 A limequat! I didn’t know what a limequat was, never heard the name and though I instinctively broke it down into something related to limes and kumquats, I didn’t know how it should be pronounced. Thanks to Google, I was able to find out that it is in fact a hybrid between a kumquat and a key lime, and it does look like a lime.
So why was I trying to figure out what a limequat is? Well, it wasn’t for a recipe, It was because I was just looking through the journal, “Tropical Agriculture,” which had something of a relaunch on July 23.
It was actually founded in 1924, three years after the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture was formed, and it has kept going through all the transitions that have led to the adulthood of The UWI as an institution.
This is Volume 95 Special Issue 1, the first online edition and it is a collection of the papers on the research findings from the project, Enhanced Preservation of Fruits Using Nanotechnology. This project was funded by the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund and included researchers from the University of Guelph, Canada (leader); Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India; Industrial Technology Institute, Sri Lanka; University of Nairobi, Kenya; Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania; and The UWI.
 So the abstracts are practically segmented by fruit variety as they look at different ways to extend shelf-life and what are the factors affecting them. There were studies using a veritable fruit salad as subjects – bananas, papayas, oranges, limequats, mangoes – looking at specifics like “the effects of pre-harvest application of hexanal formulations on time to ripening.”
I had to look up hexanal, which is used in the flavor industry to produce fruity flavours, and it smells like freshly cut grass. According to Wikipedia, it is potentially useful as a natural extract that prevents fruit spoilage. And I guess that’s what the researchers were exploring.
They also spoke about Senescence, which I looked up as well. When I found the meaning I shook my head in sad recognition: it is the condition or process of deterioration with age. (Maybe researchers will find something to slow that down in humans too.)
But even if you are not an academic, or not an agriculturist, and just someone interested in regional development or learning something new, the journal is worth scanning.
On the Tropical Agriculture website, it declares that it was established to publish the results of original research on aspects of agriculture that would lead to greater productivity and sustainability in tropical regions.
Has it kept to that objective?
Click here and find out! : https://journals.sta.uwi.edu/ta/index.asp?action=viewIssue&issueId=730
(Vaneisa Baksh) |
