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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Biological variance is omnipresent. In animals, in humans, in biology, in sociology, medicine, you name
it. In fact, life would be utterly boring without biological variation. Also in agricultural and horticultural
produce, the ubiquitous variation causes a lot of trouble in dealing with the product in the supply chain.
Basically, the majority of troubles and problems in the food production and supply chain is in one way or
another related to the presence of variation between entities like individuals, up to batches, pallet loads,
orchards and harvests, and down to cells and organelles. Many modern measuring techniques make it
possible to analyse product entities without destroying the samples. These gathered, so-called longitudinal
data, offer many advantages for extracting information. By using these techniques, it becomes possible to
follow individual units (batches, fruit etc.) in time, and estimate the kinetics of change in (any) properties
on an individual level. Destructively obtained data (cross-sectional data) can only be analysed at the level
of mean values, neglecting completely the information on variance contained in data. Explained parts of
data analysis con increase from 60-70% obtained on cross-sectional data to well over 90% obtained on
longitudinal data, with the quantification of the biological variance present. The analysis of longitudinal
data, however, requires a special approach and the use of special analysing techniques. The benefits of
longitudinal data and their analysis using mixed effect non linear regression for extracting information
on maturity and biological variance within a batch, is highlighted based on a large number of examples,
already published or in preparation, covering the colour and firmness of nectarines, water loss in plums,
mandarins and melons, firmness in Near Isogenic Lines of melons, colour of apples in storage and during
growth. More and more papers are published that prove the usefulness for both theory and practice of the
applied techniques and viewpoints on biological variation.
Description
Proceedings of the International Conference “Environmentally friendly and safe
technologies for quality of fruit and vegetables”, held in Universidade do Algarve, Faro,
Portugal, on January 14-16, 2009. This Conference was a join activity with COST Action 924.