[en] Apart from our regular Coordinated Research Project (CRP) activities and our technical support given to ongoing national and regional Technical Cooperation (TC) projects, we were also involved in the formulation (together with our Member State counterparts and TC Country Officers) of projects for the 2009/11 TC project cycle. In addition to this, when carrying out our 2007 programme of work and budget performance evaluations, we could identify the areas where good performance was achieved as well as areas where further improvements are needed. It is hoped that our inputs will serve the best interests of our Member States. The focus of our activities is on enhancing food security by supporting sustainable livestock production systems in developing countries. This is to be achieved by strategic and applied research, technology transfer and capacity building. The three principal components of the subprogramme are animal nutrition, reproduction and breeding and animal health. Within these three components, problems are identified and solutions developed through the use of strategically applied nuclear-based tools, in conjunction with conventional technologies

[en] Food quality and safety are among the most important criteria for the evaluation of consumable fresh fruits and vegetables. Food irradiation is a promising new food safety technology that can eliminate disease-causing microorganisms (such as E. coli and Salmonella) from foods. However, through irradiation process, the food nutritional value is essentially unchanged and the food does not become radioactive. The development of food irradiation detection methods is useful for regulatory compliance purposes, and is an active area of investigation. Detection methods would likely accelerate approval of additional food irradiation applications and enhance international trade of irradiated foods. In this work, a food nondestructive irradiation detection method is proposed. The method utilizes the image processing procedures to facilitate the discrimination of the irradiated food. The experiment has been conducted on database of apples’ images which are captured before and after exposing the apples samples to different doses of Gamma rays. The experiment has been conducted on database of apple’s images which are captured before and after exposing. The image analysis shows that the radiation causes a distinct gradient in color throughout the irradiated food. This work proposes two methods, which are depends on statistical calculation and Zernike moments, for extracting the color changes and converting them into features vectors. These features vectors are utilized by the classifiers (Linear Discriminate Analysis and Support Vector Machine) to identify the irradiated food. The proposed algorithms prove good identification of the irradiation process by which the job of “Quality “Assurance Engineers” at the radiation units is facilitated. The proposed methods achieve about 87% and 94% success recognition rate of the irradiated food respectively. Finally, the proposed methods are simple and cheap and have been validated by physical analytical method (ESR). So, it overcomes the disadvantages of the known methods which are complex, destructive, and very costly

[en] Doses required for disease control are nearly always in the range which causes host damage. Prospects for effective postharvest disease control by ionising energy treatments alone are therefore severely limited. Doses selected for semi-commercial testing should be those required to achieve insect disinfestation without host damage. Fungicides should be avoided to exploit the commercial advantage of a no-residue ionising energy treatment

[en] The blackberry (Rubus spp.) has a color ranging from purplish red to blue, due to the high content of anthocyanins. This together with the carotenoid pigment comprises natural pigments present in this fruit. Several studies have correlated increased consumption of these bioactive compounds, such as protection and / or inhibition of degenerative diseases. Nevertheless, the major obstacle to consumption and marketing of the fruits of mulberry is your perishability due to their high respiratory rate, which reduces their lifetime. Processing of fruit in pulp form provides an increase in shelf life the same possibility of expanding its use as an ingredient in yogurt, pastries, ice creams, juices etc.. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of gamma irradiation and pasteurization in physico-chemical, chemical and microbiological blackberry pulp, stored for 60 days under refrigeration. The temperature used for the heat treatment was 75 ° C / 20 seconds. In the irradiation process, the following treatments were used: 0, 0.75 kGy, 1.5 kGy and 3 kGy. Pulps blackberry pasteurized and irradiated were stored at 4 ° C and evaluated at 0, 7, 15, 30 and 60 days. To determine the effect of processing on the quality of the pulp characterization was made through analysis of the chemical composition, total acidity, pH, soluble solids, total solids, total anthocyanins, antioxidant activity and color. Microbiological analysis was also done according to Brazilian law. The heat treatment led to the retention of blackberry pulp as the pulp had a good microbiological quality from beginning to end storage. Irradiation contributed to increased shelf life of 60 days pulp and treatment using 1.5 kGy was that provided the best microbiological quality. It can be concluded that chemical changes observed during the storage time of the pulp did not differ irradiated analyzed pulp pasteurized. (author)

No abstract available

[en] Short-term feeding tests with day old single comb White Leghorn cockerels were undertaken to test the proposition that radiation pasteurization of animal feed would result in improved performance of animals or birds consuming that feed. This assumes that animal feed frequently harbours pathogens which deleteriously affect the consuming animal or bird, and that irradiation destroys those pathogens. In five of six tests completed to date, using separate lots of feed ingredients in each, radiation pasteurization resulted in statistically significant improvements in feed consumption, weight gain and/or feed conversion efficiency

[en] Solo papaya is subject to infestation by the Oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel). Since ethylene dibromide has been banned for use as a fumigant for fruits, gamma radiation was investigated as an alternative quarantine disinfestation treatment for solo papaya. Results of small-scale laboratory tests showed that 150 Gy completely prevented the emergence of B. dorsalis. For egg-infested solo papaya, pupal recovered decreased with increasing dose while insect survival was not associated with fruit maturity. For larvae-infested ones, insect survival, in general, was highest in the full-ripe stage and lowest in the one-fourth-ripe stage of the fruit. Confirmatory tests of the proposed treatment using more than 100,000 test insects revealed that 150 Gy radiation dose is sufficient to provide Probit 9 quarantine security for solo papaya. (author). 10 refs.; 1 fig.; 4 tabs

[en] Published in summary form only

[en] Processes used for meat treatment for storage (cooling, radurization + cooling, freezing, heat treatment and radappertization) are compared with regard to energy demand. The effect of doses above 10 kGy and below 10 kGy are discussed. Doses of ionizing radiation may be combined with other techniques (heat treatment, the addition of certain chemicals or antibiotics). Czechoslovak experience with irradiation of meat with tapeworm cysticerci is described. (E.F.)

No abstract available