic effect on host immune function, metabolism, and homeostasis.The earliest cultivars of allo-octoploid garden strawberry originated approximately 300 years ago from spontaneous hybrids between ecotypes of non-sympatric wild octoploid species: Fragaria chiloensis subsp. chiloensis from South America and Fragaria virginiana subsp. virginiana from North America. Several additional wild octoploid subspecies have since been used as parents in breeding,large pot with drainage creating an admixed population of F. × ananassa individuals with genomes that are mosaics of phylogenetically and demographically diverse progenitor genomes.

While several subgenome origin hypotheses have emerged from cytogenetic, phylogenetic, and comparative genetic mapping studies, a complete hypothesis for the origin and evolution of the octoploid genome was only recently proposed with the publication of the “Camarosa” reference genome. Through phylogenetic analyses of the transcriptomes of all described extant diploid species, including four subspecies of Fragaria vesca, the putative subgenome donors found in the octoploid were identified as F. vesca subsp. bracteata, Fragaria iinumae, Fragaria viridis, and Fragaria nipponica. Edger et al. provided strong support for earlier hypotheses that F. vesca and F. iinumae were two of the four subgenome donors. Until the octoploid reference genome was published, the origin of the other diploid subgenome donors had remained unclear, although multiple hypotheses had been proposed. Liston et al.then reasoned that Edger et al.may have misidentified two of the progenitors due to bias from excluding in-paralogs in their phylogenetic analyses. To address this concern, Edger et al. developed a chromosome-scale assembly of the F. iinumae genome and reanalyzed the original data with in-paralogs. The revised analysis supported the original model that the genome of octoploid strawberry originated through successive stages of polyploidization involving four progenitor species: diploid × diploid → tetraploid × diploid → hexaploid × diploid → octoploid ancestor. In addition, the chromosome-scale genome assembly showed that the diploid subgenomes were not static building blocks walled off from one another. Rather they have dynamically evolved through homoeologous exchanges, which are well-known in neopolyploids. Homoeologous exchanges in octoploid strawberry were found to be highly biased toward the F. vesca subsp. bracteata subgenome replacing substantial portions of the other subgenomes.

However, homoeologous exchanges are not unidirectional. Although the chromosomes are architectural mosaics of the four diploid subgenome donors and their octoploid descendants, F. × ananassa is strongly allo-octoploid. Because the F. × ananassa chromosomes are complex admixtures of genes with different phylogenetic histories via homoeologous exchanges, Edger et al.developed a nomenclature that precludes oversimplified oneto-one assignments to a specific diploid progenitor. The F. × ananassa genome has not only been reshaped by polyploidization events, especially homeologous exchanges, gene-conversion, and selection , but by repeated interspecific hybridization in breeding that has resulted in the introgression of alleles from phylogenetically and demographically diverse F. chiloensis and F. virginiana ecotypes. At this point in time, the decades long debate among geneticists and evolutionary biologists about the origin of the F. × ananassa genome seems to have reached an initial zenith. Remaining disagreements might only be settled when chromosome-scale assemblies of the other hypothesized diploid progenitors are assembled and analyzed. Aside from the question of subgenome origin, what other evolutionary questions might be worthy of exploration at this juncture? First, while the four extant relatives of the diploid progenitors have been putatively identified, the history and timing of the intermediate polyploids remain poorly understood. When and where were the tetraploid and hexaploid ancestors formed? Are any of the known wild polyploids endemic to Asia descendants from these intermediate polyploids? Which subgenome is dominant in these polyploids? Second, a single dominant subgenome was uncovered in Fragaria × ananassa that controls many important traits including fruit quality. Just how deterministic is subgenome dominance? In other words, is it possible to resynthesize the octoploid with a different degree of subgenome dominance, or with a different subgenome becoming dominant? The answer to this question could have implications for genetic improvement of the cultivated species.Genotyping advances in strawberry have naturally followed advances in humans, model organisms and row crops.

The development of the Affymetrix Axiom® iStraw90 single-nucleotide polymophism genotyping array was a significant advance that enabled the facile production and exchange of genotypic information across laboratories with high reliability, minor amounts of missing data, and negligible genotyping errors. The ease-of-use, speed of analysis, simplicity of data management, and outstanding reproducibility of SNP genotyping arrays have been important factors in their continued adoption in strawberry and other plant species with complex genomes. Underlying computational challenges associated with genotyping by sequencing and other nextgeneration sequencing facilitated approaches have limited their widespread application in octoploid strawberry thus far. The challenges are similar across species, but obviously exacerbated in allogamous polyploids: uneven and inadequate sequencing depth, copy number uncertainty, heterozygote miscalling, missing data, sequencing errors, etc., all of which challenge the integration of DNA variant information across studies. As with the other DNA marker genotyping approaches reviewed here, the first GBS study in octoploid strawberry utilized the diploid F. vesca reference genome in combination with a phylogenetic approach for aligning, classifying, and calling DNA variants. Recently, Hardigan et al. whole-genome shotgun sequenced 88 F. × ananassa, 23 F. chiloensis, and 22 F. virginiana germplasm accessions. Strikingly, 80% of the short-read DNA sequences uniquely mapped to single subgenomes in the octoploid reference. Approximately, 90M putative DNA variants were identified among F. × ananassa, F. chiloensis, and F. virginiana individuals, whereas 45M putative DNA variants were identified among F. × ananassa individuals. An ultra-dense framework was then developed of genetically mapped DNA variants across the octoploid genome by WGS sequencing 182 full-sib individuals from a cross between F. × ananassa “Camarosa” and F. chiloensis subsp. lucida “Del Norte”. Large expanses of homozygosity within the commercial hybrid parent prevented complete end-toend mapping of all 28 octoploid chromosomes in F. × ananassa as was accomplished with the wild parent, further demonstrating the value of dense NGS data for understanding sources of genotyping and mapping challenges in the octoploids. As these WGS-GBS and GBS mapping results demonstrate, several NGS-based genotyping approaches should work well in combination with the octoploid reference genome. In summary, while the complexity of the octoploid genome has historically complicated DNA variant genotyping and genetic mapping in strawberry,square pot the chief technical challenges were addressed with: the development of a high-quality octoploid genome assembly; WGS resequencing of numerous octoploid individuals that shed light on the extent of intra- and inter-homoeologous nucleotide variation; identification and physical mapping of DNA variants across the octoploid genome; and comparative genetic mapping of the wild octoploid progenitors of F. × ananassa using SNPs anchored to the octoploid reference genome. DNA variants genotyped with different platforms and approaches predating the octoploid reference genome were independent and disconnected, resulting in the proliferation of linkage group nomenclatures, absence of a universal linkage group nomenclature, uncertainty in the completeness of genome coverage, and inability to cross-reference physical and genetic mapping information across studies, populations, and laboratories. The DNA marker sequences from many of the previously published mapping experiments were either not readily available or too short or nonspecific to enable unambiguous mapping to the octoploid reference genome. The one exception was the genetically mapped double digest restriction-associated DNA sequence markers described by Davik et al., which were used by Edger et al. for scaffolding the octoploid reference genome. Most F. vesca DNA probe sequences used to assay SNPs on the iStraw35 and iStraw90 SNP arrays were too short and nonspecific to unambiguously determine their physical marker locations in the octoploid genome. Hence, genotypes produced with these SNP arrays could not always be effectively utilized for genome-wide association studies or other applications requiring subgenome resolution.

Moreover, none of the previously published iStraw90 based genetic mapping studies have shared SNP marker genetic locations, complete genetic maps, or other critical enabling information needed to identify corresponding linkage groups across laboratories. These long-standing issues were resolved with the development of a new 850,000-SNP genotyping array populated exclusively with DNA variants and reference DNA sequences that unambiguously mapped to single homoeologous chromosomes in the octoploid reference genome. Using the 850,000 SNP array, a second array with 50,000 subgenome specific SNPs, including 5819 genetically mapped SNPs from the iStraw35 array was developed facilitating the integration of genetic and physical mapping information across studies. These new arrays provide telomere-to-telomere coverage and target common DNA variants within and among domesticated populations. Although the full set of iStraw SNP probe DNA sequences could not be unambiguously aligned to a single octoploid subgenome, the true physical position for 97% of the retained iStraw probes were identified using linkage disequilibrium with the newly developed SNPs probes anchored to the octoploid reference genome. Comparative mapping of SNPs in several wild and domesticated populations facilitated the integration of earlier linkage group nomenclatures and the development of a universal linkage group nomenclature substantiated by the observation of genome-wide synteny among diverse octoploid genetic backgrounds. These recent advances in genotyping and mapping are expected to have tremendous and immediate impacts on applied research in genetics and breeding of strawberry. But other research questions arise which have bearing on the utility of these new tools and resources, particularly with regard to diversity among genomes that is currently undescribed. For example, what large-scale structural variations exist in octoploid Fragaria germplasm? Recent advances in long read sequencing platforms resulted in significant decreases in costs and increases in read lengths and should soon permit inexpensive assessments of structural variants across the cultivated strawberry pangenome. On a smaller scale, what percentage of genes in cultivated strawberry exhibit presence–absence variation? Recent pangenome studies in plants have revealed that a significant proportion of gene content exhibits presence–absence variation. For example, nearly 20% of the genes in Brassica oleracea are found in only certain genotypes and are enriched with functions encoding major agronomic traits. This suggests that genes in strawberry will be missed when utilizing a single octoploid reference genome and genotyping resources based on that genome alone. To construct a useful pangenome, how many individuals need to be included to capture most variation in gene content? These questions will soon be addressed as additional octoploid genomes become available.For many years genome-assisted breeding in strawberry lagged behind agronomic crops and even many specialty crops. However, surveys conducted by the RosBREED consortium and funded by the NIFA Specialty Crop Research Initiative have documented the rapid rise in the use of DNA information in strawberry breeding in the last decade. In 2010, only 43% of surveyed strawberry breeders had employed DNA markers or other genomics-based tools. By early 2019, data on 12 of the 14 active strawberry breeding programs in the U.S. indicated that all but one of these 12 programs had used DNA information for at least one of four purposes. The most common application was for verifying the identity or better understanding the lineage of plant materials used in the program. Two-thirds of the programs had used DNA markers or other genomics-based tools to choose parents and plan crosses, and seven of the 12 had used DNA information for seedling selection. Two-thirds of the programs were involved in upstream research of direct relevance to their programs, e.g., creating or validating DNA tests of particular applicability for their plant materials and breeding goals. Some of these were onetime or infrequent applications; however, seven of the 12 programs reported using at least one application of DNA information “on an ongoing, routine basis” . Among the many breeding-relevant loci discovered in the cultivated strawberry genome, flowering, and fruit quality loci have been prominent, as would be expected in a high-value fruit commodity. These, include discovery of the locus controlling day-neutrality or PF and its subgenome localization as well as multiple loci controlling volatile compounds such as gamma decalactone, mesifurane, and methyl anthranilate. For uncovering disease resistance loci, quantitative trait locus mapping has been the most prominent approach.