Seed Testing and Quality-Assurance
H igh-quality seed is the basis for profitable and productive agriculture, be it a large commercial field operation, a small familyowned farm, or a greenhouse-based operation producing bedding plants or specialty horticultural crops. Assessing seed quality and assuring the buyer of the validity of the seed label (Fig. 1) has been an important mission of the various seed regulatory agencies of state and federal governments and service-testing provided by commercial seed-testing laboratories around the world. Based on validity of labeling, commercial sales of seed have been a profitable business to both the seed producer and the consumer. In the United States and Canada, seed-testing rules have been developed and standardized by the Assn. of Official Seed Analysts (AOSA) and in other countries around the world by the Inter-
Heritability and Genetic Advance Estimates from the Parental Lines of Hybrid Maize (Zea Mays L.)
Twenty-two genotypes of maize parental line were grown during 2017-2018 at the Research field of Plant Breeding Division, Regional Agricultural Research Station (RARS), Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Rahmatpur, Barisal, Bangladesh. The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design with three replications. Heritabilty, coefficients of variability and genetic advance values were computed for days to tasseling, days to silking, days to maturity, plant height (cm), ear height (cm), cob length (cm) and diameter (cm), number of seed rows per cob, number of seeds per row, number of seeds per cob, thousand grain weight (g) and yield (g/plant). Among all the traits higher phenotypic coefficient of variation (44.53) and genotypic coefficient of variation (44.18) were observed for yield/plant. The uppermost heritability was observed in case of yield per plant (98.41) followed by 1000 seed weight (96.91). Genetic advance was highest for seeds/cob (197.87) followed by 1000-kernel weight (176.86).Greater magnitude of heritability coupled with higher genetic advance in characters under study provided the evidence that these plant parameters were under the control of additive genetic effects. Indicating that selection should lead to a fast genetic improvement of the material.
Instrumentation and Automated Photometric Titration Procedure for Total Acidity Determination in Red Wine Employing a Multicommuted Flow System
An automated procedure for photometric titration of red wine and associated instrumentation is described. The procedure was based on the flow-batch approach implemented employing multicommutation. The photometric detection was carried out using a homemade LED-based photometer. The mixing device, LED, and photodetector were attached to the titration chamber in order to form a compact and small-sized unit. The flow system comprised an automatic injector and three-way solenoid valves, which were controlled by a microcomputer through an electronic interface card. The software, written in Quick BASIC 4.5, was designed with abilities to accomplish all steps of the titration procedure including data acquisition and real-time processing to decide about the course of titration in the following step and so forth, until the titration endpoint was reached. The usefulness of the proposed titration system was demonstrated by analyzing red wine samples. When results were compared with those obtained using the AOAC reference method, no significant difference was observed at the 95% confidence level. A relative standard deviation of ca  2% (n=9 ) was obtained when processing a typical red wine sample containing 7.3 gl -1 total acidity expressed as tartaric acid.