Tag: hydroponic

The BLS estimates that Colorado’s unemployment rate in December 2017 was 3.0 percent, while Denver’s unemployment rate was 2.9 percent . Earlier in 2017, the state unemployment reached a record low of 2.3 percent. This is among the lowest unemployment rates recorded by any state in recent decades. The other six metropolitan statistical areas tracked by the BLS averaged an unemployment rate of 3.4 percent. Fort Collins had the lowest unemployment rate at 2.5 percent. Only two cities had an unemployment rate greater than the national unemployment rate of 4.1 percent—Grand Junction and Pueblo . Personal income growth among state residents reached nearly 8 percent in 2014, but growth slowed over the next two years. This trend reversed in 2017 as personal income growth increased to 5.4 percent. This growth rate exceeds the national rate by more than 2 percentage points . According to the OSPB, per capita income and wage growth in Colorado over the past year also outpaced the national figures. With regard to party registration in Colorado, voters were nearly evenly divided among Democratic, Republican, and unaffiliated categories at the time of the 2016 election. According to voter registration data from the Secretary of State’s office, the state had nearly 3.3 million active voters in November 2016. A plurality of these voters registered as unaffiliated , hydroponic nft while the share of Democratic and Republican were nearly equivalent. In February 2018, the number of active voters decreased relative to November 2016 by about 1.7 percent.

This may be partially attributable to controversy surrounding President Donald Trump’s Commission on Voter Fraud, which made data privacy a concern after the commission requested, “voluminous information on voters, including names, addresses, dates of birth, political affiliations and the last four digits of Social Security numbers, along with voting history” . Fifteen months after the 2016 election, the proportion of unaffiliated voters in the state increased to 36.3 percent, while the share of Democrats and Republicans decreased to 31.1 percent and 30.8 percent, respectively . This change is likely driven by primary election reforms approved by voters in the 2016 election. Voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 107, which adopted a presidential primary in lieu of the existing caucus system, and Proposition 108, which allowed unaffiliated voters to participate in the party primary of their choice. Previously, unaffiliated voters were prohibited from participating in any primary elections or caucus meetings. Because this reform allows unaffiliated voters to participate in the primary of their choosing, it appears that a substantial number of Coloradans changed their party registration status to take advantage of this new opportunity. Colorado’s economic trajectory remains generally positive. In late March, the Governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting released its revised economic forecast. The report summarized the condition of Colorado’s economy by stating, “Colorado’s economy is on solid footing with strong employment growth and expectations of an ongoing expansion. New business formation continues to grow, while Colorado oil production is at record levels. Although much of the state’s economic growth has occurred along the Front Range, stabilizing farmland values and increases in energy prices and production have recently supported rural areas as well. Looking forward, higher costs of living and tight labor market conditions are expected to constrain further growth through the forecast period” .

The OSPB characterized the 3.1 percent increase in General Fund revenue in the 2016–2017 fiscal year as“modest,” while projecting a larger revenue increase for the 2017–2018 fiscal year of 12.9 percent. According to the OSPB, the revenue forecast for the 2018–2019 fiscal year is projected to grow from $11.6 to $12.0 billion. The more substantial increase during the 2017–2018 fiscal year is attributable to “strong economic growth, a rebound in corporate income tax receipts, robust investment income gains, and federal tax changes” . Regarding the latter, the $1.5 trillion tax reform package signed into law by President Trump in December 2017, among other things, lowered individual income tax rates and nearly doubled the standard deduction for individuals and families. Increasing the standard deduction makes it likely that more tax returns would be filed using the standard deduction instead of itemized deductions. This, combined with reduced tax rates, mean that individuals are likely paying less in federal taxes despite having a larger taxable income. Because Colorado state taxes are 4.63 percent of each individual’s federal taxable income, the state projects to receive greater tax revenue while most state residents can expect to pay less in federal taxes. This is particularly notable in Colorado where TABOR requires any tax increases to go before the electorate for approval in a general election. Accordingly, while the state income tax rate remains unchanged, the tax cut at the federal level in effect imposes a tax increase at the state level as a result of many tax returns reporting a greater taxable income. Most of the state’s General Fund revenue comes from individual and corporate taxes. The OSPB reports that income tax with holdings increased by more than 9 percent over the past year . Partly because of the new federal tax law, the OSBP claims that there is a “high degree of uncertainty surrounding the forecast for individual income tax collections” . While individual income tax revenues increased by 3.6 percent in the prior fiscal year, the state projects further increases in excess of 13 percent in the current fiscal year. Income tax revenue is projected to grow by an additional 1.7 percent in the next fiscal year.

Further good news regarding state revenue collection is that corporate income taxes are projected to grow by 38.6 percent in the current fiscal year after a 21.9 percent decrease last year. This would be the first time in the last five years that corporate tax revenues increased. Likewise, sales tax revenues are projected to grow by 9.6 percent in the current fiscal year and 4.8 percent the following year . Part of this increase in sales tax revenue is attributable to the increased special sales tax on recreational marijuana purchases, which increased from 10 percent to 15 percent following the passage of Senate Bill 17-267 in 2017. According to the OSPB forecast, individual income taxes constitute $7.65 billion of the expected $11.6 billion in general fund revenue for the 2017–2018 fiscal year. Sales and use tax revenue are projected at $3.5 billion. Corporate income tax revenue is expected to provide an additional $0.71 billion . These three revenue sources constitute 95 percent of total General Fund revenue. State revenues were relatively stable around the $10 billion mark over the past three years. The $11.6 billion revenue estimate for the upcoming fiscal year represents a 12.6 percent increase, which would be the largest growth in state revenue since 2005 when revenues increased 13.1 percent. Such an increase would be similar in magnitude to the percentage of lost revenue that occurred during the Great Recession . Since 2009, individual income tax revenue has increased each year, hydroponic channel although not in a strictly linear pattern. Sales and use tax revenue has also increased each year over the past decade. Corporate tax revenue has exhibited greater volatility. Since the Great Recession when corporate income tax revenue fell to less than $300 million, corporate taxes rebounded over the next five years to greater than $700 million in the 2013–2014 fiscal year. The OSPB cites global economic factors, such as a strong dollar and decreases in oil, gas, and other commodity prices as the catalysts for the three-year decline in corporate tax revenue beginning in 2014. After falling 21.9 percent in the third year of this recent decline, corporate tax revenue is estimated to increase by 38.6 percent in the current fiscal year. In addressing how federal tax reform may affect state corporate tax revenue, the OSPB projects continued growth in corporate tax revenue, but cautions that “future increases will be constrained by higher business costs, especially for employee compensation, which will reduce profit margins and result in lower tax liabilities” . Taxes from the state’s legal marijuana market continue to grow. According to data released by the Colorado Department of Revenue, total marijuana sales surpassed $1.5 billion in 2017 . Of this total, $1.09 billion in sales came from the retail market, while medical marijuana sales were approximately $0.42 billion. Table 2 reports annual marijuana sales and tax revenue data. Sales have increased each calendar year since the retail market began operation on January 1, 2014, but the growth rate has gradually declined each year. In 2014, marijuana sales totaled nearly $680 million. This figure increased by 45.7 percent in 2015 to $990 million. Sales increased by 31.3 percent and surpassed the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2016 to reach a total of $1.3 billion. Total sales in 2017 amounted to $1.5 billion, which represents a 15.3 percent increase. If the trend continues, Colorado could expect to see sales numbers plateau since the growth rate has decreased by an average of 15 percentage points each year. Sales data through September 2018 indicate sales of nearly $1.16 billion. The monthly sales average for 2018 puts the state on track for an annual marijuana sales total of about $1.54 billion, which would be the largest sales amount to date and constitute a slight increase of 2.4 percent from 2017. State revenue from the medical and retail marijuana markets in the form of taxes and fees reached nearly $250 million in 2017. This is a 27.8 percent increase from 2016 following a 48.5 percent increase in tax revenue from 2015 to 2016. During the first 10 months of 2018, the state reported tax and fee revenues of $223 million. A linear projection of tax revenue for the remainder of the year suggests that the annual tax revenue would reach nearly $268 million, an increase of about 8 percent from the prior year. The largest annual increase in marijuana taxrevenue occurred in the second year after retail sales became legal when tax revenue nearly doubled . Increasing sales have driven greater tax revenue, and the state legislature modified the marijuana tax structure in the prior session with the passage of Senate Bill 17-267. From January 1, 2014 through June 30, 2017, retail marijuana sales were subject to the state’s 2.9 percent sales tax and a special 10 percent sales tax in addition to local sales taxes.

Beginning on July 1, 2017, marijuana sales are exempt from the state sales tax and are instead taxed at a special tax rate of 15 percent. A 15 percent excise tax also applies to retail marijuana sale from cultivation facilities to dispensaries for manufacturers. According to the Joint Budget Committee, marijuana tax revenue from the most recent fiscal year was allocated as follows: 49.4 percent to the marijuana tax cash fund, 39 percent to several K-12 education funds, 6.7 percent to local governments, and 4.9 percent to the General Fund.Relative to last year’s budget, Governor Hickenlooper’s budget request for the 2018– 2019 fiscal year is much more optimistic. This positive tone is a product of a good economic climate and the successful passage of a major budgetary reform in the prior session. Transitioning hospital provider fees into a government enterprise fund made these funds TABOR exempt. In the 2016–2017 fiscal year, hospital provider fee revenue was $654.4 million. In future years, these funds do not count toward the TABOR revenue cap. The governor emphasized the importance of this reform by noting that “The passage of S.B. 17-267 has materially and positively changed the State’s financial outlook compared with one year ago, when the request had to close a $500 million funding gap in the General Fund” . Beyond this important budgetary reform, Governor Hickenlooper also lauded the strong upward trajectory of the state’s economy by claiming, “Colorado’s economy continues to outperform nearly every state and the national economy overall” . Statewide unemployment remains low and job creation numbers are strong—approximately 53,000 new jobs are projected for 2018. As the state’s population continues to grow, Hickenlooper’s budget request reflects spending priorities to address increased demand for certain state services. K-12 spending is proposed to increase by $84.6 million, which represents an increase of $343.38 per student. According to state estimates, the 178 school districts in Colorado currently serve the educational needs of more than 865,000 students.

DNA quality was verified by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. DNA fragments longer than 50 Kb were used to construct a 10× Gemcode library using the Chromium instrument and sequenced at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology on a HiSeqX system with paired-end 150 bp reads. Approximately 95 Gb of 10X Chromium library data was sequenced . To increase sequence diversity and depth, three separate mate-pair libraries were constructed with 2–5 Kb, 5–7 Kb, and 7–10 Kb jumps using the Illumina Nextera Mate-Pair Sample Preparation Kit. In addition, two additional size-selected Illumina genomic libraries, ∼470 bp and ∼800 bp, were sequenced. The ∼470 bp and ∼800 bp libraries were made using the Illumina TruSeq DNA PCR-free Sample Preparation V2 kit. The ∼470 bp library was designed to produce ”overlapping libraries” after sequencing with paired-end 265 bp reads on an lllumina Hiseq2500 system, producing ”stitched” reads of approximately 265 bp to 520 bp in length. The 800 bp library was sequencedon an Illumina HiSeq2500 system with paired-end 160 bp reads, while the MP libraries were sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq4000 system with paired-end 150 bp reads. A total of ∼433 Gb of additional Illumina sequencing data were generated . Illumina library construction and sequencing was conducted at Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.The genome of ”Draper” was assembled using the DeNovoMAGIC software platform , hydroponic gutter which is a de Bruijn graph-based assembler designed for higher polyploid, heterozygous, and/or repetitive genomes.

The Chromium 10X data were utilized to phase, elongate, and validate haplotype scaffolds. Four Dovetail Hi-C libraries were prepared as described previously  and sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq X system with paired-end 150 bp reads to a total of 90.7X physical coverage of the genome . The de novo genome assembly, raw genomic reads, and Dovetail Hi-C library reads were used as input data for HiRise, a software pipeline designed specifically for using proximity ligation data to scaffold genome assemblies. Illumina genomic and Dovetail Hi-C library sequences were aligned to the draft input assembly using a modified SNAP read mapper. The separations of Dovetail Hi-C read pairs mapped within draft scaffolds were analyzed by HiRise to produce a likelihood model for genomic distance between read pairs, and the model was used to identify and break putative misjoins and to make joins to close gaps between contigs.Plant Thissue samples were collected from blueberry cv. Draper grown in the growth chamber . For the fruit developmental series, three biological replicates each of berries at seven developmental stages were collected from cv. Draper in a field at the Horticulture Teaching and Research Center, Michigan State University, in July 2017. All plant Thissues were immediately flash frozen in liquid nitrogen, and total RNA isolation was performed using the KingFisher Pure RNA Plant kit . Isolated total RNA was quantified using a Qubit 3 fluorometer . RNA libraries were prepared according to the KAPA mRNA HyperPrep kit protocol . All samples were submitted to the Michigan State University Research Technology Support Facility Genomics core and sequenced with paired-end 150 bp reads on an Illumina HiSeq 4000 system .The draft genome of V. corymbosum cv. Draper was annotated using the MAKER annotation pipeline. Transcript and protein evidence used in the annotation included protein sequences downloaded from A. thaliana and UniprotKB plant databases, V. corymbosum ESTs from NCBI, and transciptome data assembled with StringTie from different blueberry Thissues .

A custom repeat library and Repbase were used to mask repetitive regions in the genome using Repeatmasker. Ab initio gene prediction was performed using gene predictors SNAP and AugusThus. The resulting MAKER Max gene set was filtered to select gene models with Pfam domain and annotation edit distance <1.0. The filtered gene set was further scanned for transposase coding regions. The amino acid sequence of predicted genes was searched against a transposase database. The alignment between the genes and the transposases was further filtered for those caused by the presence of sequences with low complexity. The total length of genes matching transposases was calculated based on the output from the search. If more than 30% of gene length aligned to the transposases, the gene was removed from the gene set. Furthermore, to assess the completeness of annotation, the V. corymbosum Maker standard gene set was searched against the BUSCO v.3 plant dataset . Genes were annotated with pfam domains using InterProScan v5.26–65.0 .To identify and classify repetitive elements in the genome, LTR retrotransposon candidates were searched using LTR harvest and LTR finder  and further identified and classified using LTR retriever. A non-redundant LTR library was also produced by LTR retriever. Miniature inverted transposable elements were identified using MITE-Hunter . MITEs were manually checked for target site duplications and terminal inverted repeats and classified into super families . Those with ambiguous Target Site Duplication and Terminal Inverted Repeats were classified as ”unknowns.” Using the MITE and LTR libraries, the V. corymbosum genome was masked using Repeat masker. The masked genome was further mined for repetitive elements using Repeat modeler. The repeats were then categorized into two groups: sequences with and without identities. Those without identities were searched against the transposase database; if they had a match, they were considered a transposon.

The repeats were then filtered to exclude gene fragments using Prot Excluder and summarized using the ‘fam coverage.pl’ script in the LTR retriever package. The assembly continuity of repeat space was assessed using the LLAI deployed in the LTR retriever package. LAI was calculated based on either 3 Mb sliding windows or the whole assembly using LAI = /Total LTR-RT length. For the sliding window estimation, a step of 300 Kb was used . To account for dynamics of LTR retrotransposons, LAI was adjusted by the mean identity of LTR sequences in the genome based on all-versus-all blastn search, which was also performed by the LAI program .Illumina adapters were removed from the raw reads using Trimmomatic/0.33, and trimmed reads were filtered using FASTX Toolkit. After quality assessment using FastQC , the filtered reads were then aligned to the V. corymbosum genome using STAR. For the samples that were usedfor annotation, transcript assembly was performed de novo using StringTie. Counts of uniquely mapping reads were generated through HTSeq for all 35 RNA-seq datasets . Multi-mapping reads were excluded from the analysis except for the tandem gene expression analysis. Differential gene expression analysis was performed using the DESeq2 pipeline across fruit developmental stages with three biological replicates per developmental stage . Gene expression values were derived by calculating the fragments per kilobase per million reads mapped values using the standard formula for FPKM /gene length in kilobases [Kb]. To construct the gene co-expression network, genes that were not expressed or very weakly expressed in 30 or more conditions were first excluded from the analysis. The count data was then transformed into variance stabilized values using the variance stabilizing transformation function in DEseq. Pairwise correlations of gene expression were calculated using Pearson correlation coefficient and mutual rank using scripts available for download from the project’s data repository. MR scores were transformed to network edge weights using geometric decay function; five different co-expression networks were constructed with x set to 5, 10, 25, 50, and 100, respectively. Edges with PCC <0.6 or edge weight <0.01 were excluded. For each network, modules of coexpressed genes were detected using ClusterONE v1.0 using default parameters, u planting gutter and modules with P value > 0.1 or quality score <0.2 were excluded. The results from all co-expression networks were then combined by collapsing modules into metamodules of nonoverlapping gene sets.Total antioxidant capacity of Thissues from the fruit developmental panel was analyzed using the ORAC assay. Briefly, ∼20–30 mg of frozen ground fruit Thissue was measured for Thissue samples prior to extraction. Sample extractions were performed on ground Thissue using 1.8 mL of ice cold 50% acetone. Samples were vortexed and then put on a shaker for 5 minutes at room temperature. Samples were then centrifuged at 4◦C for 15 minutes . The ORAC assay was performed in a 96-well black microplate using the FLUOstar OPTIMA microplate reader . Each reaction well contained 150 μL of 0.08 μM fluorescein and 25 μL of 75 mM phosphate buffer , Trolox standards , or diluted sample extracts. For blueberry Thissue samples, 1:80–1:20 dilutions were used. Upon loading all appropriate wells, the 96-well microplate was put into the microplate reader and incubated for 10 minutes at 37◦C. Following incubation, 25 μL of 150 mM AAPH was added to each well, and fluorescence measurements began immediately. Fluorescence measurements were taken for 90 seconds per cycle for 70 cycles until the fluorescent probe signal was completely quenched.

The total antioxidant capacity of a sample was calculated by subtracting the AUC from the blank curve from the AUC of the sample curve to obtain the net AUC. Using Trolox of a known concentration, a standard curve was generated , and the total antioxidant capacity of each sample was calculated as Trolox equivalents. Each sample was run twice for two technical replicates. The coefficient of variation between technical replicates was required to be less than 0.20. Biological replicates were run for all Thissues in the fruit developmental series.Berries from ”Draper” were collected as described above. Approximately 100 mg of each frozen ground sample was resuspended in extraction solvent in a 2 mL tube . Ground Thissue was immediately mixed thoroughly to prevent thawing during extraction and to prevent metabolism of analytes by enzymes in the samples. All tubes were spun down for 10 minutes at 13,000 × g to pellet protein and other insoluble material. Then, 1 mL of supernatant was transferred to an autosampler vial. Anthocyanin content was evaluated by LC-MS as follows: 5 uL of sample extract were separated using a 10 minute gradient on a Waters Acquity HSS-T3 UPLC column on a Waters Acquity UPLC system interfaced with a Waters Xevo G2-XS quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer . Column temperature was maintained at 40◦C, and the flow rate was 0.3 mL/min with starting conditions of 100% solvent A and 0% solvent B . The gradient was as follows: hold at 100% A for 0.5 minutes, ramp to 50% B at 6 minutes, then ramp to 99% B at 6.5 minutes, hold at 99% B to 8.5 minutes, return to 100% A at 8.51 minutes, and hold at 100% A until 10 minutes. Mass spectra were acquired in positive ion mode electrospray ionization over m/z 50–1500 in continuum mode using a data-independent MSE method that acquires data under both low and high collision energy conditions with the high collision energy setting using a ramp from 20–80 V. Capillary voltage was 3 kV, desolvation temperature was 350◦C, source temperature was 100◦C, cone gas flow was 25 L/hr, and desolvation gas flow was 600 L/hr. Correction for mass drift was performed using continuous infusion of the lock mass compound leucine encephalin. Anthocyanins and other related flavonoids were identified based on accurate mass and fragmentation pattern. Peak areas were determined using Quanlynx within the Masslynx software package . Relative anthocyanin content was calculated for each sample using the formula: reported peak area of the compound/peak area of internal standard/weight of extracted Thissue .Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of mortality in the United States, and after decades of decline, is rising coincident with the increase in obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes that characterize cardiometabolic risk. Notwithstanding hereditary predisposition, reduction in identified, modifiable lifestyle risk factors can reverse CMR and CVD. It is estimated that 45.4% of all cardiometabolic deaths in the United States due to heart disease, stroke, and diabetes are associated with sub-optimal intakes of 10 dietary factors. Fewer than 1% of American children and adolescents meet full recommended metrics of heart healthy nutrition, falling especially short of recommended intake in the categories of fruits, vegetables, fiber and essential fatty acids. Intensive pediatric lifestyle interventions for obesity are effective in achieving significant reduction in body mass index but do not elicit stable changes in nutrition habits in children and adolescents. These studies suggest a critical need for developing innovative tools to improve diet quality in youth. We have previously shown that twice daily consumption for two weeks of a whole food based nutrient bar composed of a blueberry, dark chocolate, red grape, and walnut matrix, soluble and insoluble fiber, with supplemental vitamins, minerals and essential long chain fatty acids, significantly increased high density lipoprotein cholesterol , due primarily to a 28% increase in large HDL particles, in generally healthy and insulin sensitive lean and overweight adults.

This condition can cause a feedback loop in which contact between bacteria and epithelial cells leads to dysregulation of mucosal immune response. This contact can lead to a bacterial biofilm, formed when bacteria attach themselves to the surfaces of the aqueous environment in the gut and begin to secrete substances that allow them to affix onto the epithelium. The interaction between bacteria and epithelial cells elevates inflammation, leading to increased thinning of the mucus and direct host-bacteria interaction. The thali approach, however, combats this cycle in two different ways: by suppressing bacterial growth with anti-microbial phytochemicals , and by reducing the opportunity for inflammation to occur. One molecular pathway involved in such a cycle involves interleukin 6 . This cytokine is normally expressed during acute inflammatory responses, and among other effects, upregulates the transcription factor STAT3. In the nucleus, STAT3 promotes cell prolifteration and differentiation as well as upregulating anti-apoptosis genes. When IL6 is chronically elevated, it can lead to an apoptosis-resistant, constantly expanding T-cell population in the intestinal mucosa. These cells can further contribute to chronic inflammation. Just as a certain diet may promote chronic inflammation, a change in diet can help to restore health. Various bio-active compounds, including anthocyanins, have demonstrated antioxidant activity, reducing local amounts of reactive oxygen species. Low levels of reactive oxygen species can lower the expression of some inflammatory genes, including IL6, bato bucket and relieve the stresses on both the intestinal microbiota and epithelial cells caused by chronic inflammation.

In a study of pigs, we found that supplementing a high-calorie diet with purple potatoes that contains anthocyanins led to a six-fold reduction in levels of interleukin-6 compared to high-fat diet control. Colorectal cancer killed nearly 774,000 people worldwide in 2015, and nearly an estimated 50,630 deaths in 2018 in America making it the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States in women and second in men. Virtually all cases of CRC are considered to result from an interplay of exogenous and endogenous factors with respect to the variable contribution from each factor . Some non-modifiable risk factors include old age and family history of CRC. Other risk factors, however, are associated with lifte style or behaviors and thus can be changed. These modifiable risk factors include smoking, obesity, low physical activity, deficiency of dietary fiber, deficiency of vitamin D, deficiency of folate, high intake of red and processed meat, and alcohol consumption. Some of these risk factors, however, are closely related. For example, inadequate fiber intake and excessive fat intake are dietary risk factors which tend to lead to a lack of exercise which ultimately may contribute to obesity, particularly in combination. In the US, 40 percent of adults are obese, and so the risk factors discussed are common mainly due to the modern Western lifte style. Therefore, it is no surprise that nearly half of the CRC cases arise in the developed nations. The Western diet in its current form contains more risk factors than the calorie and fat content. Foods that contain heterocyclic amines , polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons , and emulsifiers can also contribute to carcinogenesis. HCA and PAH are produced in meats when they are fried or grilled over an open flame. These substances have been proved to damage the DNA of colonocytes and potentially promote risk of colon cancer. Emulsifiers are used in foods like ice cream to ensure an even distribution of fat molecules. Recent evidence suggests, however, that emulsifiers promote intestinal inflammation, creating an environment that favors colon carcinogenesis in mice. Some of these risk factors, however, are closely related. For example, inadequate fiber intake and excessive fat intake are dietary risk factors. These tend to lead to a lack of exercise, which ultimately contributes to obesity. In the US, 40 percent of adults are obese, and so the risk factors discussed are common mainly due to the modern Western life style. Therefore, it is no surprise that nearly half of CRC cases arise in developed nations. However, colon cancer has a long development period . This gives ample time for life style changes to take place, including diet-based intervention.

Chronic inflammation, a condition that is promoted by dietary risk factors also contributes to the development of cancer, even in humans. Patients with inflammatory bowel disease have a significantly increased risk of developing CRC, while long-term aspirin treatment is associated with a significantly decreased risk of CRC . The mechanisms by which chronic inflammation promotes tumor development often involve the immune system. For example, the IL6/STAT pathway discussed earlier is also implicated in cancer formation. Over expression of IL6 leads to excess STAT3 transcription, causing unwanted cell prolifteration not only in T cells but also in the intestinal epithelium. Another inflammatory cytokine of note is TNF α. While the intestinal bacteria can promote inflammation, they may also affect the likelihood of CRC more directly. Once the intestinal mucus layer is thinned, and direct bacterial-epithelial cell interactions occur, certain bacterial strains promote tumor development. E. coli strains bearing the pks island are of particular interest. This genetic locus codes for the secondary metabolite colibactin, along with the enzymes necessary for its production. Colibactin has been shown to crosslink with DNA, producing double-stranded breaks. Furthermore, pks+ E. coli strains have been shown to be prevalent in CRC patients. In one study, nearly two-thirds of CRC patients had pks+ E. coli strains in their intestinal bacteria. In the same study, pks+ E. coli also existed in about 20 percent of healthy individuals. Colibactin, however, is a reactive and short-lived protein, requiring close contact with epithelial cells to cause DNA damage. A healthy mucosal barrier keeps colibactin at a distance and reduces the chance of affecting the intestinal epithelium. Evidence for the pathogenic relationship between diets, Fusobacterium nucleatum, and CRC has been emerging. The F. nucleatum levels have been shown to be higher in CRC than in adjacent normal mucosa. Utilizing the molecular pathological epidemiology paradigm and methods, a recent study has shown the association of fiber-rich diets with decreased risk of F. nucleatum-detectable CRC, but not that of F. nucleatum-undetectable CRC .

Experimental evidence supports a carcinogenic role of F. nucleatum, as well as its role in modifying therapeutic outcomes. The amount of F. nucleatum in CRC Thissue has been associated with proximal tumor location, CpG island methylator phenotype , microsatellite instability, low-level CD3+ T cell infiltrate, high-level macrophage infiltration, and unfavorable patient survival . The amount of F. nucleatum in average increased in CRC from rectum to cecum, supporting the colorectal continuum model. Future studies should examine the role of diets, microbiota, and CRC in detailed tumor locations. Dietary prevention of CRC, then, has two intertwined aims: to reduce inflammation and to promote a healthy intestinal microbiota. As already discussed, preclinical evidence implies that dietary bio-active compounds, particularly anthocyanins, can reduce symptoms of lowgrade chronic inflammation as well as oxidative stress. It can also aid in balancing the intestinal microbiota by promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria and by reducing the populations of pro-inflammatory bacteria. Clinical trials have had mixed results, but anthocyanins and some polyphenols have shown to counteract against CRC actively. More research, however, is necessary for conclusive results. How, then, are individuals to consume enough bio-active compounds to have an effect on health? Some answers may be found in the food consumption practices of cultures with historically low CRC incidence. Parts of India, for example, have had some of the lowest CRC incidence rates in the world ; however, this status has been changing. In recent decades, dutch bucket hydroponic increasing urbanization and similar factors have led to progressively Westernized diet patterns and lifestyle. CRC incidence rates are similarly rising, lending weight to the hypothesis that the traditional Indian diet may help prevent CRC. Furthermore, Indian immigrants to Western countries have a much higher incidence of CRC compared to Indians in India. Typical components of traditional Indian meals include a broad variety of flavors, as promoted in Ayurvedic medicine, and a variety of other foods. Both are facilitated by using a thali platter to serve the meal. The traditional American main meal includes an entree , one or more carbohydrates , and one or more vegetables. This basic structure can potentially be adapted with inspiration from thali meals by reducing the size of the main dish and serving more vegetables, legumes, pulses, herbs, and spices to accompany it. A unique component to thali is the combination of many tastes and colors. The inclusion of multiple colors in a meal is desirable, because certain bio-active compounds, particularly anthocyanins are also pigments. Blue, purple, and red-purple colors in plant foods indicate high anthocyanin content. Purple-pigmented potatoes can be prepared in the same way as traditional white potatoes, but the anthocyanin content is significantly higher in the pigmented varieties. Purple sweet potatoes also contain more anthocyanins than the more common orange varieties and can be easily substituted for them. Other vegetables with red or purple cultivars include carrots, cauliflower, and cabbage. Different colors can indicate the presence of other bio-active compounds, such as orange , yellow , and red/pink . Thus, healthy bio-active compound consumption may be increased by selecting colorful vegetables. Another way to increase consumption of bio-active compounds is to increase their presence in available foods. The agricultural industry could greatly impact health by adopting food plant cultivars that produce bio-active compounds in larger amounts than is currently common.

New cultivars may need to be developed that retain desirable characteristics such as large size, pest resistance, reduced spoilage, etc., but also have high bio-active content at the time of consumption. bio-active compounds, with some exceptions, tend to deteriorate during storage. Even when compounds have not deteriorated, storage may reduce the anti-inflammatory/antioxidant activity of bio-active compounds to affect health. A second systemic change that would promote increased bio-active compound consumption involves reworking how fruits and vegetables are currently stored and processed, as well as reducing the average storage time and adapting processing to optimize the amount of bio-active compounds. Presently, “nutritional adequacy” does not consider many of the bio-active compounds discussed in this paper. Further clinical studies are needed to support and elucidate the role of bio-active compounds in the prevention and treatment of disease.More than three quarters of all plant viruses are transmitted by insects , and information regarding key biological traits of vector-borne pathogens is needed to inform effective control strategies. For example, knowledge of transmission efficiency can aid in predicting rates of pathogen spread . Another key parameter in estimating the rate of appearance of newly diseased hosts is the pathogen incubation period, the time between initial infection and when symptoms become evident. Despite the importance of transmission efficiency and incubation period with respect to the development of disease management strategies, data are often not available and, when available, are usually derived from research performed under artificial conditions such as greenhouse environments. Grapevine leaf roll-associated virus 3 , in the genus Ampelovirus, family Closteroviridae, is the primary virus species associated with grapevine leaf roll disease in vineyards of wine growing regions worldwide . GLRaV-3 can cause interveinal reddening and downward rolling in red berried grape varieties , inhibits photosynthesis, decreases vine lifespan, and reduces fruit yield and quality . GLRaV-3 is one of the most common and detrimental viruses of grapevines, and has led to economic losses of 25 % or more . Spread of GLRaV-3 in vineyards and vector-borne transmission in controlled laboratory studies were first documented in South Africa , and since then GLRaV-3 spread in vineyards and transmission by several mealybug species have been documented in wine growing regions worldwide . Although multiple grape-colonizing mealybug species transmit GLRaV-3, estimates of vector transmission efficiency vary both among and within mealybug species . GLRaV-3 is transmitted in a semi-persistent manner with no latent period required between acquisition and inoculation by vectors; transmission can occur after access periods of as little as one hour, and reaches a maximum after access periods of 24 hours . First instar mealybugs are the most efficient vectors, and mealybugs lose the ability to transmit GLRaV-3 four days after being removed from an infected source .

Each experimenter tested half of the days. We used high quality rewards that would be easily visible to the subjects. Blueberries were not part of their daily diet but were sometimes presented as enrichment in puzzle feeders and were highly desirable for all gibbons housed at the GCC. The apparaThus was composed of a plastic folding table with a square wooden plank clamped to the top. At one end of the plank a transparent plastic bin was taped so that it could be lifitted up or hang down. Te bin, at rest, would hang down and remain unmoved on the top of a wooden ramp. A hole big enough to ft blueberries was drilled on the back side of the bin so that when at rest on the ramp, the experimenter could place five blueberries into the bin. A thin purple rope was tied to the far end of the plastic bin and was routed back to the opposite end of the wooden plank. This was set up so that pulling on the purple rope would reliably lift the plastic bin, so blueberries could fall down the wooden ramp and be easily accessible for subjects to obtain. Te extreme end of the rope was attached to the mesh of the enclosure. To allow reaching and pulling the rope, we attached a small, handheld, opaque white handle . At the right tension, pulling on the handle would reliably lift the plastic bin. Te handle could contain a single blueberry inside depending on the condition presented. We used two handles of the same dimensions and appearance to avoid contamination of blueberry leftovers after the trial. Te table with wooden plank would be set up at a distance so that it could not be grabbed by subjects and the ramp was placed underneath so that blueberries would roll down and land in front of the enclosure gate.

E2 would then distract the two subjects to an opposite or adjacent side of the subjects’ enclosure with a handful of cereal pieces while E1 tied the end of the purple rope with the handle onto the mesh gate of the enclosure, roughly at the experimenter height, blueberry packing boxes approximately 2 m to the right or left. Te distance and location of the rope was kept constant for all trials of each dyad; however, because the enclosures differed in layout, the rope would go to the most convenient side. This way, we ensured that the rope had proper tension to be pulled by gibbons and lift the plastic bin as well as be distant enough from the ramp so that a subject could not easily pull on the rope and obtain food from the ramp at the same time.Individual solo pre-testing of the mechanism of the apparaThus was not possible because the separation of the days was prohibited. However, gibbons had had experience with ropes before as part of their enrichment and several individuals had participated in pilot sessions where they had to pull from different ropes and handles. Tree conditions were tested: direct food test condition, indirect food test condition and no food control condition. In the direct food test condition, the following procedure was performed. E1 would place five blueberries in the plastic bin on the apparaThus. To gain the attention of the subjects, E1 would call the subjects names and show the food, if they were not already focused on the food/experimenter. Once both subjects had observed the five blueberries placed in the plastic bin, E1 would squeeze a single blueberry on top of the handle, so that the blueberry would be clearly visible. Te rope and handle would be set up so that the handle was just far enough from the enclosure in order for subjects to need to pull on the rope to obtain access to the handle and blueberry. Consequently, pulling the rope would also lift the plastic bin and drop five blueberries down the ramp, accessible to subjects. Te experimenter would also call the names of the subjects when placing the single blueberry in the handle.

A choice was recorded when one of the subjects pulled the rope. If no subject pulled the rope within 90 s, the trial ended and was recorded as no pull. If an experimenter error was made , up to 3 repetitions of the trial would be completed. Environmental conditions such as rain would also end test sessions to be continued the next day. In the indirect food test condition, there was no single blueberry placed in the handle. To compare conditions, we followed the same procedure as in the direct food test condition. Instead of inserting a blueberry inside the handle, we approached it with the first close and then we touched it with the fingers. In the no food control condition, no blueberries were used in the trial. In order to control for time and actions, we used the same procedure of calling the subjects and touching both the box and the handle.Two cameras on tripods recorded footage concurrently. One was placed to the side of the experimenter in order to capture a wide view of the trials, specifically to show the positions of the subjects, their choices and if they obtained blueberries. Te other was placed close to the ramp to accurately count the quantity of blueberries obtained by each subject. For all trials we coded the act of pulling or not pulling and the ID of the puller and non-puller . We also coded the number of blueberries each subject ate and whether the actor subject ate the blueberry from the handle. Next, we coded whether a passive subject was present in front of the ramp or within one meter from it at the moment the plastic bin was lifted and at the moment the actor arrived at the release location. Additionally, we coded instances of cofeeding and displacements. Cofeeding was coded when individuals feed within a distance of 1 m of one another. Displacements occurred when an individual left her spot due to the partners’ arrival. Additionally, we calculated the latency to pull from the start of the trial until the individual releases . All analyses were conducted with R statistics . We used Generalized Linear Mixed Models to investigate gibbons’ choices . Covariates were z-transformed. Every full model was compared to a null model excluding the test variables. We controlled for session and trial number in all our models. We controlled for the length of the dyad in models 1 to 3 given the larger dataset compared to models 4 to 6. In addition, in model 3 we included individuals’ age and sex as control predictors.

When the comparison between the full and the null model was significant, we further investigated the significance of the test variables and/or their interactions. We used the “drop1” function of the lme4 package to test each variable significance including interactions between test predictors. Non-significant interactions were removed and a new reduced model was produced when necessary. A likelihood ratio test with significance set at p<0.05 was used to compare models and to test the significance of the individual fixed effects. We ruled out collinearity by checking Variance Infation Factors . All VIF values were close to 1 except for age and length of dyad in model 3. Te two variables were slightly collinear . For every model we assessed its stability by comparing the estimates derived by a model based on all data with those obtained from models with the levels of the random effects excluded one at a time. All models were stable. We also fitted a mixed-effects Cox proportional hazards model to analyze gibbons’ latencies to act. For this purpose, we used the “coxme” function from the coxme package. Te results of Model 2 are reported as hazard ratios . An HR greater than one indicates an increased likelihood of acting and an HR smaller than 1 indicated a decreased hazard of acting. In addition, to obtain the p-values for the individual fixed effects we conducted likelihood-ratio tests.Drosophila suzukii Matsumura is an economic pest of small and stone fruit in major production areas including North America, Asia and Europe . Female D. suzukii oviposit into suitable ripening fruits using a serrated ovipositor. This is unique compared to other drosophilids, including the common fruit fly, D. melanogaster, package of blueberries which oviposit into overripe or previously damaged fruit. Developing fruit fly larvae render infested fruit unmarketable for fresh consumption and may reduce processed fruit quality and cause downgrading or rejection at processing facilities. In Western US production areas, D. suzukii damage may cause up to $500 million in annual losses assuming 30% damage levels, and $207 million in Eastern US production regions [9]. Worldwide, the potential economic impacts of this pest are staggering. Pesticide applications have been the primary control tactic against D. suzukii both in North America and in Europe. The most effective materials are those that target gravid females, including pyrethoids, carbamates, and spinosyns. These applications are timed to prevent oviposition in susceptible ripening host crops. In the Pacific Northwest, many growers have adopted scheduled spray intervals of 4–7 days. This prophylactic use of insecticide is unsustainable as growers have a limited selection of products and modes of action. This could ultimately lead to D. suzukii becoming resistant and may cause secondary pest problems because of negative effects on beneficial organisms. Furthermore, production costs have increased substantially in crops where D. suzukii must be managed. Effective sampling methodology for D. suzukii is lacking despite extensive efforts to improve trap technology or determine effective fruit infestation sampling protocols. Theoretically, traps to capture adult flies should aid growers in the timing of spray applications so that insecticides could be used more judiciously. Traps baited with apple cider vinegar or a combination of sugar-water and yeast are currently used to monitor adult D. suzukii flight patterns. However, without standard methods for trapping or management thresholds based on trap count data, it is questionable how much is gained by establishing and monitoring traps in crops.

Establishing, monitoring, and maintaining traps is very labor intensive and the costs do not justify the benefits for many growers. Historically, trap data has not provided a reliable warning against D. suzukii attack, especially for susceptible crops in high-density population areas where considerable oviposition can occur in short time periods. Currently, no significant differences are found in any traps used for monitoring D. suzukii given differences between crops and environments where traps have been tested. Monitoring fruit infestation levels to guide management may also be impractical. Furthermore, by the time larvae are detected in the fruit, it is too late for management action and damage has already occurred. No detailed studies could be found using monitoring for fruit infestation for this pest, and precision of sampling methodology is currently unavailable. Degree-day , or phenology models, are standard tools for integrated pest management in temperate regions and are used to predict the lifte stages of pests in order to time management activities and increase the effectiveness of control measures. Degree-day models work best for pests with a high level of synchronicity and few generations. Our data suggest that D. suzukii has short generation times, high reproductive levels, and high generational overlap compared to other dipteran fruit pests. Given this lift history, stage-specific population models represent an alternative and potentially more applicable tool for modeling pest pressure. Pest population estimates may be greatly improved by employing additional tools such as mark recapture and analytical or individual-based models. The ability to describe and forecast damaging pest populations is highly advantageous for fruit producers, policy makers, and stakeholder groups. Many such studies have been directed at forecasting populations of medically important insect species. The major factors affecting survival, fecundity and population dynamics of drosophilids include temperature, humidity, and the availability of essential food resources. Therefore, an improved understanding of the role of temperature on D. suzukii may provide for a better understanding its seasonal population dynamics. In this paper, we present a population model for D. suzukii that represents a novel modification of the classic Leslie projection matrix, which has proven to be one of the most useful age structured population models in ecology, with applications for diverse organisms including plants, animals, and diseases.

The ethnic-labor hierarchy seen here—white and Asian American US citizen, Latino US citizen or resident, undocumented mestizo Mexican, undocumented indigenous Mexican—is common in North American farming. The relative status of Triqui people below Mixtecos can be understood via a pecking order of perceived indigeneity. For example, many farm workers and managers told me the Triqui are more ‘‘purely indigenous’’ than other groups, Triqui is still their primary language, and ‘‘they are more simple.’’ Ethnicity functions as a camouflage for perceived indigeneity versus civilization. The Anglo and Japanese Americans inhabit the pole of civilization, modernity. The Triqui are positioned as the opposite, indigenous peasants, savages, simpletons. The more modern one is perceived to be, the better one’s job. As illustrated in Figure 3, this hierarchy of modernity also correlates roughly with citizenship from US citizen to US resident=Mexican citizen to undocumented immigrant=Mexican citizen . Yet, this diagram shows only a small piece of the global hierarchy. The continuum of structural vulnerability can be understood as a zoom lens, moving through many such diagrams. When the continuum is seen from furthest away, it becomes clear that the farm owners are near the bottom of the global corporate agribusiness hierarchy. When looked at more closely, garden grow bags we see the hierarchy on this particular farm.Responsibilities, stressors, and privileges differ from the top to the bottom of this hierarchy.

Everyone on the farm is structurally vulnerable, although the characteristics and depth of vulnerability change depending on one’s position within the labor structure. Control decreases and anxieties accumulate as one moves down the pecking order. Those at the top worry about market competition and the weather. The middle managers worry about these factors as well as about how they are treated by their bosses. The pickers also worry about picking the minimum weight in order to avoid losing their job and their housing. The higher one is positioned in the structure, the more control over time one has . The executives and managers can take breaks as their workload and discretion dictate. The administrative assistants and checkers can take short breaks, given their supervisor’s consent or absence. The field workers can take infrequent breaks if they are willing to sacrifice pay, and even then they may be reprimanded. The higher one is located in the hierarchy, the more one is paid. The executives and managers are financially secure with comfortable homes. The administrative staff and checkers are paid minimum wage and live as members of the rural working class in relatively comfortable housing. The pickers are paid piecemeal and live in labor camp shacks. They are constantly aware of the risk of losing even this poor housing. Among pickers, those in strawberries make less money and are more likely to miss the minimum and be fired than those in apples. This segregation is not conscious or willed on the part of the executives or managers. Rather, inequalities and the anxieties they produce are driven by larger structural forces. While farm executives are vulnerable to macro-social structures, vulnerability is further conjugated through ethnicity and citizenship, changing character from the top to the bottom of the labor hierarchy . Bodies are organized according to the social categories of ethnicity and citizenship into superimposed hierarchies of labor possibilities and housing conditions.

The over determination of the adverse lot of indigenous Mexican migrant berry pickers tracks along the health disparities seen throughout the public health literature on migrant workers . The focus on risk and risk behaviors in public health and medicine carries with it a subtle assumption that the genesis of vulnerability and suffering is the individual and his or her choices . This focus often leads to blaming inadvertently the individual victim or their ‘‘culture’’ for their structurally produced suffering . Public health and medical interventions are planned with the goal of changing individual choices, behaviors, and values. The concept of structural vulnerability, on the other hand, refocuses our analysis onto the social structure as the locus of danger, damage, and suffering. Without such a concept, diagnoses and interventions rarely correspond with the context of suffering and may instead comply with the very structures of inequality producing the suffering in the first place . The concept of structural vulnerability is crucial not only to refine anthropological analyses of the social production of suffering but also to reorient medical and public health attention away from individual behaviors and toward social structures.Farmland covers more than 35% of Earth’s ice-free terrestrial area, and agriculture is expanding and intensifying in many regions to meet the growing demands of human populations . This trend threatens biodiversity and the ecosystem services on which agriculture depends, including crop pollination . Indeed, recent reviews have highlighted how multiple anthropogenic pressures lead to a decline in wild pollinators such as bees, flies, beetles, and butterflies . However, practices to enhance wild pollinators in agroecosystems are still in development , and considerable uncertainty remains regarding their effects on crop yield and farmers’ profits.

Here we review recent research on the topic, including the impacts of certain practices on wild pollinators, crop pollination, yield, and profits . We focus on practices that enhance the carrying capacity of habitats for wild insect assemblages that may then provide crop pollination services; practices to conserve or manage a particular pollinator species are outside our scope although they have received attention elsewhere . We offer general science-based advice to land managers and policy makers and highlight knowledge gaps. Throughout, we emphasize the need to consider population-level processes, rather than just short-term behavioral responses of pollinators to floral resources.Plant–pollinator interactions are typically very general, with many pollinators being rewarded with pollen, nectar, or other resources from several plant species , and with most angiosperms being pollinated by multiple insect species . Humans benefit from this generalized nature of pollination systems, as exotic crops brought far from their ancestral ranges can find effective pollinators within native insect assemblages . Accordingly, a synthesis of 600 fields from 41 crop systems showed that only two of the 68 most frequent pollinators globally were specialist species: the weevil Elaeidobius kamerunicus pollinating oil palm and the squash-bee Peponapis pruinosa pollinating pumpkin .Because of differences in species functional traits, greater pollinator richness can lead to foraging complementarity or synergy, improving the quantity and quality of pollination and therefore increasing both the proportion of flowers setting fruits and product quality . Across crop species, insects with contrasting mouth part lengths may be needed for the pollination of flowers not only with easily accessible rewards but also with rewards hidden at the bottom of a tubular corolla . Within a crop species, social and solitary bees visited flowering radish plants at different times of day, suggesting temporal complementarity among these pollinator groups . Flower visiting behavior also differs among pollinators of different body sizes, and visits by a range of differently sized pollinator species increase pumpkin pollination . In addition to functional traits, interspecific differences in response traits to climate and land-use change can increase resilience of pollination services . The role of diverse assemblages of wild insects in crop pollination is also evident from recent global analyses. Worldwide, incomplete and variable animal pollen delivery decreases the growth and stability of yields for pollinator-dependent crops . This lower yield growth has been compensated for by greater land cultivation to sustain production growth . The consequent reduction in natural areas within agricultural landscapes decreases the richness and abundance of wild pollinators, including bees, syrphid flies, and butterflies , further diminishing crop pollination . A possible solution to this “vicious cycle” is to increase pollinator abundance through single-species management, most commonly European honey bees , tomato grow bags which are not greatly affected by isolation from natural areas . However, increasing the abundance of one species may complement but not replace the pollination services provided by diverse assemblages of wild insects, and wild insects pollinate some crops more efficiently than honey bees . Moreover, during the past 50 years, the fraction of animal-pollinator dependent agriculture and the number of managed honey bee hives have increased 300% and 45%, respectively, and honey bees have suffered from major health problems such as colony collapse disorder . All of these factors point to the potential benefit of practices that boost the species richness and abundance of wild pollinators. Indeed, richness and visitation rate of wild pollinators are strongly correlated across agricultural fields globally . Therefore, practices that enhance habitats to promote species richness are also expected to improve the aggregate abundance of pollinators, and vice versa .Below we describe practices that diversify and improve the abundance of resources for wild insects outside the crop field, without affecting crop management. Practices are ranked from less-to-more required area, with practices covering less area likely to be less costly . Nesting resources – such as reed internodes and muddy spots for cavity nesters, and bare ground for soil nesters – can be enhanced at crop field edges without affecting much of the crop area. Although providing such resources can promote the recruitment of certain bee species , evidence of its effects on crop yield is lacking .

Hedgerows and flower strips are woody or herbaceous vegetation, respectively, planted at the edge of a crop field, and generally covering only a small area. If appropriate plant species are chosen and adequately managed through time , hedgerows and flower strips can provide suitable food and nesting resources for, and enhance species richness and abundance of, bees and syrphid flies . These practices also enhance pollinators in adjacent fields – rather than simply concentrating pollinators at dense flower-rich regions – and therefore increase crop yield . Regional programs that augment the quality and availability of seeds from native flowering plants are important for the success of these practices . Conserving or restoring natural areas within landscapes dominated by crops often provides habitat for wild pollinator populations . In addition, pollinators depend on various types of resources , which are difficult to provide in ways other than by enhancing natural areas. Consequently, these areas also enhance pollination services for nearby crops . Enhancing farmland heterogeneity increases pollinator richness because plant species provide complementary resources over time and space, and insect species use different resource combinations . Also, insects usually require resources for periods longer than crop flowering . In fact, a synthesis of 605 fields from 39 crop systems in different biomes found that diversity of habitats within 4 ha enhanced bee abundance by 76% as compared with bee abundance in monoculture fields . Smaller crop fields increase land-use heterogeneity, and also benefit pollinators because most species forage at distances less than 1 km from their nests . Thus, crops in small fields are more likely to benefit from pollinator enhancements such as nearby field margins and hedgerows . Indeed, pollinator richness, visitation rate, and the proportion of flowers setting fruits decreased by 34%, 27%, and 16%, respectively, at 1 km from natural areas across 29 studies worldwide .In contrast to off-field methods that can be ordered from smaller to larger scale , on-field practices are all applied at a similar spatial scale, ie that of the crop field. Here we discuss practices that reduce the use of insecticides and machinery, enhance the richness of flowering plants, and require greater effort because of changes in the crop species or system . Reducing the use of synthetic insecticides that are toxic to pollinating insects should provide an important benefit . For example, in South Africa, insecticides adversely affected pollinators, impairing rather than enhancing mango yield . Insecticides with low toxicity to pollinators, with non-dust formulations, applied locally through integrated pest management practices, and applied during the non-flowering season are less likely to be detrimental to pollinators than highly toxic, systemic insecticides that are broadly sprayed from airplanes . No-tillage farming may enhance populations of ground nesting bees given that many species place their brood cells <30 cm below the surface . Tillage timing, depth, and method probably have differential impacts on pollinators and pollination, but further studies are required to verify this expectation . Similarly, flood irrigation may be detrimental in comparison to drip irrigation because of the increased likelihood of flooding pollinator nests but, particularly in arid systems, irrigation in general can promote wild-insect abundance through higher productivity of flowering plants or by making the soil easier to excavate .

According to Kucel et al. , severe infestation of up to 80% of berries occurs in Uganda and Ivory Coast, and 96% in Congo and Tanzania. In Kenya, Jaramillo et al. reported infestations ranging between 60 and 91% of berries on the plant and 44–84% of shed berries on the ground. Given the lack of control of CBB by parasitoids, cultural controls need to be developed to control CBB infestation levels as explored in a forthcoming paper.Over the last few decades, the field of nutrition has grown and evolved. Although we continue to define the critical roles that nutrients play as fuel sources, enzyme cofactors, signaling molecules, and vital infrastructure for our bodies, the cutting edge of nutrition research is pushing beyond simply meeting our bodies’ basic needs. Indeed, as the population is living longer, an emerging focus for nutrition has been on obtaining and maintaining optimal health over the lifte course. On 10 October, 2022, the Council for Responsible Nutrition held their annual Science in Session conference entitled Optimizing Health through Nutrition – Opportunities and Challenges. The audience consisted of scienThists and executives from dietary supplement and functional food companies as well as nutrition graduate student awardees of a CRN and ASN Foundation educational scholarship to attend the symposium. CRN is a trade association representing dietary supplement and functional food companies. The goals for this meeting were to propose a definition for optimal nutrition and identify strategies and tools for evaluating optimal health and nutrition outcomes while highlighting the gaps in this emerging space.

Now more than ever in history, our population’s health has emerged as a global priority. Currently, 6 in 10 adults in the United States have a chronic disease, and 4 in 10 have 2 or more. In <10 y, seedling starter pot the number of older adults is projected to increase by ~18 million. This means that by 2030, 1 in 5 Americans is projected to be 65 y old. As the major risk factor for many chronic illnesses is age, it is anticipated that the rates of all age-related diseases, especially chronic diseases, will skyrocket, potentially overwhelming the health care system. We need to enable the health care system—and the population—to be more proactive rather than reactive toward health outcomes. There is a critical need to help find solutions to optimize health across the liftespan to support living better longer, i.e., health span. Ensuring optimal nutrition is a significant and easily modifiable variable in the solution for maintaining and improving health span. We need to advance concepts beyond essential health and consider meeting the nutritional needs for optimal health. Although the nutrition science community is moving toward the vision of nutrition to support optimal health, many challenges and gaps still exist, but there are also recent advances and exciting opportunities. The goal of the CRN “Science in Session” workshop was to discuss these challenges, gaps, and opportunities in order to advance the concept of nutrition for optimal health. This review summaries these findings and discussions.The DRIs for individual nutrients, including the Estimated Average Requirement and the RDA, are lifte stage- and sex specific recommendations for Americans and Canadians. These reference intakes were established in the 1990s by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to prevent deficiency disease and to reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

However, incorporating chronic disease endpoints has been extremely challenging, primarily because data are largely lacking. Such end points were used to set the DRIs for only a handful of nutrients. Thus, the current DRIs, including the RDAs that are aimed to cover the nutrient needs of 98% of the population, do not account for the amount of a nutrient that one needs in order to achieve and maintain ‘optimal’ health.The science of resilience is not a new concept—this scientific concept was documented in the literature as early as the 1800s; the terminology enThered the biomedical sciences in the mid- 1900s and emerged in the early 2000s as a concept to be interconnected in multiple health domains. The questions dominating its broad use and applicability tend to focus on how to define resilience. In 2019, the Trans-NIH Resilience Working Group was formed with a goal to develop an NIH-wide definition of resilience and to achieve consistency and harmony on the design and reporting of resilience research studies. In 1993, an introductory manuscript to a special issue published on the science of resilience included a quote stating, “resilience is at risk for being viewed as a popularized trend that has not been verified through research and is in danger of losing credibility within the scientific community”. The authors of the manuscript also warned against definitional diversity with respect to measures of resilience and urged researchers to clearly operationalize the definition of resilience in all research reports. Remarkably, this call to action served as a primary aim of the Trans-NIH Resilience Working Group when it was organized >25 y after the 1993 special issue on resilience. One of the first activities of the Trans-NIH Resilience Working Group was to host a workshop, in March 2020, which led to the development of a definition of resilience and a conceptual infographic. The definition was intended to be applicable and useful across multiple domains, and it states that resilience encompasses “A system’s capacity to resist, recover, grow, or adapt in response to a challenge or stressor”.

A system can represent different domains, levels, and/or processes. Over time, a system’s response to a challenge might show varied degrees of reactions that likely fluctuate in response to the severity of the challenge, the length of time exposed to the challenge, and/or innate/intrinsic factors. To show applicability of the definition in resilience research studies, the Resilience Research Design Tool was later developed to help improve consistency in resilience research reports and to facilitate harmony with respect to measures of resilience outcomes. One of the goals of the resilience framework is to reframe the way we ask research questions, particularly about nutritional interventions like dietary supplements, so that we can better understand health outcomes that are not based solely on disease end points. Going forward, as researchers across various scientific domains and sectors come closer to a unified definition of resilience and perhaps agree to the use of a standard checklist for designing and reporting on resilience studies, there is greater opportunity to harmonize the science and develop more empirical evidence of resilience outcomes.Optimizing performance also includes building resilience in order to enhance the ability to perform tasks and ensuring resilience in order to prevent illness, injury, and disease. Within the US Department of Defense, researchers are able to study different models of physical and psychological stress and the application of different nutritional interventions with Service Members throughout their careers. Various models of stress are introduced, including initial military training , advanced military training courses , service academies , and extreme environments , along with examples of various interventions and outcome measures collected to date. The importance of nutrition on readiness and resilience was identified in military populations more than a decade ago and continues to be of interest. Two specific examples are provided to further explore nutrition interventions aimed at optimizing performance in the Department of Defense. The first, a completed double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, used a calcium and vitamin D fortified food product to optimize bone health during initial military training of Marine Corps recruits. Using a supplement or food intervention for calcium and vitamin D, participants received 2000-mg calcium and 1000-IU vitamin D per day. The primary outcomes of the study showed that bone markers and vitamin D status improve, but the supplementation did not affect skeletal parameters. Vitamin D also augmented markers of innate mucosal immunity. A second, forthcoming study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of adding spices and herbs to increase vegetable intake among junior-enlisted Service Members. Using a cycle of basic science/discovery that advances to clinical trials with various review steps helps move the field of nutrition science forward in a “total force fitness” approach. Total force fitness was introduced as a framework to help Service Members, their families, round nursery pots and military units reach and sustain optimal, holistic health, and performance in a way that aligns with their mission, culture, and identity. Other examples of frameworks focused on a holistic approach to research include Whole Person Health proposed by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, Whole Health developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and a recent consensus study report by the National Academies entitled Achieving Whole Health. A focus on improving resilience as a model outcome highlights the opportunities and complexities of conducting optimal health and nutrition research in this space.As the number and proportion of older adults in the population increase, the prevalence of age-related deficits in mobility and cognition also increases. Such deficits may be because of normal aging or to pathologic processes. For instance, cognitive impairments like declines in memory and speed of processing may result from normal brain aging or neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. When considering hallmarks of optimal nutrition and health, improving resilience from cognitive decline has strong promise and impact. Although the etiology of age-related mobility and cognitive changes is multi-factorial, it is well established that vulnerability to oxidative stress and inflammation increases as we age. Strategies that target oxidative stress and inflammation may improve resilience to processes that lead to cognitive decline.

For example, a healthy diet may help combat both oxidative stress and inflammation in the body, but a diet rich in bio-active polyphenolics from fruit, vegetables, walnuts, and coffee may be especially important in improving resilience and health outcomes. Polyphenols have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, so consuming them could slow or prevent age-related changes. As previously shown, foods high in polyphenols, e.g., dark-colored berry fruits, prevent age-related neuronal and behavioral deficits in animal models of aging. In particular, studies from animal models of aging have found that polyphenolic compounds from walnuts and berries hold promise in slowing—and perhaps even reversing—age-related motor and cognitive declines. These polyphenolics possess antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and may also influence the brain directly through various mechanisms, including alThered cell signaling and increased neurogenesis, arborization of dendrites, and autophagy in the brain. In recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot studies in healthy older adults , blueberry or strawberry supplementation was able to improve some aspects of cognitive performance, but not gait or balance. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in 44 healthy older adults , supplementation with freeze-dried blueberry powder for 3 months improved 1 measure of executive function and 1 measure of learning and memory. In a similarly designed trial, supplementation of freeze-dried strawberry powder in 39 healthy older adults for 3 months improved 2 measures of learning and memory compared with placebo but had no effect on executive function. Both trials found that berry powder supplementation did not affect mobility, including measures of balance and gait, likely because the study subjects had no mobility detriments at baseline. Berry supplementation did not decrease serum levels of inflammatory biomarkers compared with placebo, but when serum from berry-supplemented subjects was applied directly to cultured microglia cells, there was a reduction in LPS-induced inflammatory markers relative to placebo-treated subjects. interestingly, the serum was protective when taken during fasting as well as post prandially. Although these studies are preliminary, they add to the evidence that berry supplementation may help protect against age-related cognitive declines. In addition to single nutrients, healthy dietary patterns have been shown to slow the rate of cognitive decline. In particular, the Mediterranean-DASH diet intervention for neurodegenerative delay diet, which highlights increased intake of plant-based foods, such as berries and green leafy vegetables, is associated with lower risk of cognitive impairment in older adults. Further investigations examined mechanisms and other factors involved in the beneficial effects of berry fruits. For example, changes in circulating levels of specific phenolic compounds were correlated with changes in cognition. Furthermore, cognitive performance and inflammation were related, as serum collected from berry-supplemented animals reduced LPS-induced inflammatory-stress-mediated signals in stressed highly aggressively prolifterating immortalized microglia in vitro relative to serum from placebo-fed controls, and nitrite levels following supplementation were positively correlated with cognitive performance. Therefore, the inclusion of additional servings of polyphenolic-rich foods, such as nuts and berries, in the diet may be one strategy to forestall age-related neuronal deficits, perhaps via decreases in inflammation and suppression of microglial activation, to help increase cognitive resilience and preserve cognitive function.

When used as food, the salt is removed by washing or soaking in water. The recovery of fruit fragments just outside some buildings in Berenike suggests local growth of the plant, which would have eliminated the need for preservation. Members of the white bryony family are very juicy in a fresh condition and cannot be dried successfully. Four species are evidenced in Berenike by their seeds: the colocynth , the watermelon , the cucumber , and the bottle gourd . The colocynth grows in the Eastern Desert, where it is easily gathered and remains fresh for at least a couple of weeks. Ripe water melons can only be stored for five up to eight days and must have been available from local kitchen gardens or harvested in an unripe condition if they were imported. The ripening process continues after harvesting if the fruits are exposed to warm air, preferably between 20 to 25°C. Methods of preserving gourds until the next yield are available, is described by Pliny . One way is to add brine and another is to store them in a trench floored with sand and covered with dry hay and earth. In this way, gourds will remain in a green condition. The fruits of the subfamily Maloideae are classified as pomes. The seeds are enclosed in a cartilaginous structure in the center of the soft, indehiscent fruit. Apples can be preserved in several ways: fresh, dried, or kept in a preservative liquid, such as honey, as described by Apicius , or in a mixture of vinegar and brine as mentioned by Columella . Fresh, juicy apples might have been the most desirable ones. Dealing with the preservation of fresh fruits, Varro, cited by Pliny , bud drying rack says that fruits such as apples should be separately wrapped in fig leaves. According to Galen , properly ripened apples can be stored for the winter and the following spring . Windfall specimens were not used for storage.

The storage life of fresh apples is prolonged if stored in a cool environment. Although this condition is not met while on the way to Berenike, the transport of fresh apples to this remote destination would not have been problematic from September to October, just after harvesting. Today, dried apples produced on a commercial scale are peeled, cored, and sometimes cut into rings. But small apples can be dried as whole specimens or simply cut into segments, as described by Columella . In the latter case, fruits evaporate quicker and spoilage is reduced. Such halved apples, preserved by charring, are frequently found in archaeological contexts. The presence of pips in Berenike leaves open all aforementioned kinds of preservation methods. The last group of fruits and nuts to be dealt with concerns false fruits. They are represented by the juniper and the fig . The berrylike fruit of the juniper is easily dried and can be kept for a considerable period. Fresh accessory fruits of the fig are juicier but can also be dried easily. Due to the high sugar content, they can be kept until the next harvest. Long-distance transport is no problem, as is evidenced by the recovery of figs throughout the Roman Empire. Fresh figs can only be kept for a couple of days, as they are vulnerable to mold, which results in lactic fermentation. It is possible to preserve fresh figs in honey, as is mentioned by Apicius . Fig paste, made from trampled figs mixed with sesame , anise , fennel , and cumin , was made into balls and kept in jars covered with pitch or was heated in vessels in order to reduce the moisture content .The archaeobotanical record of Berenike and Shenshef, based on samples from seven excavation seasons, comprises 68 cultivated plants that could be identified in most cases to the level of species. As much as 28 cultivated plant species are evidenced from Berenike but are absent from the archaeobotanical record from Shenshef. Juniper is, on the other hand, a plant species that has been found only in Shenshef. Most certainly, the discrepancy between these records is partly affected by the unbalanced excavations at both sites. The wild plants are represented by some 110 wild plant taxa and could only partly be identified to the level of species. Some of the botanical remains are still unidentified, and it is assumed that they concern both cultivated and wild plant species. A part of these still-unidentified remains have clear diagnostic features and may even concern whole seeds or fruits. Their identification is hampered by the incompleteness of the reference collection.

The cultivated plants were obtained from an extended geographical area, and for this reason a large number of economic plants from remote areas have to be taken into consideration. As far as the reference collection of the wild plants is concerned, the incompleteness is caused by the difficulties met in collecting the seeds and fruits of desert plants, their presence largely dependent on the fluctuations in the humidity. The first step to a successful identification of the unidentified cultivated plants would be the compilation of lists of potential plant species that were traded from specific areas. Such a valuable checklist was presented by Warmington , who selected medicinal plant products traded by the Arabs on the assumption that they were perhaps also known to the earlier Romans. Although the number of species is limited, this list includes the coconut , the emblic , and the tamarind , three species evidenced at Berenike by the current archaeobotanical research as real trade products. Although these three species were already present among the botanical remains unearthed in Berenike during the first excavation seasons, the identification of emblic was only successful several years later, when a sample of this food plant containing some of the characteristic endocarp fragments was obtained from a spice shop in Cairo. Consultation of Warmington’s list at an earlier stage would have been of great help. Recently, a more extensive list of plant species that might have been traded from tropical Asia and China has been compiled. The matter is urgent as spice shops in the Near Eastern bazaars are becoming increasingly threatened. Their broad and exotic selection is being replaced more and more by a limited and more standardized supply as a result of globalization. But it is still possible to get a glimpse of the range of goods offered for sale during the past and to collect relevant reference material. From the uneven distribution of many plants over the trenches as well as the still untouched large habitation and industrial areas of both settlements, we can expect more plant species to be unearthed in future excavations, which in turn may shed new light on the subsistence and trade economy. This is not to say that a more elaborate sampling will ultimately result in a representative picture of subsistence and trade. Despite the excellent preservation conditions, archaeobotanical research is faced with the transfer and consumption of plants that have left no visible marks and of which all traces are vanished. Wastage of expensive commodities would have been the exception rather than the rule.

Food may also have been prepared in such a way that allowed for no inedible leftovers. Other food is completely digested, and therefore no identifiable remains would have been excreted in the feces. Despite their botanical richness, a similar warning is called in for the analysis of dump areas. Most of the botanical remains that have been investigated originate from organic dumps, which appeared to be predominantly middens and fl at dump areas in the proximity of stone buildings. It should be realized that in the course of time even such concentrated and well-preserved archives become only a faint reflection of the organic waste once deposited. Several processes are responsible for the reduction of this organic archive. Although it is conceivable that at least part of the habitation area was inaccessible to straying animals, as was the case, for example, with locally constructed garden plots, it seems most likely that organic dumps in particular were frequently visited by browsing animals, as is evidenced by the many dung pellets especially of sheep and goats and, to a lesser extent, from camels. Archaeozoological research and recent observations of trash deposits have attested to the presence of the following animals: cattle, pigs, chickens, sheep, goats, donkeys, black rats, dogs, Egyptian vultures, vertical grow rack system and brown-necked ravens . On a smaller scale, small creatures, such as beetles and larvae, also eat organic material. This kind of reduction may even last for thousands of years, as could be observed when special attention was paid to this process while analyzing a Roman trash deposit in Karanis . It was found that such small animals are present at least in the upper 10 cm of the trash. The reduction of the archaeobotanical archive may also be the result of burning the trash. During the excavations campaigns, such burning is still frequently practiced to get rid of the stench and to control as far as possible the number of flies, rats, and other such vermin, which in turn attract predators such as snakes. For safety reasons, such burning would mainly have taken place outside the settlement. This explains why most of the plant remains from the trash dumps inside the settlement have been preserved by desiccation, those used for offering ceremonies being an exception. The wind would also have been a factor in the reduction of the trash deposits. When trash dries out during high temperatures, it may be easily blown away. Only those remains that were sufficiently covered would have been protected from further losses due to wind and other factors, and these deposits constitute the actual archive that has been sampled . Some prudence is called for when numbers of plant remains are compared. A quantitative approach is not only obscured by the different plant parts we are dealing with, which is even true for seeds and fruits, but also because numbers of seeds and fruits differ highly among plants. Additionally, taphonomic processes bias the number of sub-fossil remains. Some fruits may serve as examples. It appeared that the endocarp fragments of the almond easily fall apart in an arid environment. This is caused by the relatively thick veins that are present in the middle of the inner fruit layer. Differences in the fruit anatomy also cause a discrepancy in counts. Each consumed date and olive , for example, will produce only a single leftover, either a seed or a fruit stone . Other fruits contain many seeds, such as a pomegranate with has some 250 to 400 seeds and the fig , whose number of “seeds” ranges from about 700 to 1,800 . A simple conversion of the number of sub-fossil seeds that have been found to the original number of fruits that were consumed is therefore impossible. The comparison of the retrieved plant remains is further complicated by differences in the consumption of fruits. Seeds of the date and fruit stones of the olive are not consumed and have a good chance of ending up in the trash deposits. On the other hand, the small seeds of the pomegranate and the fig are consumed and excreted and are therefore less likely to be found in trash layers. The consumption of whole, destoned fruits at the sites proper would have been the main source of recovered fruit-stone fragments. The concentration of these remains in middens or dump areas will partly depend on the way the fruits are eaten. Eating olives with an Egyptian colleague in a courtyard, I observed that I just threw the fruit stones on the ground, while my colleague collected all the fruit stones carefully but simply discarded the packing material of his cigarettes. From an archaeobotanical point of view, a possible recovery of my discarded fruit stones during a hypothetical excavation is most unlikely, whereas in excavating the trash deposit, one would have a good chance of finding some of my companion’s, which most probably will have been deposited there by the kitchen help.

There has been only one report of nodulation of a compatible host from soil that was devoid of native host plants , although only after 18 months of bait plant incubation. Recently, a cluster II Frankia strain was isolated in pure culture from a nodule of Coriaria japonica collected in Japan . These two examples indicate that not all cluster II Frankia strains are obligate symbionts. That being said, it seems clear that the cluster II Frankia strains form a strongly restrictive association with their host plants. Our study adds to the complex nature of cluster II Frankia strain association with their hosts. Two degrees of ecological association between a microsymbiont and its host may be considered: persistence and enrichment. Members of cluster I and III Frankia spp. have been known to persist in soil devoid of host plants for many years and to readily nodulate their respective hosts . Moreover, the number of infective units of cluster I Frankia spp. has been known to increase under Alnus host plants up to 30-fold, which makes the presence of the host plants a major factor in ampliftying Frankia populations . interestingly, the rhizosphere of Betula sp., a non-host closely related to the genus Alnus, showed enrichment of cluster I Frankia spp. compared to the rhizosphere of Alnus spp. at a host-plant-present site and abundance comparable to Alnus spp. at a host-plant-absent site . In our study, as evidenced in the microbiome analysis, an enrichment effect of cluster II Frankia was present but was much subtler. Cluster II Frankia spp. were detected in the host-plant-present sites and were also detected in rhizosphere soil of a non-host, H. arbutifolia, in the host-plant-present site, but no cluster II Frankia spp. were detected in the host-plant-absent site. In contrast, plastic flower bucket strains of the other clusters of Frankia were detected in both host-plant-present and -absent sites.The relatively greater abundance of cluster I Frankia spp. among the typical symbiotic and nitrogen-fixing subgroups that we observed is in congruence with results of previous studies . On the other hand, we found that cluster III was the least abundant: 6 reads total and only two samples with any reads detected.

This contrasts with previous findings where cluster III Frankia spp. was the dominant or codominant subgroup in a noncompatible host rhizosphere . This difference may be due to the fact that the soil conditions among these studies are at the opposite end of the ecological spectrum. In reference 35 the soil was moist and in a university campus arboretum, whereas our MiSeq samples were collected in dry nutrient-poor serpentine soil in summer. It is possible that there was a specific effect of serpentine soil conditions on cluster III Frankia spp. For example, Oline showed that while microbiomes from serpentine soils were similar to those of nearby non-serpentine soils at the phylum level, distinct subgroups were adapted to the specialized environment of serpentine soil. Not very much is known about the population distribution of the atypical cluster IV Frankia strains in soil. However, since they comprise the most abundant subgroup inour samples, it is clear that at least some strains of cluster IV Frankia are adapted to serpentine soil. The observed trend of decreasing clusters I and IV Frankia spp. in host-plant-present sites compared to that in host-plant-absent sites suggests that the host plant may be influencing the population sizes of strains of clusters I and IV as well as of cluster II Frankia. This may be related to an inhibitory factor in the host soil ecosystem, as discussed below. Nearly 34% of the reads that mapped to the genus Frankia mapped to OThus of indeterminate identity. Thus, depending on the true identity of these OThus, our results are subject to change. However, all of the reads that mapped to indeterminate OThus were  1% different from any of the cluster II OThus; with the mapping threshold set to 99%, no reads that mapped to these OThus would map to cluster II OThus, and all indeterminate OThus are more closely related to known cluster I or III strains than to cluster II strains.While the relative abundance of cluster II Frankia spp. in the microbiome was significantly higher in the host-plant-present site, it is still clear that this group of OThus is quite rare in the microbiome, representing only 0.05‰ in any sample.

This suggests that the host factor is not a source of energy to sustain a large population; i.e., it is not promoting the prolifteration of cluster II Frankia outside the host, in contrast to some strains within the cluster I Frankia that can utilize a host-derived soil carbon source . Further, permutational MANOVA and factorial ANOVA both showed that the presence of the host plant did not significantly affect the relative abundances of all OThus in the microbiome overall nor the -diversity; in fact PCoA with an outgroup showed that the microbiomes of the samples from the host-plant-present and host-plant absent sites were very similar to each other. This minimal influence of host/non-host on the overall microbiome together with the trend observed for clusters I and IV Frankia OThus suggests that a host-derived factor has an effect specifically on cluster II Frankia OThus. Cluster II Frankia OThus were found in the rhizosphere soil of the non-host H. arbutifolia in host-plant-present sites, but not in the rhizosphere of H. arbutifolia in host-plant-absent sites. Thus, the host-plant effect was not limited to the host-plant rhizosphere but rather extended to the level of the site where the host plant was present. Extracts from host-plant roots and shoots have also been found to enhance growth of Frankia strains in culture particularly strongly if the strain is compatible . Taking this into account, we propose that possible mechanisms for the dispersal of this host-dependent factor might be diffusion of a compound or compounds originating as root exudates, leaf litter decomposition and leaching into the soil profile, or chemical signals dispersed via mycorrhizal networks . A plant factor with specific targets that might have a strong impact on Frankia strain presence in the rhizosphere might be a plant-derived secondary compound related to nodulation signaling, such as a flavonoid. Flavonoids are known signaling molecules in rhizobial symbioses . Additionally, in Myrica sp. symbioses, a suite of hydroxy-chalcones, termed myrigalones, has been shown to promote infective Frankia and inhibit noninfective Frankia strains . Alternatively, this factor might be a terpenoid with effects similar to strigolactone, known to stimulate spore germination and limited hyphal growth of fungal symbionts in the rhizosphere in arbuscular mycorrhizal endosymbioses . The host signaling pathway that initiates AM symbiosis is ancestral to signal exchange in RNS; and the microsymbiont signal molecules are also similar between these two types of endosymbiosis . These nod gene homologs have been shown to be expressed in developing root nodules of D. glomerata . In summary, our data demonstrate the existence of a host site enrichment of cluster II Frankia strains that is independent of host plant species, vegetation type, geographical location, climate, soil type, and soil pH. The dependency of Frankia spp. on theirhosts for survival and persistence has been postulated, based on in vitro experiments . Host and non-host rhizospheres were recently compared with respect to cluster I Frankia strains in one location , showing no significant host rhizosphere effect. Cluster III Frankia strains were shown to have a distribution independent of the host rhizophere, implying a broad physiological adaptation in soil . The current report is the first comprehensive study showing a significant host plant influence on cluster II Frankia strains in natural soil environments, an effect that is distinct from that of other ecological parameters. Identification and testing of potential specific host-plant compounds and transmission pathways remain to be carried out in more controlled environment experiments.All soil, leaf, flower buckets wholesale and root nodule samples were collected from three locations in northern Califtornia: in and near Anderson Lake County Park, Santa Clara County, Califtornia , McLaughlin Natural Reserve, Lower Lake, Califtornia , or Sagehen Experimental Forest, Truckee, Califtornia , as shown in Fig. 6 . Maps of these locations were generated with R with the ggmap package .

These locations varied considerably in altitude, monthly precipitation, monthly temperature, and soil type. The altitudes were approximately 200 m, 650 m, and 1,950 m above sea level in ALCP, MNR, and SEF, respectively. Multiple sampling sites were selected within each location: ALCP, n 4 sampling sites; MNR, n 5 sampling sites; and SEF, n 2 sampling sites. The main factors that were tested across these sites were host plant presence/absence , host plant species , soil type , soil pH, vegetation type, and climate type. Factors 1 to 5 are described in Table 2. The soil type in each site was determined by methods described below, and the vegetation types were determined to the macro group level according to the U.S. National Vegetation Classification using A Manual of Califtornia Vegetation . The annual patterns of temperatures and precipitation at each location were determined according to the WorldClim database . Sites within each location were paired according to host-plant presence/absence for comparison. In ALCP, AR, WA, and K were compared with CC on serpentine and non-serpentine soil . In MNR, SE02 was compared with SE05 , both on serpentine soil, and NS02 was compared with NS01 , both on non-serpentine soil. In SEF, SH06 was compared with SH01 , both on non-serpentine soil. Vegetation composition was similar for pairs in ALCP and in MNR . In the Sagehen Creek site, the pairing was between sites with dissimilar but adjacent vegetation types . In ALCP, the host plant Ceanothus ferrisiae was present in AR, WA, K but absent in CC. In MNR, the host plant Ceanothus jepsonii was present in SE02, and the host plant Cercocarpus betuloides was present in NS02. In SEF, Ceanothus velutinus was present in SH06. Site SE06 in MNR was used to collect leaf samples of Avena fatua for 15N comparison .Strawberry production in Califtornia accounts for more than 80% of total U.S. production, with an annual farm gate value of $1.10 billion , which is four times greater than all other states combined . In addition, Califtornia produces nearly one billion strawberry transplants each year in nurseries, and these transplants must meet strict phytosanitary standards for local production and export. Such a profitable industry in Califtornia has been made possible by the fumigation technology developed in the 1950s with methyl bromide and chloropicrin . Since then, preplant fumigation with methyl bromide and chloropicrin has become an integral part of the Califtornia strawberry production industry , and nearly all conventional strawberry production occurs in fumigated soils . Annual soil fumigation has contributed to the control of soilborne pathogens, nematodes, and weeds while also boosting the yields of strawberry plants. Historically, this also allowed breeding programs to focus on improving horticultural characteristics of strawberry cultivars in lieu of emphasizing disease resistance. Because of the negative effects of methyl bromide on stratospheric ozone, the fumigant was designated as a class I stratospheric ozone depleting substance by the Montreal Protocol and as a significant risk to human health . The continued availability of this efficient fumigant for agricultural soil fumigation beyond the 2005 phase-out date will be through critical-use exemptions. It has been estimated that annual losses in short term net farm income in Califtornia will be more than $162 million, with strawberry accounting for more than 60% of these losses . Over the past 10 years, research has focused on identifying alternative fumigants with efficacy comparable with methyl bromide . Alternative fumigants such as chloropicrin and Telone C35 have been identified, and improved application techniques have been developed to reduce emissions . Although chloropicrin is as efficacious as methyl bromide + chloropicrin at high rates, these are not feasible for the growers due to regulatory limits placed on application rates. Regardless, chemical alternatives to methyl bromide will be subjected to increasing review and regulation and they may not be readily available over the longer term. It has been estimated that soilborne diseases caused by Pythium, Phytophthora, Cylindrocarpon, Macrophomina, Rhizoctonia, and Verticillium spp. result in 20 to 30% strawberry yield losses in the absence of fumigation .

In Egypt it has a tradition of being added to bread, mixed with the fl our of sorghum in particular . A popular dish in Yemen is “hulbah,” which is made from pounded fenugreek mixed with meat broth and various vegetables . Fenugreek is often eaten with white lupine , which is already mentioned by Galen . The seeds are also used for making fenugreek tea , which is still served in Egypt. Medical treatments include promoting lactation; healing inflammations; regulating digestion; relieving coughs, asthma, and emphysema; and its use as an aphrodisiac . Duke states that in Punjab , whole plants are added to stored grains as insect repellents and that seeds are used locally for a yellow dye. It is not known if this was also practiced in ancient Egypt. During a botanical field trip, a sample of fenugreek seeds was found by the author among the belongings of a dead Ababda sheikh, who was buried on a terrace of Wadi Shenshef near the Roman ruins . The author discovered these belongings high up between the branches of an Acacia tree, well safeguarded against incidental water currents. I visited the tree again the following day with some Ababda nomads who allowed me to inspect part of the find, including a tin that appeared to contain an almost-empty packet of Nefertiti cigarettes, indicating that the belongings must have been deposited in the tree at least ten years earlier. Also present were three boxes of matches, an illegible piece of paper, a small medicine bottle, plastic pot manufacturers and two tied-up pieces of cloth in the form of a purse. The fenugreek seeds were present in one of these purses; the other one contained seven topped cowrie shells.

These shells could be used by gifted people for fortune-telling and for consulting to plot out a proper route during a journey. It could not be determined whether the fenugreek seeds were used as a spice or as a medicine. The archaeobotanical records of fenugreek are scattered and include Spain, Bulgaria, Germany, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and India. The oldest finds originate from Iraq , Israel , and Jordan . Archaeobotanical records from Egypt almost equalize the number of all other finds, the oldest one originating from predynastic Ma’adi . In Berenike, fenugreek might have been cultivated in locally constructed garden plots. It is adapted to sandy soils and can even withstand some salinity. Seeds can be harvested about three to five months after planting. Alternatively, the seeds could have been imported from the Nile Valley.The general picture from the Egyptian archaeobotanical record is that the hulled emmer wheat predominated during the pharaonic period and was largely replaced by free-threshing wheat during the Ptolemaic period. A reexamination of the published records revealed that we are predominantly dealing with hard wheat in the GrecoRoman period, and not with bread wheat . Both free-threshing wheats can easily be distinguished by their threshing remains, whereas the identification of fruits can be problematic . Although hard wheat is well adapted to relatively warm climates, and for that reason is the dominant wheat in the Near East and the Mediterranean area, it has quite recently been replaced in Egypt by bread wheat on a large scale. The cultivation of hard wheat is now confined to small areas in the Delta and the Fayum. Nevertheless, a new variety of hard wheat has recently been brought into cultivation. The yield of durum wheat is larger than that of emmer wheat, but less than that of bread wheat. The name hard wheat refers to the very hard endosperm, which makes it unsuitable for bread making. After grinding, the gluten-rich flour is made into a stiff, unleavened dough that is used for all kinds of pastas, such as spaghetti, noodles, and macaroni. The identification of the Berenike specimens is based on the morphological features of the rachis fragments .

It appeared that almost all the rachis nodes unearthed belong to durum wheat. Only a few spikelets of emmer wheat and some rachis fragments of bread wheat were found. Both species were always found mixed up with the predominant durum wheat and are therefore considered as contaminants. Durum wheat has been recorded in reasonable quantities in both early and late Roman deposits of Berenike and would have been one of the staple grains for human consumption. Most probably, the hard wheat was obtained from the productive Nile Valley. The delivery of mainly modest quantities of wheat from Koptos to Berenike is evidenced by an ostraka archive found at Koptos, dated from 18 BC to AD 69 .The bitter vetch is a pulse crop native to the Near East and the Mediterranean area. Also from Egypt, it has been recorded as a wild plant species, where it grows on cultivated grounds in the Mediterranean coastal area . From this area it moved westward to the Balkan area and to the countries along the Mediterranean Sea, where it has been recorded from many Neolithic sites. Records from Egypt date back as far as predynastic times . The bitter vetch belongs to the first group of domesticated crops of the Fertile Crescent and central Anatolia, although it is considered of less importance than the lentil or the pea . Seeds of the bitter vetch can be eaten by ruminants such as cows and sheep and by birds such as chickens, but they are toxic for other animals such as donkeys, horses, and pigs. The seeds are only fit for human consumption if they are soaked in water for some time. According to Zohary and Hopf , bitter vetch was mainly used as forage for animals, at least from Roman times onward and was only eaten by man in times of famine. Originally a weed in lentil fields, the bitter vetch is still difficult to eliminate once it has become established in such fields.

The correlation between the bitter vetch and the lentil in samples from Berenike and Shenshef is weak and assumes that the bitter vetch had been purposely brought to the site. Considering the availability of a broad spectrum of high-quality food products in both these sites, the bitter vetch was probably imported as animal fodder from the Nile Valley. According to Becker-Dillingen , seeds of the bitter vetch have also been used to adulterate black pepper , but such a practice at Berenike is not conceivable.The wild ancestor of the fava bean has not yet been identified and the archaeological evidence from early Neolithic settlements is also still scanty. For these reasons the fava bean is not considered as one of the founder crops of early agriculture . The oldest finds are recorded from the Levant, from where the crop spread westward into the Mediterranean area and eastward into India and China. The oldest Egyptian archaeobotanical find, unequivocally identified to the level of species, is dated to the Old Kingdom and originates from Abusir . Today, the fava bean belongs to the most important food legumes produced in Egypt . The fruits have a white and velvet coating on the inside and contain some 3 to 6 seeds. Dry beans have a protein content of about 25 percent, black plastic plant pots wholesale which is comparable with that of the pea . Fava beans are grown for both green and dry consumption. If consumed as immature green beans, the plants are harvested several times. To obtain dry beans, the whole plant is harvested as soon as the first fruits turn black. Green beans are eaten after boiling, whereas dried beans are often baked first, a meal that is called foul midamis . Taamiah is a fried ball of paste made of germinated fava beans, and is a popular snack in Egypt. In the eastern Mediterranean, a part of the human population is hypersensitive to the consumption of fava beans, which can cause a condition known as favism. Pollen may also bring on this disease, and it is probably for this reason that Pythagoras advised against eating flowers of this plant . A variety of chemical compounds is responsible for the oxidation of red blood corpuscles and hemoglobin, resulting in anemia and jaundice . Unless they are stored in a cool environment, harvested beans will quickly deteriorate. This may explain why the fava bean was frequently found among crops cultivated in the small kitchen gardens present in settlements in the Eastern Desert. Obviously, this pulse is easily grown under controlled conditions, and it is most likely that it was also cultivated in local kitchen gardens in Roman Berenike and Shenshef. Such plants might concern special garden cultivars, which are distinguished from field cultivars. The garden cultivars are especially grown on a small scale throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and parts of India for its green pods . The green pods can be harvested for human consumption, and the remaining plant parts are suitable for use as stock feed. Despite their relatively thick seed coat, only a few small fragments of the fava-bean seeds have been unearthed in Berenike and Shenshef, indicating that their presence in the archaeobotanical records is probably underrepresented. This could be explained in several ways. First, large seeds will have less chance of getting lost in the sieving process in food preparation. This is in line with the predominance of small, aborted fava-bean seeds frequently found in waterlogged samples from The Netherlands. In addition, it may be assumed that if large seeds do indeed get lost, they have a better chance of being eaten by browsing animals than smaller ones such as lentils that will easily sink down in the trash. Furthermore, large seeds of pulses easily disintegrate and, in this state, are easily susceptible to further organic decay.

As only seed fragments were found, it was not possible to measure the size of the seeds, which would enable an identification to the level of variety.The mung bean is a domesticate of the Indian subcontinent. Its wild progenitor, Vigna radiata ssp. sublobata , is found in the western Himalayan foothills and extends throughout the Western Ghats into Sri Lanka. Apart from the discovery of the mung bean in Roman Berenike, the only other archaeobotanical records so far originate from India and date at least to the start of the second millennium BC . Together with black gram , the mung bean is highly valued, the former being particularly prized by high-caste orthodox Hindus . Today, the mung bean is mainly produced in Southeast Asia, including India. According to Westphal , the mung bean has been introduced relatively late in East Africa and is still not fully accepted there as a pulse crop. Mung beans are grown primarily for their dried pulses. They can be eaten whole, split into dhal, or ground into fl our. Whole or split seeds are eaten after boiling, and the fl our of mung beans can be used for all kinds of baking products. Additionally, germinated bean sprouts are eaten, which are obtained from the green-colored seeds. Their protein content is well over 25 percent. Almost 70 mung beans have been unearthed from several loci in two trenches, located in the northwest part of the center of Berenike. They were traded as whole seeds. sub-fossil mung beans from India that coincide with the Roman trade with India have been recorded from Narhan and Taradih , both located in north India, and from Nevasa , east of Bombay . This would suggest the import of mung beans from Barygaza. On the other hand, it has to be realized that the Indian archaeobotanical record is still biased in favor of prehistorical sites found in the southern part of India. Prehistorical finds of the mung bean are recorded from Hallur and Sangankallu in Karnataka . Assuming a continuation of the mung bean cultivation, this means that import from the more-southerly ports of Muziris and Nelkynda must also come into consideration.The progenitor of the cultivated grape is Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris, which grows in the Mediterranean area and eastward to Turkmenistan and Tadzhikistan where isolated populations are present. As far as the North African Mediterranean coastal strip is concerned, the distribution of this wild grape is confined to Morocco and Algeria. Grape cultivation started in the Levant in the early Bronze Age, making it one of the first classical fruits of the Old World .

Olive oil can be kept for a long time if not exposed to air and is mainly used in cooking. The first archaeobotanical evidence of olive dates back to the Eighteenth Dynasty and includes leaves found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. Not until the fourth century BC, however, did the olive become a substantial part of the diet of the Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt . A further increase of its use in Egypt is dated to the Roman period, as is evidenced by the numerous references in literary sources and the substantial archaeobotanical record. Both the number and size of the fruits found at Berenike and Shenshef indicate that we are dealing with the cultivated subspecies and that they were imported from the Mediterranean area or the Fayum. The fruits of the wild species are smaller than those of the cultivated ones. Also the relatively small population at Gebel Elba makes it improbable that olives were imported from this area. The presence of the stony endocarps at Berenike and Shenshef indicate that they were available as table fruits. Salted olives must have been a valuable food in the warm desert as it supplements the loss of salt via evaporation.Two different species of rice have been domesticated: the Asian rice Oryza sativa L. and the African rice O. glaberrima Steud. Cultivation of Asian rice began in many parts of south and Southeast Asia, including northeastern India. In fact, rice cultivation in India goes back to 2500 BC, raspberry grow in pots making it one of the oldest regions of rice cultivation. The cultivation of African rice, on the other hand, is probably not more than 3,500 years old .

Although the original distribution area of the annual Oryza glaberrima Steud. spp. barthii J. M. J. de Wet, the wild progenitor of Oryza glaberrima, coincides with the savanna zones south of the Sahara and even extends towards the center of Sudan, its domestication area is limited to West Africa . Therefore, it is plausible that the rice that has been found in the excavations was imported from India late in the history of Berenike. The Periplus Maris Erythraei frequently mentions grain as a trade item together with rice, suggesting that the taxonomic relationship of rice with wheat and barley was not clear to the author of the Greek text. See for example the enumeration of export commodities of Syrastrênê : “The region, very fertile, produces grain, rice, . . .” . The separate status of rice was also expressed in its use in beauty treatments . Casson notes that with the exception of textiles, not all items traded from India to Arabia and Africa are mentioned in the list of exports of the Periplus. According to Casson, this implies that merchants from Roman Egypt were only interested in the real luxury products that were available at these ports. The presence of reasonable amounts of rice in both early and late deposits at Berenike, however, makes it very likely that at least for this cereal an indirect trade with India did exist. According to Feliks , who wrote about rice cultivation in the Roman period, a highly prized large kernel rice variety was cultivated in Israel, probably in the Hula Valley. Feliks’s main source is the Mishnah , which is considered to be very authentic. This assumption is, however, not yet evidenced by archaeobotanical research. Greek and Roman writers only mention rice cultivation in Syria and Mesopotamia . Strabo , for example, mentions that rice grew in Bactria, Babylonia, Susis, and lower Syria Others, such as Dalby , are of the opinion that rice was never grown within the Roman Empire. Because fragments of amphoras were found at Berenike that originated from Syria and possibly also from the Gaza-Negev area , it is possible that the rice found at Berenike was imported from the Near East.

With Berenike’s southern and southeastern maritime orientation, however, it seems more likely it was an item of the distributive trade with Arabia. According to the Periplus, rice was exported from the country of Parsidai and the Gulf of Terabdoi and the district of Ariakê , which are identified by Casson as respectively the area around modern Karachi in Pakistan and the area between Broach and Surat in northwest India . From there it was exported to the island of Socotra , which is located northeast of Somalia, and to the so-called far-side ports on the northern coast of Somalia . The Periplus is less clear about the export of rice from Limyrikê, the present-day state of Kerala, which is located along the southwest coast of India. It is mentioned that sailors from both Barygaza and Limyrikê by chance put in at Socotra and would have exchanged rice, among other commodities . This is in line with modern rice cultivation in India, which stretches along the western coast from Gujarat southward to Sri Lanka. Rice is mentioned as one of the trade items of Sri Lanka by Ptolemy . Ships that called at ports along the Somalian coast could be loaded up with Indian rice brought there by Indians or Arabs. In this way rice was indirectly traded to Egypt. It is even possible that for some Roman ships these ports in Somalia were the final destinations . The claim that rice import from India must have been expensive, as put forward by Dalby , is questionable in the light of intermediate involvement of Indian and Arab traders. Pliny states that rice was imported from the East without further specification and does not mention a price. Rice could be obtained from harbors along the northern coast of Somalia and from the island Socotra . The import of rice to Berenike is in concordance with its earlier mentioned use within the Roman Empire, although the export of grain, probably wheat , from Berenike to Muziris and Nelkynda in southwest India seems to contradict this. According to Casson , grain exported from Egypt to Indian ports was destined for Westerners permanently established in those places, while Indian merchants living in Berenike ate rice.

Conversely, perhaps, the import of rice to Berenike indicates the presence there of Indian or other South Asian residents who consumed it. Although rice cultivation probably began in Egypt between the Arabic conquest and the Turkish invasion , the archaeobotanical evidence from Berenike indicates that it was already being consumed during the Roman period. Intact spikelets as well as loose chaff remains show that rice was transported in the husks. In addition to the rice found at Berenike, only three other archaeobotanical records of rice are known from sites within the Roman Empire so far. Small quantities of rice have been found at Quseir al-Qadim, both from the Roman and the medieval period . A still unpublished record is mentioned by A. R. Furger from Zurzach in Switzerland . Roman rice consumption has also been documented by Knörzer for the first quarter of the first century AD in Novaesium . In this fortress along the Rhine River, altogether 196 charred kernels were found. Whether this rice originated from the East or was imported from Arabia, perhaps via Berenike, cannot be determined. All other archaeobotanical records from Europe are dated to the Middle Ages and modern times. Papyrological evidence of the availability of rice in Egypt is extremely scanty. Only four out of the approximately 34,230 published documents, dating from the third century BC to the eighth century AD, mention rice. Three of them are dated to the early Roman period, the other to the sixth century AD . Two of these documents originate from the Fayum; one mentions the purchase of rice, the other the control of the rice trade. According to Konen, such a monopoly indicates that, at least temporarily, rice trade must have been quite important. Strabo states that most of the Indian food consisted of rice porridge and that Indians made a beverage from rice that is known as arak. In India, 30 planter pot rice has also a tradition in being used in offerings at all kinds of religious and auspicious ceremonies. Only new rice is used for this purpose, whereas old rice is used for cooking. It is also believed that rice gives strength and makes one more fertile, which is, for example, expressed in throwing rice on a bridal couple . Possibly, rice was only used on a limited scale within the Roman Empire and in particular for medical reasons. In some of the recipes in the Apicius cookery book, rice is used as a thickening agent for sauces, making use of the waxy consistency of rice fl our. A kind of rice cake is mentioned by Chrysippus of Tyana . Additionally, it was mixed with beans and used by women for preserving the smoothness of the skin .

The main distribution area of the date palm lies between lat 15°N and 30°S and extends from the Spanish Sahara toward Pakistan. To the north it follows the coastal area of the Mediterranean Sea as far as southern Spain, and to the south it is recorded from the coastal area of Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia. In this southern part of its distribution area, however, most of the date palms grow in the northern provinces of Sudan . The date palm is recorded from all the phytogeographical districts of Egypt, although the most numerous groves can be found in the oases of the Western Desert and in the cultivated land along the Nile. Date palm groves along the Red Sea coast are recorded by Schweinfurth from the Wadi Gimal estuary, some 100 km north of Berenike, and from Abu Nechle south of Ras Hadarba , some 300 km south of Berenike. Also in the near vicinity of Berenike, several date palms were observed by the author recently. All these specimens were, however, still immature and not fruit bearing. Being a monocotyledon, the date palm has only adventitious roots, which do not grow deeper than 2 m. Its presence, therefore, is confined to localities where sufficient fresh water is available. Although it is not a halophyte, the date palm can withstand considerable concentrations of salt and can be found near the sea, as is the case with some specimens in the estuary of Wadi Gimal. Several freshwater springs are present in this coastal area, which enable the date palms to survive. Schweinfurth links the palm grove in the Wadi Gimal estuary with human interference, suggesting a relict vegetation from an ancient settlement or a plantation initiated by pilgrims or sailors. Mandaville , however, is of the opinion that such palm groves along the coast might also concern true relict populations of wild specimens. Propagation from seeds is indicated by equal numbers of male and female plants. The date palm is dioecious, just like the doam palm. One single male date palm can fertilize on average about 25 females date palms. Cross-pollination is achieved either by wind, and eventually insects, or by humans. The advantage of artificial pollination over wind pollination is that a higher yield is obtained. This is not only because more flowers become fertilized, but also because artificially pollinated flowers produce on average larger dates. Unfertilized flowers of the date palm are also capable of producing fruits, a phenomenon that is known as parthenogenesis. Although dates from such flowers are as sweet as the ones that develop in fertilized flowers, they are significantly smaller . artificial fertilization has been described as early as ca. 2300 BC in a cuneiform text of Ur . The knowledge of artificial fertilization was probably introduced into Egypt during the Middle Kingdom . This assumption partly rests on the rare occurrence of date fruits or seeds dated before the Middle Kingdom, whereas dates are frequently found from this period onward. We must bear in mind, however, that the total number of archaeobotanical records concerning the remains of the date palm of the pre-Middle Kingdom period is still relatively small, which is, for example, also true for the sycamore fig , another fruit tree native to Egypt. Another problem is that no comprehensive analysis of the variation in seed size is available on seeds dated from the Middle Kingdom onward.