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Chocolate is a popular and widely consumed product in different ages, however, the demand of consumers has increased for healthy chocolate with free or low sugar in recent years. The objective of present research is to substitute the sucrose of chocolate with D-tagatose and lemon essential oil for improving biological functions. The seven formulations of chocolate included distinct percentages of D-tagatose (0, 13, 29 and 47 %) and lemon essential oil (0, 0.1 and 0.2 %). Afterwards, the tests were performed on chocolate treatments such as moisture level, fat, sugar content before and after hydrolysis, color perception, hardness, antioxidant, microbial and sensory evaluations. The results demonstrated that moisture of treatments (except CTL₅ containing 47.80 % D-tagatose and 0.1 % lemon essential oil) was noticeably different from the control. A significant difference was observed between the average sugars of treatments before hydrolysis, however, there was no considerable difference in fat levels (33.39 to 33.41 %). The essential oil has led to a reduction in hardness, so CTL₆ (including 47.90 % D-tagatose and 0.2 % lemon essential oil) with higher essential oil had a lower hardness (16.61 N). D-tagatose and lemon essential oil had an influence on color features, but antioxidant functions were affected only by essential oil and all treatments were within the standard range in terms of microbial load. In sensory assessment, the overall acceptance score was given to the control (4.96) and CTL₅ (4.92). The conclusion of present research introduced CTL₅ as the most suitable treatment for production of healthy chocolate.
 

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In order to investigate the possible presence and molecular features of Peach Latent Mosaic Viroid (PLMVd) in west Iran (Kurdistan Province), a total of 132 leaf samples from almond, apricot, nectarine, peach, plum, sour cherry, and sweet cherry were collected from orchards during the summer of 2016 and 2017. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction amplified an expected ~350 base pair DNA fragment from 34 samples. The complete genome sequencing of 17 cloned isolates was determined. Sequence alignment of the new sequences showed 94.3-100% nucleotide identity, and 79.2-100% nucleotide identity with other previously reported PLMVd isolates. In phylogenetic analysis, isolated viroid variants from this study and 32 previously reported isolates were placed in two groups (I and II). All the isolated viroid variants in the present study were placed in group II-A (mosaic-inducing isolates), together with other isolates from Australia, China, India, Iran, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey. The secondary structure of the Iranian variants revealed their unique structures as compared with previously reported isolates of the viroid. To our knowledge, this is the first report of PLMVd infection on apricot, sweet cherry, sour cherry, and nectarine in Iran.

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Farmers’ perceptions of climate change risk is critically important if they plan to implement appropriate adaptation measures in their farming. This research was conducted to evaluate the accuracy of farmers’ perceptions of climate variability and assess the factors influencing it. To evaluate the accuracy of farmers’ perceptions, this study also explored the pattern and trend of climate variability in the study area, using historical meteorological data analysis. Research sample included 217 farmers of Kermanshah Township, who were selected using multistage sampling technique. The accuracy of the farmers’ perceived patterns of local climatic changes was appraised based on graphical analyses of meteorological records during 1970 to 2018. Then, the accuracy of farmers’ perceptions were categorized. Findings showed that the perceptions of 58.06%. of farmers were consistent with the meteorological data, and there was a need to improve the accuracy of farmers’ perceptions of climate variability. Sharing specific local weather information with the community would be one possible way of solving this issue. Also, this study investigated the factors influencing farmers’ perceptions of climate change risk. The results showed that knowledge, personal emotions, social norms, and personal experience collectively accounted for 49.3% of the farmers’ perceptions of climate change risk variance.