The Interplay of Physiological and Biochemical Response to Short-Term Drought Exposure in Garlic (Allium sativum L.).

The impacts of global climate change and a rapid increase in population have emerged as major concerns threatening global food security. Environmental abiotic stress, such as drought, severely impairs plants' morphology, physiology, growth, and yield more than many other environmental factors. Plants use a complex set of physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms to combat the negative effects caused by drought-induced stress. The aim of this study was to investigate morphological, spectral, physiological, and biochemical changes occurring in 30 garlic accessions exposed to short-term drought stress in a greenhouse setting and to identify potential early drought-induced stress markers. The results showed that, on average, garlic plants exposed to drought conditions exhibited a decrease in assimilation, transpiration, and stomatal conductance of 39%, 52%, and 50%, respectively, and an average increase in dry matter and proline content of 10.13% and 14.29%, respectively. Nevertheless, a significant interaction between the treatment and accessions was observed in the investigated photosynthetic and biochemical parameters. The plants' early response to drought ranged from mild to strong depending on garlic accession. Multivariate analysis showed that accessions with a mild early drought response were characterized by higher values of assimilation, transpiration, and stomatal conductance compared to plants with moderate or strong early drought response. Additionally, accessions with strong early drought response were characterized by higher proline content, lipid peroxidation, and antioxidant capacity as measured by FRAP compared to accessions with mild-to-moderate early drought response.

Phenolic Content, Amino Acids, Volatile Compounds, Antioxidant Capacity, and Their Relationship in Wild Garlic (A. ursinum L.).

Allium ursinum L. is a wild relative of garlic, and it is abundant in many antioxidant compounds. Sulfur compounds, primarily cysteine sulfoxides (CSOs), are converted through several reactions into various volatile molecules, which are considered the principal flavor compounds of Alliums. In addition to secondary metabolites, wild garlic is abundant in primary compounds, such as amino acids, which serve not only as building blocks for the health-promoting sulfur compounds but also as antioxidants. The aim of this study was to investigate the link between individual amino acid contents, the total phenolic content, and the profile of volatile compounds as well as their influence on the antioxidant capacity of both the leaves and bulbs of wild garlic populations in Croatia. Both univariate and multivariate methods were used to study the differences in the phytochemical compositions among the wild garlic plant organs and the link between individual compounds and antioxidant capacity. Both the plant organ and location, as well as their interaction, have a significant impact on the content of total phenolic content, amino acids, volatile organic compounds, and the antioxidant capacity of wild garlic.

Effectiveness and safety of erenumab in chronic migraine: A Croatian real-world experience.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the real-world effectiveness and safety of erenumab after 6 months of treatment in chronic migraine patients with therapeutic resistance to multiple classes of prophylactic medication. METHODS: The patients were recruited from the Headache Outpatient Clinic of the University Hospital Centre Zagreb, Croatia between March 2019 and November 2019. All participants received erenumab 70 mg for 6 months. Interviews with participants were conducted at baseline and after the treatment period. The following parameters were analysed: reduction percentage of monthly migraine days, monthly migraine days (MMDs), monthly non-migraine headache days (MNDs), monthly headache days (MHDs), pain intensity measured by the visual-analogue scale (VAS), monthly acute migraine medication intake and reported side-effects. Additionally, we analysed the data for migraine with and without aura separately. RESULTS: There was a significant decrease in the mean value of headache frequency and pain intensity parameters after 6 months of treatment with erenumab. Out of the 54 participants included in the analysis, 70.37% had a ≥ 50% reduction in MMDs, while 40.74% had a ≥ 75% reduction. The mean values of MMDs and MHDs were reduced from 10.37 ± 0.38 to 4.59 ± 0.43 days (P < 0.001) and from 22.24 ± 0.70 to 9.74 ± 0.91 days (P < 0.001), respectively. Furthermore, the mean migraine VAS score decreased from 10.00 ± 0 to 6.69 ± 0.24 (P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in effectiveness between participants with migraine with and without aura. Nine participants reported side-effects. CONCLUSION: Our study indicates that erenumab is a safe and effective therapeutic option for chronic migraine patients.

Rapid honey characterization and botanical classification by an electronic tongue.

In this paper a commercial electronic tongue (αAstree, Alpha M.O.S.) was applied for botanical classification and physicochemical characterization of honey samples. The electronic tongue was comprised of seven potentiometric sensors coupled with an Ag/AgCl reference electrode. Botanical classification was performed by PCA, CCA and ANN modeling on 12 samples of acacia, chestnut and honeydew honey. The physicochemical characterization of honey was obtained by ANN modeling and the parameters included were electrical conductivity, acidity, water content, invert sugar and total sugar. The initial reference values for the physicochemical parameters observed were determined by traditional methods. Botanical classification of honey samples obtained by ANN was 100% accurate while the highest correlation between observed and predicted values was obtained for electrical conductivity (0.999), followed by acidity (0.997), water content (0.994), invert sugar content (0.988) and total sugar content (0.979). All developed ANN models for rapid honey characterization and botanical classification performed excellently showing the potential of the electronic tongue as a tool in rapid honey analysis and characterization. The advantage of using such a technique is a simple sample preparation procedure, there are no chemicals involved and there are no additional costs except the initial measurements required for ANN model development.

Simultaneous determination of fermented milk aroma compounds by a potentiometric sensor array.

The paper reports on the application of an electronic tongue for simultaneous determination of ethanol, acetaldehyde, diacetyl, lactic acid, acetic acid and citric acid content in probiotic fermented milk. The alphaAstree electronic tongue by Alpha M.O.S. was employed. The sensor array comprised of seven non-specific, cross-sensitive sensors developed especially for food analysis coupled with a reference Ag/AgCl electrode. Samples of plain, strawberry, apple-pear and forest-fruit flavored probiotic fermented milk were analyzed both by standard methods and by the potentiometric sensor array. The results obtained by these methods were used for the development of neural network models for rapid estimation of aroma compounds content in probiotic fermented milk. The highest correlation (0.967) and lowest standard deviation of error for the training (0.585), selection (0.503) and testing (0.571) subset was obtained for the estimation of ethanol content. The lowest correlation (0.669) was obtained for the estimation of acetaldehyde content. The model exhibited poor performance in average error and standard deviations of errors in all subsets which could be explained by low sensitivity of the sensor array to the compound. The obtained results indicate that the potentiometric electronic tongue coupled with artificial neural networks can be applied as a rapid method for the determination of aroma compounds in probiotic fermented milk.