eChapters

Drying

Drying is one of the age-old techniques for preservation and value addition of food products. Generally, it means removal of moisture from the food products by evaporation. It is aimed at lowering the water content of food stuff, thereby arresting the growth of microbes, action of enzymes and other autolytic chemical reactions (Naidu et al., 2016). This preservation technique is predominately used for food materials which are regarded as “highly perishable”. The benefits of drying includes extended shelf-life, lower storage space, reduced packaging requirements, lower handling and transportation costs, off-seasonal availability and importantly diversified product for the ultimate consumers (Bonaui et al., 1996).

Fish drying

Open sun drying as a method of fish preservation is recorded in history by the primitive societies. However, open sun drying of fish has few draw backs which includes poor product quality, higher microbial contamination and complete dependence of weather conditions for drying (Bala & Mondol, 2001). In the later stages, drying developed into completely a controlled process in which drying air temperature, relative humidity and air velocity were precisely maintained at optimum level. The fish drying process is slightly different from other food materials mainly due to its gel like behaviour until considerable reduction of moisture. Moreover, significant amount of shrinkage takes place in fish during drying in addition to the other irreversible changes.

The Government of Tamilnadu has taken a number of progressive measures on water resources and irrigation management, particularly through the Bank -assisted Tamil Nadu Water Resources Consolidation Project (WRCP) which was closed in September 2004 with a satisfactory rating. Now the Tamilnadu Government has decided to implement a project for the modernization of the Traditional Irrigation systems in Tamil Nadu with loan assistance from World Bank. The World Bank has also come forward to assist the Tamilnadu Government’s proposal. Under the World Bank funded project of “Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation and Water Resources Management” (WRCP - II) about 17 River sub basins have been selected and proposed to be taken up under the control of Water Resources organisation Wing of Public Works Department of Tamilnadu. The Varahanadhi sub basin is one among the seventeen. Accordingly this ‘IAMWARM’ Project report for the modernization of the irrigation systems of Varahanadhi Sub Basin has been prepared. The very objective of this project is to attain maximum productivity from farm lands, for which serious attention is required to modernise the existing irrigation structures, anicuts, canal systems and tanks in order to make them functionally more effective, conserve and utilise the available water from catchment area for optimum use.

As the heart diseases in companion animals is becoming common as in humans, the research in canine cardiac diseases is one of the most extensive studies in the present scenario. As per the available literature, the overall occurrence of various cardiac abnormalities ranges from 0.37 percent to 1.67 percent in various parts of the country. Whereas, in western parts of the globe, nearly 8 million dogs suffer from heart disease accounting 10% of all dogs in the United States. Heart diseases are common among older dogs; up to 75% of senior dogs have some type of heart condition, and unfortunately, most go undiagnosed due to varied reasons. The recognition of canine cardiac diseases has been delayed, and ignored on account of lack of awareness and knowledge by the owner and inadequate diagnostic facility in our country. Physical examination, radiography, electrocardiography and echocardiography are most useful diagnostic procedures employed in diagnosing the cardiac diseases in dogs. However, majority of the acquired cardiac diseases are being managed medically with one or a combination of drugs. Improved diet management and health care of companion animals have led to increased life expectancy, as a result, cardiac diseases have become pivotal causes of death for both dogs and cats. For such reason, a major objective has become to increase the quality of life by reducing the expansion of cardiac diseases via early detection of diseases and provision of effective treatment.

A new buzz-word is rapidly spreading through the manufacturing and analytical environment. Discussions on the application of Non Invasive Research namely the Near Infrared (NIR) Spectroscopy are often found on the agenda of production, project, and technical and even board meetings. Engineers and chemists are confronted more frequently with the challenge to decide whether a NIR instrument will be the solution to their production quality control and other analytical problems. Are there really amazing machines that can determine protein, fat, moisture, fibre, starch, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, amino acids and whatever analyses you require on any product from foodstuff to fertilizer and animal feeds in less than a minute and so simple to operate that even the unskilled labourer can handle it? In this article we will endeavor to answer the questions that often crop up in the evaluation of NIR as an analytical technique towards Natural Products.

7.1. Developing Sector in Scientific and Technological Approach of Waste Management

From the very past, many traditional practices have been put into use for waste management like landfilling, composting, and recycling, which are practiced even today. However, the boundless upsurging waste compels the modern world to modify the traditional methods or to introduce innovative techniques with the grace of technology

With the increasing health consciousness of consumers, there has been an increasing concern over the use of thermal processing methods like blanching, pasteurization, sterilization etc. for enhancing the shelf life of foods as these methods fail to preserve the fresh like nutritional, therapeutical and sensory qualities of the food. With the increased consumer demand for fresh and fresh-like foods, interest in minimal processing of foods is increasing. The trend is also shifting from the traditional heat processing to those technologies that employ no or minimum heat application, thereby retaining the quality to a maximum level. One of the ways to accomplish this is via use of non-thermal processes. Over the past few years a number of non-thermal processes or cold preservation methods have been invented and developed. These methods are being evaluated in pasteurization and sterilization of various foods or in the extension of shelf life of various packaged foods. Some of such novel technologies and the products prepared, have been discussed here under.

1. Extrusion

Extrusion is a size enlargement process wherein small granular food or powdered particles are re-formed into larger pieces with different shapes, textures, colours and flavours from the basic ingredients. In extrusion food is compressed and forced to pass through a fine opening (die). As soon as it comes out of the opening, the outside pressure is very less as compared to the pressure inside the screw of extruder and the food expands instantaneously. If the food is heated the process is called as extrusion cooking. It is a process which combines several unit operations including cooking, mixing, kneading, shearing, compressing, shaping and forming. Extrusion adds a variety to the products by changing shape, size, texture and even some of the minor ingredients of the food and at a reduced cost than most of the other processing methods. Extrusion cooking (not extrusion) is a high temperature short time (HTST) process that reduces microbial contamination and inactivates enzymes.

Abstract

Sedentary lifestyle coupled with excess calorie intake is partially responsible for increased incidence of lifestyle related diseases like coronary heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer and hypertension. Non-nutritive sweeteners can offer consumers a way to enjoy the sweet taste with little or no energy. Further, functional beverages are the drinks which are altered in such a way to provide specific health benefits and disease preventing properties beyond general nutrition. In the present paper, authors have summarized various research works on development of different low calorie functional fruit and vegetable products by replacing sugar with non-nutritive sweeteners like saccharin, cyclamate, sorbitol and stevioside at different levels of sweetness (equivalent used to sucrose). The cyclamate sweetened spiced plum squash at 50 per cent sweetness proportion gave higher taste scores in comparison to saccharin sweetened beverage. In case of sorbitol sweetened beverages, with the increase in the proportion of sorbitol sweetness, the organoleptic score for colour, body and flavour increased compared to saccharin and cyclamate sweetened products. Whereas, the stevia sweetened beverages indicated highest sensory acceptability at 75% stevioside sweetness level. Further, sorbitol sweetened health products were found to have similar calculated energy value as that of sucrose sweetened products (100%), but sorbitol is absorbed slowly and does not raise the insulin levels. The development efforts had successfully reduced calorie value of plum squash up to 42% with cyclamate at 50% sweetness level. The calorie value of the sorbitol and stevioside sweetened products has been reduced by 70% and 60% per serving at 100% and 75% sweetness level, respectively. The developed products were found to have strong antimicrobial activity against E. coli as well as high antioxidant potential. Overall, it was concluded that, the developed products had better taste, palatability and storage stability beside reduced energy value, hence their availability in the market will definitely benefit the at risk group i.e. diabetics, obese and health conscious people.

A. Concentrated Organic Manures

Introduction

Human resources are the most important assets of an organization. The success of an organization depends on the talent and caliber of the employees working therein. It is true in the case of service-oriented institutions like libraries and Information centres. Libraries of the university are a treasure trove of information and knowledge. The library is one of the important components of a university. Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals are the assets of libraries and information centres. Libraries are undergoing transformational changes across the world as a result of disruptive technologies. Libraries are becoming informal, relaxed and collaborative spaces.

INTRODUCTION

Northeast India comprises the contiguous seven sister states.viz., Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura and the Himalayan state of Sikkim. The Northeastern states of India are blessed with diversified fish fauna which assumes special interest due to the fact that the region is grained by two important drainages viz., Brahamaputra-Barak and Chindwin Irrawaddy. (Gurumayum and Choudhury, 2009). Riverine fisheries resources of Northeastern States comprise of 19,150 km of streams and rivers. Except the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys in Assam and Imphal Valley in Manipur, the Northeast mainly comprises of Hills and Mountains which form 65% of its territory (Suguman, 1998).

Introduction

Indian fisheries and aquaculture is an important sector of food production providing nutritional security, besides livelihood support and gainful employment to more than 14 million people, and contributing to agricultural exports. With diverse resources ranging from deep seas to lakes in the mountains and more than 10% of the global biodiversity in terms of fish and shellfish species, the country has shown continuous and sustained increments in fish production since independence. The sector constitutes about 6.3 percent of the global fish production and contributes to 0.91 percent of the GDP and 5.23 percent of the agricultural GDP. The total fish production of 13.34 million metric tonnes presently has nearly 74 percent contribution from the inland sector and rest by the marine sector. Paradigm shifts in terms of increasing contributions from inland sector and further from aquaculture have been significant over the years. With high growth rates, the different facets, viz., marine fisheries, coastal aquaculture, inland fisheries, freshwater aquaculture, and coldwater fisheries are contributing to the food basket, health, economy, exports, employment and tourism of the country. More than 50 different types of fish and shellfish products are being exported to 75 countries around the world. Fish and fishery products have presently emerged as the largest group in agricultural exports from India, with 13.77 lakh tonnes in terms of quantity and ` 45,106.89 crore in value. This accounts for around 10% of the total exports and nearly 20% of the agricultural exports, and contribute to about 0.91% of the GDP and 5.23% to the Agricultural GDP of the country.

The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) is an initiative launched by the Government of India to establish a comprehensive framework and reduce infrastructural gaps in the fisheries sector. The scheme was announced by the Finance Minister, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman during her speech in the Parliament of India while presenting the Union budget for 2019–20 on 5 July 2019. The government intends to place India in the first place in Fish production and processing by implementing Blue Revolution. This scheme is in line with government’s aim to double the farmers’ income by 2022–23.The policy envisages integrating all the fishermen with agricultural farmers and providing all the facilities available through various farmer welfare schemes to the fishermen. A new dedicated Department of Fisheries was constituted in a newly carved out Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying to implement this and other policy initiatives of the government.

The study of soil organic matter is becoming increasingly important by the day as world agriculture attempts to ensure sustainability of soils, while at the same time striving to enhance food production to feed an ever-burgeoning population. The use of green manures and pasture leys, the return of residues and additions of organic amendments to the soil are often resorted to in an attempt to increase soil organic matter which immensely benefit the physical, chemical and biological make-up of the soil.

Introduction PCR is an important molecular tool used widely in different applied research fields such as Infectious disease diagnosis, clinical medicine development and gene cloning etc., (Fang et al., 2008). Among different amplification methods, PCR was the first to be developed and has been the method of choice for its simplicity, easier methodology, extensively validated standard operating procedure and availability of reagents and equipment’s. However, it also has a good number of limitations such as advanced equipment, high cost, sensitivity to certain classes of contaminants and inhibitors requirement of thermal cycling etc. (Fakruddin, 2011). These limitations of PCR allowed to develop the alternative methods such as loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) (Notomi et al., 2000), nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) (Compton, 1991), self?sustained sequence replication (3SR) (Guatelli et al., 1990), rolling circle amplification (RCA) (Lizardi et al., 1998) etc., most of these techniques are isothermal that don’t require thermal cycler. These methods have many advantages over PCR in terms of speed, cost, scale or portability.

Introduction

Nucleic acid based diagnosis is highly specific, sensitive and rapid method widely used in health management. The detection is mainly based on structure and sequence of bases of nucleic acid which are unique to an organism. In recent years, nucleic acid based diagnosis is becoming common and popular in fish and shell fish health management. Commonly employed nucleic acid based diagnosis are DNA hybridisation and Polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Nucleic acids are made up of nitrogen bases. The primary sequence of bases in DNA or RNA have regions which are unique for a particular organism or gene. The sequence of DNA is composed of a series of four phosphorylated bases Adenine (A), thymidine (T), guanidine (G) and cytosine (C). Pairs of bases (A=T, or G=C) can form hydrogen bonds, which cause opposing strands of DNA to form a semi-stable bonding (hybridization or annealing) to one another. If the opposing strands of DNA match exactly, then the familiar double helix form of DNA results. In the following example, the opposing strands in (1) will form a double stranded, tightly bonded structure, and the DNA strands are described as complementary. In (2) the strands are non-complementary (opposing A=T and G=C base pairs do not line up) and the two strands will not bond.

DNA Hybridisation

The basic principle in DNA hybridization is that, if a strand of double helix of DNA is separated from its complement (by heat) it will bind (reanneal or hybridize) only to its complementary strand (or to a duplicate of its complementary strand). Two complementary RNA structure will hybridise in the same manner. Inaccurate and mismatched bindings will be unstable and fall apart.

The binding of one DNA strand to another is in some respect is analogous to binding of antigen and antibody. However, in the case of nucleic acid bindings, the precise molecular nature of binding (base pairing) is known and can be easily manipulated by choosing DNA strand of appropriate length and by incubating the strands in appropriate salt concentration, temperature. The stringency (faithfulness of the match) of hybridisation can be precisely defined and as a result coincidental cross reaction is virtually eliminated.

Nucleic acid extraction from clinical samples is the first step to be followed in molecular detection of cancer. Nucleic acids are the starting material for all downstream molecular diagnostic tools. Quality of test results largely depends upon the quality of starting material. Thus utmost importance should be given to the extraction protocols to isolate good quantity and good quality nucleic acids from patient samples.

Basic principle: The basic principle of nucleic acid extraction is to disrupt cell membrane and nuclear membrane to release and precipitate nucleic acid in the solution. Following precipitation,removal of other cellular contaminates such as protein, lipids, polysaccharides etc is performed to obtain a good quantity and quality of nucleic acid.

DNA Isolation Protocol
Introduction

Most of the all procedures involved in molecular biology experiments require the purified form of nucleic acid. It forms a fundamental requirements for genome characterization, gene mapping and for identification and isolation of gene for genetic engineering. The most important step involved in removal of proteins which is carried out in different ways. The following protocol is one of the most commonly used protocols in animal, plant and microbial samples.

The search for the chemical basis of genetic material began about one and half century ago. Soon after discovery of Mendelian principles of segregation and independent assortment in 1865, Friedrich Miescher (1844-1895) published a method for separating cell nuclei from the cytoplasm and from these cell nuclei, he extracted an acid material termed as “nuclein” which had unusually large amount of phosphorous. Miescher concluded that this substance was unique and was just not comparable with any other group known at that point of time. Later on nuclein, now named as “nucleic acid” was found to be associated with various proteins and the combined entities were termed as “nucleoproteins”.

Nucleic acids were first discovered in 1868 by Friedrich Meischer. Nucleic acids are high molecular weight polymers that are present in our cells. They  store and transfer genetic material from generation to generation. Knowledge of how genes are expressed and how they can be manipulated is becoming increasingly important for understanding   of nearly every aspect of biochemistry. These macromolecules pass on information for cellular growth and reproduction.  All the genetic information in the cells is called the genome. Every time a cell divides, the information is copied and passed on to the new cells.
 
Nucleic acids fall into two main classes according to the type of sugar they contain: the Deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) and Ribonucleic acids (RNA). Some sections  of  the  DNA  called  genes contain the information to make a protein. RNA translates the genetic information in the DNA to the ribosomes, where the synthesis of proteins takes place.