This research aims to design and construct small-scale angular rotary macadamia nut cracker machine using angular rotary striking mechanism. The proposed machine can crack 3 sizes of macadamia nuts - 17-22 mm 23-28 mm and 29-34 mm diameter with no need for separation size before feeding into the machine. Results of the experiment showed that the proposed angular rotary macadamia nut cracker machine could be used exactly as designed. Its average efficiency in separating sizes before cracking was 83% with overall productivity of 7.75 kilograms per hours. With regard to cracking process it was found that weight of the cracked macadamia nut was 29.75% of the whole macadamia fruit. The other 70.25% was weight of the shell. Furthermore it was also found that regarding quality of the cracked macadamia nuts the whole-nut quality was 39% the half-nut quality was 44% and the broken- nut quality was 17% respectively.

This study focused on screening and identification of lactic acid bacteria with antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli from milk samples. There were 250 isolates showing different antimicrobial activities. Five isolates with predominant anti-E. coli efficiency were chosen for the study of bacteria identification bacterial growth as well as the stability in pH change heating and proteolytic treatment. The sequences of 16s rDNA indicated that selected isolates were Lactobacillus sp.. The antimicrobial efficiency described in the term of Antimicrobial Index (AI) ranged from 0.63 to 0.84. However the anti-E coli activity did not change when performing the test under proteinase-treated condition and high temperature-treated condition. Conversely the pH adjustment of cell-free bacterial culture to 7.0 demolished their antimicrobial activity. This data implied that their antimicrobial activities were results of acidic condition produced by lactic acid bacteria. From this study the selected lactic acid bacteria showed their potential as a starter culture for fermented foods.

This study was carried out to evaluate the influence of pruning on floral emergence fruiting yield and fruit quality in longan. Fifteen years old “Daw” longan trees were pruned in June 2013 at Agricultural Technology Research Institute Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna Lampang province. The longan pruning for removing some branches consisted of 4 treatments i.e. 25 50 and 75 % compared with no pruning. The result revealed that there was no effect of treatment on floral emergence or leaf flushing after potassium chlorate application. However the 25-75 % pruning gave greater new shoot length leaf width and leaf greenness than that of no pruning. The pruning treatments increased fruit size while the highest pruning (75 %) decreased yield and the no pruning produced the lowest yield.

A system response of a near infrared (NIR) instrument sometimes changes depending on measuring conditions such as warming up time room temperature and the others. In the last peach experiment we measured NIR spectra over 3 days and spectral differences were observed between spectra measured at the first day and those at the second and third days. Therefore a simple method of system response compensation was examined. As a result of principle component analysis (PCA) of second derivative (2D) spectra of peaches samples were separated into two groups the first-day measured samples and the second and third-day measured ones on the plane consisted of PC1 and PC2. On the hypothesis that average 2D spectrum of each group should be almost the same the difference of the average 2D spectra (2D spectrum) was calculated. Using 2D spectrum 2D spectra of the first-day samples were adjusted to those of the other samples. The data set including the adjusted one is called “compensated 2D data set” hereafter as compared with “original 2D data set”. As results of partial least square (PLS) regressions based on the original and compensated 2D data sets and Brix value of peaches good SEPs of 0.98 °Brix for both cases could be obtained. The number of factors for the calibration model in case of compensated 2D data set was smaller than that in case of original one. It was concluded that the method using 2D spectrum could be used to compensate the difference of system response of an NIR instrument.

This research was aimed to study the effect of chitosan on total polyphenol contents anthocyanin contents antiradical properties and resistance of rice blast disease in Sung Yod Phatthalung rice (Oryza sativar L.) cultivars. The chitosan was applied on rice leaves at concentrations of 50 100 and 500 ppm compared with the control (without the chitosan and only adding a 0.025% acetic acid respectively). The result showed that 500 ppm of chitosan could significantly increase the total polyphenol contents (220.75 mg GAE/100 g dry weight sample) anthocyanin contents (2.98 mg/100 g dry weight sample) and antiradical properties (83.15%) in the grain extracts of Sung Yod Phatthalung rice. In addition Necrosis test on rice leaves treated with 500 ppm of chitosans clearly indicated the plant resistance againt Pyricularia grisea. Therefore the future studies of chitosan activation mechanism will give more valuable information that possible to be applied in the healthy rice product development and fungal disease control.