Month: July 2024

Lewis himself stretches this instant into a paragraph, slowing the action as he describes how “[t]he friar’s eyes followed with dread the course of the dagger,” settling into Ambrosio’s gaze as “his eye dwelt” on Matilda’s nudity, and evoking the enormity of Ambrosio’s fatal abandonment of self-control as “a thousand wild wishes bewildered his imagination.”I will show how it is control that comes to the fore when we compare multiple illustrations of the scene, as different artists explore the indeterminacy of this moment when each character holds power over the other, before Ambrosio submits to Matilda’s will and his own desire. The illustrations of Matilda and Ambrosio’s struggle of wills suggest dramatically different interpretations of the situation through positioning, gesture, facial expression, and visibility of the dagger. While these illustrations of the scene are truer to the novel than the pulp cover’s depiction that I examined earlier, they still sometimes represent it in sentimentalized ways that, at first glance, have little to do with the situation Lewis conveys. As the first editions of The Monk were published without any illustrations, the earliest image I found that represents this scene is a watercolor by British artist Charles Reuben Ryley that the Lewis Walpole Library estimates to be from around the time of the novel’s publication, 1796. From a distance, a viewer may perceive only a man threatening a woman. Ambrosio leans toward Matilda with arms raised menacingly, and she braces herself and holds up what appears to be a defensive arm. On closer examination, a viewer could notice the exposed nipple that is nearly camouflaged against the shadow of Matilda’s robe,hydroponic nft system the fact that one of her hands holds open the robe, and the dagger that partially blends into the background foliage.

Matilda appears to be composed, looking directly into Ambrosio’s agitated face. Because Ambrosio is hunching, their heads and toes are on a level with each other, suggesting parity. In this image, Matilda exposes her right breast, not her left, as in the novel. Though she points the dagger near her heart, the fact that she gratuitously reveals her chest on the opposite side implies that she is tempting him with her sexuality, an artistic interpretation founded in other scenes from the novel. Here, it provides more evidence for the perception that though Matilda initially appears helpless, she is in control of their encounter, subtly undermining Ambrosio’s attempts to overpower her. Even illustrations that use similar compositions suggest drastically different readings of the what is at stake in this moment of indeterminacy. In both images below, the figures appear close together, low in the frame, centered or nearly so, of roughly equal height and on a level with each other, surrounded by the garden.The one on the left is an anonymous engraving from the French Maradan edition of 1797, the earliest illustrated version of the novel I found. Though the page features a caption in which Ambrosio blames his impending doom on Matilda, the image suggests a sentimental serenity. The soft folds of the robes and the stylized grace of the figures’ physical attitudes make it appear as if the two are dancing rather than that Ambrosio is attempting to prevent Matilda’s suicide. Matilda gazes at Ambrosio with a look that seems adoring while baring both of her breasts, which the engraver renders in sensual detail. The gently rounded, untrimmed trees and shrubs create an Edenic atmosphere. The lone indicator of peril amid this calm scene is Matilda’s dagger, which is well defined but small, thin, and easily ignored. Ambrosio’s gaze might be resting on her chest , and his heavy lidded eyes negate any sense that he may be alarmed. In contrast, the illustration on the right appears stark and urgent.

Ambrosio, instead of being stunned when Matilda raises the dagger, as he is in the text, is rushing to stop her. With his eyes fastened on Matilda’s large, prominent dagger, he places his hand on the arm with which she holds it. Matilda’s indistinct breast is more legible as the target of the dagger than as the enticement of a lover, and her expression is resolute. Compared to the Maradan illustration’s ripples and curves, the lines of the robes and sculpted trees are stiff and forbidding. The former image emphasizes the sensuality of the scene; the latter, its threat, which, unlike the earlier threatening image, portrays Ambrosio not as an aggressor but as Matilda’s would-be savior. The first engraving seems to suggest that the most significant outgrowth of this moment in the text is Ambrosio’s sexual awakening, an occurrence which the image presents as mutually desired. The second implies that this moment is most important as the seed of the destruction that follows, which it clearly attributes to Matilda. The two final illustrations I’ll consider both highlight the erotic and destructive aspects of the scene, though they imply very different things about Ambrosio’s self-control. One is an illustration from an 1891 American edition, one of many in which the story is reprinted with the more sensational title Rosario; or, The Female Monk. The illustration, by August Leroy, shows Matilda revealing her breast with a guarded expression and Ambrosio grasping her sleeve with what appears to be a smile, as if he doesn’t notice the poniard Matilda holds. Meanwhile, the knife is pointing at his groin. The last is a woodcut from a 1984 Folio edition illustrated by George Tute, who makes Matilda’s voluptuous body the focus of the image.Her white breast against the prevalent darkness draws the eye and makes the point of the dagger pressed to it more conspicuous.

Though Matilda holds the knife and the viewer’s gaze, Tute positions her below Ambrosio and facing away from the viewer, which could imply that she is less powerful and less important than Ambrosio. He appears impassive, with a grave expression and a palm raised to command her to stop. He holds his other hand up defensively, but it blends in with the folds of his robe and does not diminish the impression of his dominance. In these five illustrations, Matilda appears in turn to be victimized, determined, amorous, desperate, and unreadable. Ambrosio seems to be dangerous, pleasant, distressed, admiring, and forbidding. It may seem that some of these visual interpretations must actually be misinterpretations, but each one, whether straightforward or ambiguous, has a basis in the text’s complex negotiation of authority and feeling. Comparing illustrations in this way has several possible benefits for literary scholars writing about novels like The Monk. This practice encourages us to see beyond our own subjective responses to a novel or the limited responses enabled by our current critical norms, because when we are able to view several different interpretations of the same textual moment, we are less likely to conclude that there is only one way to respond to it, as several scholars have done with scenes and characters from The Monk. Though the early marketing of The Monk as a sentimental work failed due to scandal, sentimentality persists in many illustrations of the novels and invites readings that take Lewis’s use of the mode seriously. The visual medium allows us to reconsider the emotional portrayals in the text, because it can vivify passages that we may have dismissed because we find the writing too conventional to be effective, as with scholars’ responses to Lewis’s sentimental and theatrical descriptions. Some scholars have argued that Lewis must have intended these ineffective portrayals to be critiques or parodies, but most illustrations present the text’s moments of terror, indecision, and desperation as sincere, making it clear that recent scholarly ways of interpreting the text’s emotional qualities have been narrowed by current critical lenses. Even the act of noticing what passages have been illustrated can be generative, as it may help us determine where others have located the imaginative energy of the text and which moments distill some of the essential dynamics of a novel, as the encounter between Matilda and Ambrosio does. When the same or similar moments from the text have been illustrated multiple times, they can suggest patterns in the novel that we may not have observed. The illustrations of The Monk that I found often depict moments of danger and desire, which mirrors the critical focus of scholars and online reviewers. However,nft channel seeing multiple visual portrayals of the novel’s violence and sex made it clear that nearly all of them feature two characters, and these two characters are most often positioned in ways that emphasize the balance of power between them. And alongside these sensational illustrations are other representations of power between two characters that are neither aggressive nor sexual. In addition to illustrations of Matilda and Ambrosio’s confrontation, Ambrosio lusting over Antonia, Ambrosio murdering Elvira and Antonia, and Lucifer carrying Ambrosio to his death, there are images of Agnes pleading with Ambrosio to preserve her secret and Lucifer demanding that Ambrosio sign his demonic contract. With these latter scenes, and even in many of the more sensational ones, artists often freeze the scene in a moment of decision.

This tendency of illustrations to emphasize choice and complex relational dynamics in The Monk differs from illustrations of other gothic novels that I could find, which suggests that these motifs are significant in the novel. The illustrations of Ann Radcliffe’s novels that I located are generally of scenes of terror that focus on an individual’s experience—the cloaked monk frightening Vivaldi in The Italian, Emily fleeing from the black curtain or from the castle of Udolpho, and several images of Emily discovering a corpse. The gothic illustrations collected in Maurice Levy’s “Images du Roman Noir” most often portray a clear imbalance of power in which a heroine is imperiled: a woman is carried down a cliffside, threatened atop a gothic castle, menaced by men with weapons, dragged across a room or into a closet.These images of scenes from other gothic novels do not emphasize the struggle in relations of power or the choice in fatal moments the same way images from The Monk do, which makes Lewis’s situations of possibility worthy of further attention. Though scholars are certainly justified in arguing that the accumulation and amplification of scenes of sex and violence are a defining pattern of The Monk, we could also envision the narrative as being built on these moments of choice, in which one character holds tenuous power over the fate of another. Seeking out the moments of decision that illustrators represent allowed me to see many more of them, and to observe that whole scenes contain many moments in which characters vie for control. Thinking in terms of the various illustrated iterations of the same instant prompted me to notice the verbal iterations of control within and among scenes, which made it clear that power in The Monk is more complex than scholars have acknowledged. Considering how similar scenes in the novel contain repetition with difference is essential in emphasizing the novel’s kaleidoscopic power relations, as well as the struggle, precarity, and choice involved in Ambrosio’s downfall, elements that many scholars minimize when they focus on Lewis’s authorial control. Even more importantly, what this reading makes clear is that there are more options for discussing feeling in The Monk than the current scholarly parameters have allowed us to see.Felski’s claim that the prevailing scholarly mood of the last several decades has been a suspicious one is especially helpful in considering the way scholars have focused on issues in The Monk that harmonize with distrust. Multiple studies analyze the role of characters’ various kinds of concealment, which I will address in my discussion of Ann Radcliffe’s Italian in the next chapter. Even more informative for this chapter’s consideration of how scholars have argued that Lewis disallows certain feelings in response to particular scenes is the way scholars have dealt with the issue of control in the novel. Several prominent scholars interpret The Monk’s tightly constructed plot of Satanic manipulation or Lewis’s ostentatious writing style as evidence that Lucifer and Matilda dictate Ambrosio’s actions and Lewis attempts to dictate his readers’ responses to an unusual degree. For instance, Maggie Kilgour contends that Lewis “gives the reader a sense of power and control over the narrative” but in reality “keeps us outside, to make us marvel at his authorial powers.”David Punter argues that he “tries to be more cynical than his audience, and to dominate it by means of this cynicism.”

Claudia Johnson claims that Northanger “does not ridicule gothic novels nearly as much as their readers.”She argues that Austen makes both Catherine and Henry out to be bad readers of gothic novels—one for seeing them as true life and the other for seeing them as mere entertainment, when the reality is that they are somewhere in between. Ultimately, she writes, Austen encourages her own readers to approach both fiction and society “with critical detachment.”Natalie Neill also emphasizes the value of critical distance in Northanger, arguing that this is the skill Catherine needs to learn, and that Austen prompts readers “to assume a detached critical relationship” with her own novel.In different ways, all of these scholars interpret Northanger as a sort of textbook that teaches professional reading. Just as Catherine learns to discriminate, attend to context, and become less emotionally involved, so do attentive readers of Austen, they argue. These techniques allow for a detached, scholarly interest—one that is different from the unconditionally involved interest Parsons models in Wolfenbach, and which I will examine more fully in the final section of this chapter. What these readings of Northanger do, even when they argue for the value of gothic fiction within Austen’s text, is use Austen’s gothic parody to delineate developmental hierarchies of reading and writing and imply that they correspond to mature perception, feeling, and action in everyday life. Within these hierarchies, Parsons’s Wolfenbach and the other Horrid Novels are positioned as immature—aesthetically unrefined, morally indiscriminate, and emotionally inappropriate. Northanger and its criticism thus work together to teach ways of condescending to novels like Wolfenbach, making it likely that readers who come to Parsons’s novel through Austen or Austen scholarship will be aware that in reading one of the Horrid Novels,blueberry box they are reading a work that they ought to think is bad, and that its badness can serve as model for what not to write, read, feel, or do.

For nonprofessional readers, this awareness may result in readings that resist the emotional immersion that Parsons encourages, but it does not necessarily result in cold condemnation. Despite or because of being dismissed and recommended as “horrid” and puerile by Northanger and its criticism, Wolfenbach continues to be read and reviewed by amateur critics. As the first named and first published of the seven Horrid Novels, it is the most reviewed on sites like Goodreads and Amazon, and it is the one most thoroughly covered on blogs. In expressing their responses to the novel, amateur reviewers often adopt an authoritative tone and teach other readers how they ought to feel about the work. This instruction often recommends paying attention to formula more than detail, much like Parsons’s own attention to categories in expressions of emotion. Modern amateur critics, though, like scholars, suggest that every aspect of the novel, emotion included, is equally typical. Parsons’s repetition of sad stories, which seems intended to train her readers to recognize them as emotional conventions and respond appropriately, appears to backfire with modern readers. While a reader who has spent time inhabiting Parsons’s school of affliction and studying the beliefs that support its literary-emotional conventions could have the conditioning necessary to feel with the formula of these repetitious emotional displays, recent reviewers treat them as just another genre cliché. One blogger asks, “How do you know when you’re reading a gothic novel? Characters faint then weep, and then faint some more and then someone comes to their rescue.”Another writes, “The story speeds along, packed with tales of woe, heroes and villains, titles and society, swooning and fainting, weeping and wailing, swooning and fainting.”On Goodreads, a reviewer writes that “Eliza Parsons included damsels in distress, swooning and fainting, weeping and wailing, incest, murder, kidnapping, a haunted castle . . .” In keeping with the codified, disdainful language used for literary clichés, these reviews echo each other when mentioning emotional conventions; this is especially striking in the repetition of “swooning and fainting, weeping and wailing” in the last two examples, as if reviewers are actually supplying each other with the exact language with which to critique the conventions of the novel.

This echoing recalls the way Matilda learns to speak in the aphorisms of her mentors by the end of the story, but if these reviews provide education in the recognition of and response to emotional categories, it is far from the kind that Matilda learns. In each of these examples, the reviewer includes the emotional conventions alongside genre conventions of plot, character, or setting . It seems as if, due to different literary-emotional training, today’s readers see the cues for feeling as simply conventions. The first review of Wolfenbach, from 1794, provides a good comparison to this, as the writer inserts an emotional response in the midst of a listof plot events: “he [Matilda’s uncle] also discloses the measure of his crimes; restores her [Matilda] to her mother, from whom he had likewise taken her when an infant and burying himself in a convent . . .” Though this writer also places emotion alongside other literary features, he phrases the plot in specifics while making the emotion general and even minimizing it in parenthesis. This eighteenth-century professional critic suggests through his sentence structure that his own emotional response has a subordinate place in a review, as a sort of embarrassed aside that interrupts the real work of relating the situations from the novel in detail. He carefully elucidates the circumstances in the novel while minimizing a personal emotional response to those circumstances, implying, like Parsons, that situations are more relevant than personal feelings to well-trained audiences of stories of suffering. In contrast, the modern amateur critics generalize about every aspect of the novel, making both situations and emotions unimportant. The earlier review and the later ones judge Wolfenbach as inferior to good novels, but they model different forms of judgment. Parsons’s contemporary makes distinctions, detailing the plot, separating plot summary from emotional response, and characterizing the work as not “one of the first order, or even of the second” but possessing “sufficient interest” to command some degree of engagement.The online reviewers quoted here have inherited the critical tendency to flatten distinctions among formulaic gothic works that began in the decade of Wolfenbach’s publication and was likely enhanced by the pedagogical dimensions of Northanger and its scholarship.

Going beyond the modeling of conventional disdain that the amateur critics above demonstrate, some of the online commentary about Wolfenbach is explicitly emotionally didactic, but rather than employing categorical thinking to achieve sympathy, as Parsons does, this emotional education uses categorical thinking to achieve amusement. This trend is especially obvious in blog entries and comments from the Gothic Lit Classics Circuit Tour of October 2011 . The tutor of this particular read, in addition to educating her “student” on eighteenth-century culture and gothic conventions, also educates the reader on how to enjoy the novel, by advising her student to count the number of times a female character bursts into tears. They both continue to mockingly quote these dramatic passages.It is worth noting that ironically tracking weeping in novels is not a twentieth or twenty-first-century phenomenon. Henry Morley famously edited an edition of Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling in 1886 that included an “Index to Tears” for the amusement of a Victorian audience distant from the conventions of eighteenth-century sensibility.Many of these amateur critics, however,blueberry package go further than offering humorous commentary on the novel by instructing their community of readers on how to feel. The kind of emotional curriculum shown in the “so bad it’s good” blog post and comments or the LibraryThing exchange, while teaching to feel against the formula of Wolfenbach, is still feeling—but substituting pleasure for pity. Scholars generally do not express pleasure in what they present as failed writing—pleasure for scholars is most expressible in terms of interest, as I will discuss in the following section. As scholars, we value critical emotion—emotion that requires labor, or specialized taste, or that resists what appear to be the intended emotions of the work—more than feeling with the formula, which, when it lines up with the intended emotions, appears passive, naïve, and boring. Nonprofessional reviewers are not sanctioned by their community for enjoying formulaic fiction, but when a novel like Wolfenbach comes prejudged as “horrid” and unsophisticated, they may be less inclined to express simple enjoyment, even as they are also disinclined to aloofly dismiss it. By modeling for other readers how to enjoy what they call bad writing, they teach a way of valuing formula that incorporates critical judgment, even if it favors categorical responses over careful discernment—which, as I will demonstrate in the next section, is not entirely without its own categorical tendencies. Even if scholars believe that The Castle of Wolfenbach possesses no engaging qualities in and of itself, they may express their engagement with the project of literary recovery that it allows. Deidre Lynch, writing about scholarly affects, describes the “pleasures of laboriously recovered, recondite information” that literary historicism allows.

Devendra Varma mentions this feeling in his introduction to The Northanger Set of Jane Austen’s Horrid Novels in 1968, when Wolfenbach had been out of print for more than a century. He writes, “[T]his piece of research has brought to me many moments of delight and given me the thrill and pleasure of literary archaeology.”At that time, Varma was one of only a handful of modern scholars to assess Wolfenbach and the other Horrid Novels, and the opportunity he had to help bring the books back into print and inform modern readers about the authors and works that played a large role in Jane Austen’s novel is one that few scholars today ever get to experience the like of. Diane Long Hoeveler was in a comparable position in 2006 when she wrote the introduction to the first major edition of Wolfenbach since Varma’s, and she makes a similar statement, though a less fervent one. She writes, “In a decade that saw the fall of a King and the rise of Emperor Napoleon, this novel spoke about the attraction and allure of France and the French people to the British bourgeois imaginary. Unpacking that allure even today is an engaging exercise in literary archaeology.”The pleasures of literary archaeology are difficult to share with others— Varma’s is for him alone, and Hoeveler’s is for readers with a strong background in history. Thus, scholars expressing the joys of recovery work with Wolfenbach are not likely to transmit their enjoyment to others, but they may transmit their less positive attitudes. The attitudes scholars express are important because the authoritative nature of scholarly discourse could influence other readers, instructing those readers on how a text ought to be approached. Rita Felski writes that “the authority of critique is often conveyed implicitly . . . via inflexions of manner and mood, timbre and tone.”A critical mood spreads because, she explains, “the student learns by imitating the teacher, adopting similar techniques of reading and reasoning, learning to emulate a style of thought,” which includes attending to “displayed dispositions” and “emulation of both tone and technique.”This emulation becomes apparent in the way several amateur reviewers paraphrase Hoeveler’s introduction to the modern edition, repeating her assertion that the novel is important as a window into history. While they endorse her interest, they also copy her condescension. Hoeveler shows disdain for Parsons’s tendency to seem “blatantlynationalistic in her celebration of British superiority” and writes that in her “bourgeois agenda” Parsons “goes so far as to say in this novel that middle-class people are more attractive than aristocrats because they do not stay out late at night partying, drinking, and losing their looks.”Similarly, a reviewer on Goodreads expresses patronizing amusement when noting, “The book also has a very strong patriotic bent and wouldn’t you know it, England is the best country in the world” and “If [ . . . ] the rich gave up late nights and gambling, there would be nothing to improve.”Of course, readers possess agency in how they respond to any novel, but we cannot discount the fact that scholarly experts act as teachers, especially in their introductions to novels. When these teachers introduce the uninitiated to a novel like Wolfenbach, they draw readers’ attention to certain features, and they encourage certain kinds of responses.

However, as Felski observes, “Much work in the New Historicist vein . . . leans toward diagnosis rather than dialogue.”Many of these studies imply that to read gothic novels without ascribing their features to specific historical forces is to read them badly. Felski explains that New Historicism was an important corrective to “grand narratives”— the oversimplification of history in service of a particular perspective—but she argues that it has over corrected by keeping texts bounded in their historical periods.She writes that “standard ways of thinking about historical context are unable to explain how works of art move across time.In this dissertation I am interested in the manner in which the work of novelists and critics reaches us across time—for example, in chapter 1, how present-day fans of Jane Austen learn about The Castle of Wolfenbach from her list of “horrid novels,” or in chapter 2, how mid-twentieth-century paperback covers of The Monk present Lewis’s novel to readers as a sexy, modern thriller, and how these mediations facilitate different responses to the texts. In my inclusion of these sorts of mediations, I am drawing on Bruno Latour’s theories to some extent. Latour emphasizes the importance of the human and nonhuman mediators that enable certain ways of knowing and interacting.In order to account for particular features in the current reception of the novels I write about in my dissertation, I will attempt to trace different lines of influence. These lines are not unbroken, as my reconstruction of them relies on the work that historicist scholars have done and the texts that digitizers have preserved. I would argue, though, that these selections themselves are significant,pe grow bag as they help to demonstrate the priorities that have shaped our critical inheritance.

In gauging the importance of different critical voices, I have paid special attention to which early responses appear again and again in bibliographies and introductions and which quotations from those critical sources have served as a reference point for recent scholars. Often, scholars differ in the ways they contextualize the same response, as I examine in chapter 4 when discussing the selection and interpretation of Thomas Gray’s letter to Walpole about The Castle of Otranto, in which he writes that it “makes some of us cry a little.”I note that critics use Gray’s words variously as evidence that Walpole fooled his contemporaries into reading sentimentally, that earlier readers found the novel effective in a way that is no longer possible, that Walpole’s inner circle understood that he meant the work to be satirical, or that Gray was simply being polite. I, in turn, read the frequent use of this quotation as evidence that critics have attempted for years to resolve the emotional indeterminacy of Otranto by using Gray’s letter as a window into Walpole’s intentions. A trans-historical approach is especially relevant when considering how minute details of older works affect readers today. Wai Chee Dimock, in “A Theory of Resonance,” calls for “diachronic” rather than synchronic historicism. She argues that “the text, as a diachronic object, yields its words differently across time, authorizing contrary readings across the ages and encouraging a kind of semantic democracy.”Attending to “the changes in the webs of meaning surrounding individual words,” she writes that “[t]hese semantic webs, broadening, contracting, acquiring new overtones and inflections, bear witness to the advent and retreat of social norms.”For instance, in chapter 3, I examine changing historical associations of the word sweet that could inflect different readings of Radcliffe’s portrayals of femininity in Udolpho. I also use this technique when thinking about changes in the grammar of emotional expression in chapter 1 and the punctuation of dialogue in chapter 4.

Even the smallest details of fictional texts can accrue affective associations that transform over time and alter readers’ engagements with novels. Historicizing these associations allows us to see the specific ways these texts are in flux and helps some of the historical variability of responses. That is to say, a professional critic immersed in the age of sensibility reads a gothic novel differently from a mid-twentieth-century magazine critic with a taste for minimalism, a twenty-first-century scholar comparing electronic reproductions different editions of a gothic novel in an office reads differently than a college student on break curled up with a Kindle, etc. Though I do not conduct experiments or surveys to determine how people read, I approach reception with an awareness of how different circumstances structure reading and how public literary judgments can implicitly or explicitly recommend ways of feeling about novels. A crucial goal of my approach to reception is to make legible the emotional conventions of recent scholars and amateur critics. As Lynch notes, the popular stereotype of scholars as emotionless is false, and this stereotype often opposes scholars to amateur readers “not yet subjected to the affective deformation that supposedly comes with formal education.”In Lynch’s view, we are all formed by historical constructions of literature as an object of love, but as I discussed above, the modern history of reading literature has also constructed nonprofessional readers as a threat to themselves or to the broader culture. Willis describes the historical construction of reading as involving “the division between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of reading, and the way these map on to gender, class and race”—ideas that she argues “continue to structure both critical and popular notions of audience and reception down to the present day.”The discourses of good and bad, tasteful and tasteless do not explicitly invoke gender, class, and race today, as they did in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, but the way they deal with emotion can be a coded way of reinforcing the construction of certain groups of readers as bad. Many of the twentieth-century writers who helped establish scholarly approaches to criticism employ language or methods that place emotion within a hierarchy.

Lynne Pearce writes that the wording of W. K. Wimsatt and C. M. Beardsley’s mid-twentieth-century concerns that the “affective fallacy” “ends up in impressionism and relativism” allows us to “speculate that their real anxiety is with the fact that such indeterminacy signals a reader’s lack of control over both the text and the reading process; and such lack of control is, in modern Western culture, a mark of both the feminine and the uneducated, working class.”Though the formative work of reception theorists like Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish, and Roland Barthes allows more importance to the role of the reader than previous critics did, Pearce writes that their emphasis on interpretation of the text rather than engagement with it still draws on “the gendering of knowledge” and “the class politics which has made ‘the ability to interpret’ the sign of bourgeois status.”By focusing on the emotional dimensions of responses from different kinds of critics, including scholarly ones, I am contributing to efforts to explore and validate previously devalued modes of reading and responding to literature. Scholars have become more interested in the differences and similarities of lay and professional readers, as John Guillory terms them. Writing in 2000,growing bags he considers their forms of reading to be two entirely different practices. His description of professional reading is similar to Felski’s, as one that is “vigilant,” “stands back from,” and is “wary” of pleasure.For Guillory, though, this is preferable to lay reading, which he describes as solitary consumption for enjoyment or diversion alone.Felski, however, argues that “in spite of their differences,” academic methods of reading and common methods of reading “share certain affective and cognitive parameters.”In response to fears about the current status of reading outside academia and concerns about paranoid reading inside academia, Magnus Persson argues that “we should become more curious about our own and others’ impassioned reading.”To act on this curiosity, Persson recommends studying the way more people read with more entirety. He writes, “Exploring the diversity of reading practices entails several perspectives: investigating reading practices available outside the educational system; viewing individual reading practices as a multitude of complex entities of which text interpretation is only one; and paying closer attention to the social dimensions of reading.”These are three of the objectives I attempt to achieve in my dissertation by focusing on the responses of amateur critics, the emotional qualities of lay and professional responses, and the ways critics influence each other, including in online forums. The responses I use in my dissertation include periodical reviews contemporary to the novels I analyze, criticism from nineteenth-century essays or studies of literature, private correspondence, twentieth-century magazine articles, conference papers, dissertations, and literature blogs, but I devote the most attention to scholarly monographs and articles of the last four decades and online review criticism.

In chapters, I often separate the responses of scholars and amateur critics not only because I expect my scholarly audience will view these groups differently but also because of the notable distinctions between their respective review conventions, subject matter, or tone that allow for insights into their respective affective approaches to the texts. Within those groupings, when scholars or amateurs write different kinds of emotional responses, I further subdivide them, and when the responses of scholars and amateurs are similar in some ways, I set them alongside each other. The responses I have chosen are ones that represent trends I have noticed in reception, ones that have been especially influential, and ones that offer particularly rich phrasing for analysis. Though I have been very selective in the amateur responses I quote, I attempted to read as many online reviews as possible for each novel. Most of the online reviews I use come from Amazon, Goodreads, and LibraryThing. Megan Milota, who has contributed to establishing methodology for the quantitative study of reader response in online book reviews, has judged these three sites to be similar enough to use without differentiating among them because, in addition to their common use of a five-star rating system, they all allow “the chance to participate in the literary field, a sense of community, an opportunity to present oneself, and finally, the chance to gain or display status” .All three sites aggregate ratings and reviews for particular books across most editions but have separate ratings and reviews for a handful of editions, such as ones where a novel is included in a collection. There are differences among the platforms, though: Amazon is an online megastore, whereas Goodreads and LibraryThing are social networking sites that let users record the books they’ve read or want to read and connect with other readers. Amazon allows ratings only with reviews, Goodreads allows ratings without reviews, and Library Thing allows ratings with reviews but also tracks “mentions” and “conversations” in its forum postings. Goodreads is the most active site for amateur criticism, with its main listing for Udolpho featuring 11,300 ratings and 839 reviews as of March 7, 2018, whereas Amazon has 139 aggregated ratings and reviews and LibraryThing has only 45 ratings and reviews with 378 mentions and 2 conversations. Milota observes that amateur reviews tend to use review conventions, though more loosely than professional reviews, writing that “while there may have been a degree of flexibility in the format, register, and formality of reviews, they still followed an established template of what was deemed appropriate by the broader community of readers.”These standards are maintained through features that allow users to rate or comment on each other’s reviews. Milota is one of a growing number of scholars who use empirical methods to study reception, part of a broader turn toward the sciences in studying literature. Though I initially tried to analyze amateur reviews quantitatively, the correlations I found between numbers of stars and positive or negative assessments were minimal, and more often, amateur critics used mixed assessments and emotional language that demanded interpretation. Like the affectively inflected assessments of recent scholars and critics from older historical periods, these reviews present complex engagements with the text, the broader critical culture, and narratives of history that need to be more closely analyzed and considered in conjunction with the emotional features of the text and its historical and present-day positioning. In her article about the British reception of a novel about Caribbean immigrants, Anouk Lang analyzes the responses of nonprofessional readers to an online survey and in transcriptions of recorded book group discussions, selecting and interpreting these responses in a qualitative way that is more similar to my approach.

Two-thirds of the octoploid strawberry germplasm accessions screened for resistance to Fusarium wilt race 1 in the present study had disease symptom ratings in the resistant range , where ̄y is the estimated marginal mean among replicates and years, y = 1 plants were symptomless, and y = 2 plants were nearly symptomless . The severity of symptoms increased as ̄y increased on our ordinal scale . The race 1 resistance phenotypes observed among resistant and susceptible checks in the present study were consistent with those previously reported. The repeatability of race 1 resistance phenotypes among clonal replicates of resistant and susceptible checks was 0.81. One-fourth of the individuals screened in the present study were symptomless, classified as highly resistant , and appeared to be immune to AMP132 infections . This confirmed our suspicion that resistance to race 1 was widespread in natural and domesticated populations of octoploid strawberry. We suspected this because the only ‘non-California’ individuals screened in our previous study were highly resistant to AMP132 infection, had non-FW1 SNP marker haplotypes, and were presumed to carry novel R-genes . Moreover, the individuals screened in the present study were more diverse than those previously screened from the California population . Slightly more than half of the F. chiloensis and F. virginiana ecotypes screened for resistance to race 1 in the present study were classified as resistant . We did not observe geographic or phylogenetic trends—highly resistant ecotypes were found throughout the natural geographic ranges of both species . Eleven out of 62 F. chiloensis and 12 out of 40 F. virginiana ecotypes were classified as highly resistant . Moreover,plastic square flower bucket highly resistant ecotypes were identified for each of the seven subspecies of F. chiloensis and F. virginiana apart from one ecotype of F. virginiana subsp. platypetala, which was nevertheless classified as resistant .

We did not screen ecotypes of F. chiloensis subsp. sandwichensis, the subspecies found in Hawaii , because none were available when our study was undertaken. Approximately two-thirds of the F. × ananassa individuals screened in the present study were resistant to AMP132 infection . Of these, 20 originated in the California population and were either known or predicted to carry FW1 from SNP marker haplotypes . Other than Wiltguard , the other 141 are heirloom and historically important F. × ananassa individuals originating in North America, Europe, and Japan between 1880 and 1987 . We extracted the pedigree records for Wiltguard and the 141 non-CA individuals from the database described by Pincot et al. to show that the genetic relationships among most of these individuals and their ascendants were complex and intertwined . Of 603 individuals in the pedigree network, 101 were identified to be founders and 180 were phenotyped for resistance to Fusarium wilt race 1 . Twentyone individuals either lacked pedigree records or only had a single-generation of pedigree records with one or both parents known . The orphans are identified in the pedigree database but not shown in Fig. 2, which displays interconnections among the other 120 non-UC individuals and Wiltguard . The pedigree network diagram and database show that the alleles found in these resistant individuals have flowed through several common ancestors . Although the presence of multiple R-genes cannot be ruled out—partly because some of the individuals are orphans or extinct and phenotypes are only known for a subset of the ascendants of resistant individuals—there is a high probability that the number of unique alleles is small and that many of the R-alleles found in cultivars worldwide are identical-by-descent .

Our studies targeted two heirloom cultivars that share three resistant common ancestors , had unique haplotypes for SNPs in LD with FW1, were genetically distant from one another and individuals in the California population, and were predicted to have a high probability of carrying novel R-genes . The pedigrees for these cultivars are shown in Online Resource 7 .Selection of individuals for constructing a host differential panel was informed by insights gained from screening public germplasm collections for resistance to race 1 and insights gained from population structure analyses in strawberry . The host differential panel was assembled to maximize the probability of differentiating races and identifying sources of resistance to different Fof isolates . The phenotypes for resistance to AMP132, MAFF727510, and four other Fof isolates were previously reported for 25 octoploid individuals on the host differential panel: one F. chiloensis ecotype, one F. viriginiana ecotype, and 23 F. × ananassa individuals . MAFF727510 is an Fof race 2 isolate found in Japan . To broaden insights into the frequency and distribution of race 2 resistance sources, the phenotypes for resistance to MAFF727510 are reported here for an additional 116 individuals: 10 F. chiloensis ecotypes, 16 F. viriginiana ecotypes, and 93 F. × ananassa individuals . The latter included cultivars and other individuals selected to broadly sample allelic diversity in California and non-California populations worldwide. Similarly, the ecotypes were selected to sample allelic diversity across the natural ranges of F. chiloensis and F. viriginiana. The race 1 and 2 resistance phenotypes observed in these studies were highly repeatable: estimates of broad-sense heritability were ̂H2 = 0.98 for resistance to AMP132 and ̂H2 = 0.91 for resistance to MAFF727510 . Forty-one individuals on the host differential panel were classified as resistant to race 2 . Thirty-four of these individuals were symptomless and classified as highly resistant , and 34 of the race 2 resistant accessions were resistant to race 1 . Of the 78 F. × ananassa individuals from the California population, only four were resistant to MAFF727510. Conversely, of the 38 F. × ananassa individuals from the non-California population, 21 were resistant to MAFF727510. Slightly more than half of the F. chiloensis and F. virginiana ecotypes were resistant to race 2 , which was comparable to the frequency observed for race 1 resistance .

Three individuals on the host differential panel were resistant to every Fof isolate tested from California, Japan, Australia, and Spain . According to historical breeding records , Royce S. Bringhurst developed 61S016P006 , an S1 descendant of 43C001P036, by selecting for resistance to Verticillium wilt in Davis, California, nearly a half century before Fusarium wilt was discovered in California . Using the host differential panel as the study population and 50K Axiom SNP array genotypes, we searched the genome for associations between SNP marker loci and race 2 resistance phenotypes. Statistically significant GWAS signals for loci affecting resistance to race 2 were not observed . We repeated this analysis with the host differential panel using race 1 resistance phenotypes and reproduced the strong GWAS signal associated with the segregation of FW1 in the California population . The absence of a significant GWAS signal for race 2 resistance has several possible explanations. First, resistance to race 2 might not be governed by gene-for-gene resistance. Second, resistance to race 2 could be governed by gene-for-gene resistance but undetectable in a highly diverse population where multiple alleles and loci are segregating and the resistant alleles are uncommon. Those alleles, however,plastic plant pots could almost certainly be uncovered and identified by forward genetic analyses of segregating populations developed from crosses between resistant and susceptible parents, as described below for the race 1 resistance loci identified in the present study. Third, the sample size may have been insufficient to detect the presence of gene-for-gene resistance to race 2. This seems unlikely because R-genes have large effects, and we have consistently observed strong GWAS signals for FW1 in small samples of California population individuals, including the host differential panel .The FW1 locus was previously identified and physically mapped using diploid genome-informed GWAS in a closed UCD or ’California’ population of 565 individuals genotyped with a SNP array populated with diploid genome-anchored SNPs . To revisit our original analyses using octoploid genome-informed GWAS, 356 of these individuals were genotyped with either the 50K or 850K Axiom SNP arrays . This substantially increased the density and uniformity of SNPs in the FW1 haploblock and facilitated a search for genes with plant defense annotations because the SNP markers on both arrays were physically anchored in silico to octoploid reference genomes developed since the original study was reported . The physical positions of FW1-associated SNPs in the ’Camarosa’ and ‘Royal Royce’ genomes are shown in Online Resource 8. GWAS and de novo genetic mapping pinpointed the location of the FW1 locus to a near-telomeric haploblock on the upper arm of chromosome 2B spanning approximately 3.3 Mb . The 3.3 Mb haploblock was populated with 1,725 SNP markers from the 50K and 850K Axiom SNP arrays, of which 460 were signifcantly associated with race 1 resistance phenotypes . SNP markers with the strongest GWAS signals on chromosome 2B were AX-184226354 and AX-184176344 . KASP markers were developed for SNPs predicted by GWAS to be in LD with FW1 .

These were genotyped in the Fronteras and Portola S1 populations, shown to be tightly linked to the FW1 locus on chromosome 2B, and estimated to predict race 1 resistance phenotypes with 98.7 to 98.8% accuracy in the Fronteras and Portola S1 populations and 95.2 to 97.6% accuracy in the California population . Even though GWAS signals were observed between resistance phenotypes and SNP markers predicted to reside on homoeologous chromosomes, 84% of the 50K and 80% of the 850K Axiom array SNP markers with statistically significant GWAS signals were predicted in silico to reside on chromosome 2B proximal to the previously genetically mapped FW1 locus . Nevertheless, the strongest GWAS signals were observed for SNP markers that had previously been physically assigned in silico to chromosome 2D: AX-89872358 , AX-184098127 , and AX-184513679 on the 50K SNP array and AX-184055143 on the 850K SNP array . The GWAS signals observed on chromosomes other than 2B were almost certainly caused by incorrect in silico physical assignments of Axiom SNP array probe DNA sequences to positions in octoploid reference genomes . This conclusion was supported by several observations and analyses. First, QTL mapping in the Fronteras and Portola S1 populations only uncovered statistically significant signals for race 1 resistance on chromosome 2B . Second, GWAS was repeated for race 1 resistance phenotypes observed in the California population by fitting AX-184226354 as a fixed effect, then searching the genome for significant GWAS signals—AX-184226354 was the SNP marker on chromosome 2B that was most strongly associated with the FW1 locus . GWAS with AX-184226354 incorporated as a fixed effect eliminated signals on other chromosomes, in addition to eliminating signals for other tightly linked SNPs on chromosome 2B . Hence, fitting and testing multilocus genetic models with SNPs selected from single locus genome-wide searches is a powerful approach for resolving physical address assignment errors, a particular problem in polyploids, and generating more accurate estimates of genetic parameters . A certain percentage of erroneous GWAS signals are expected in octoploid strawberry because a small percentage of the short 71-nt DNA probe sequences for Axiom array SNP markers are incorrectly assigned in silico to physical positions in the reference genome, e.g., Hardigan et al. estimated that approximately 74% of QC-passing 850K Axiom SNP array probes could be assigned to the correct homoeolog in the ‘Camarosa’ genome. That percentage was virtually identical to the percentage of Axiom array SNPs with significant GWAS signals on chromosomes other than 2B in our analyses . Genetic mapping of Axiom array SNPs in the present and previous studies have shown that the percentage of Axiom array SNPs with physical positions that were incorrectly assigned in silico are found on homoeologous chromosomes . This GWAS complication is bound to arise in strawberry and other polyploid and paleopolypoid species with complex repetitive DNA landscapes, especially outbred species with whole genome duplications where homoeologous DNA variation complicates the physical assignment of short DNA sequences to subgenomes . The assignment of highly accurate long-read DNA sequences, by contrast, is straightforward . The octoploid genome-informed GWAS analyses described here were initiated in 2017 immediately after we assembled the ‘Camarosa’ reference genome . We have since expanded our understanding of the complexity of the octoploid genome, built superior haplotype-phased genome assemblies , and unequivocally shown that homologous and homoeologous DNA variation can be differentiated nearly genome-wide in strawberry .

Our results also corroborated with this finding. Our results indicated that, apart from fruits, SS were mainly accumulated in the leaves at harvest, which accounted for about 90% of the total leaf NSC. Thus, the allocation of NSCs in different organs allowed the plants to persist when respiration rate was higher than photo assimilation in annual events, but also aided in responding to abiotic stresses such as drought . Our results indicated that plants that received 100% ETc had higher NSC content. Similarly, a previous study with potted grapevines reported increased starch and SS contents in the leaves from the grapevines with higher leaf area to fruit ratio that were well-watered . In shoots, sucrose and raffinose proportions were higher in 50 and 100% ETc treatments compared with 25% ETc. As a great part of the shoot biomass is vascular tissue, this may suggest an increase in NSC translocation in these treatments. Although sucrose is the main sugar for carbon translocation through the phloem into the sink tissues, recent research highlighted the roles of other sugars, such as raffinose, in carbon translocation and storage . On the other hand, previous research reported less NSC accumulation in grapevine canes under carbon starvation at a low leaf to fruit ratios, suggesting that sucrose may control starch accumulation through adjustment of the sink strength . Furthermore, Rossouw et al. also highlighted the role of raffinose toward root carbohydrate source functioning in grapevines with significantly lower leaf to fruit ratio due to defoliation from carbon starvation . When the photosynthetic supply of carbohydrates is limited,round flower buckets remobilization from perennial tissues can provide an alternative carbon source . Thus, previous research conducted on potted grapevines reported a concurrent starch remobilization from roots with a rapid berry sugar accumulation .

Conversely, under our experimental conditions , no effect of water deficits on NSC remobilization from roots to berries was observed despite the decreased leaf to fruit ratio. Likewise, Keller et al. did not observe higher amounts of sugars in berries from field-grown Cabernet Sauvignon subjected to 25% ETc compared with 70 or 100% ETc under field conditions. Under our experimental conditions, yield per plant was strongly related to shoot, leaf, and root BM. Similarly, Field et al. found that grapevines with the lowest shoot growth rate before veraison had significantly less fruit set than the other treatments, attributing these effects to the restoration of root carbohydrate reserves that occurred at the same time. Grapevines subjected to 25% ETc had reduced photo assimilates due to lower AN in both seasons resulting in less NSC in the source leaves available for new growth and exported to sinks. This resulted in a general lower plant BM . Contrarily, grapevines subjected to 100% ETc had higher photo assimilation rates throughout the course of the study that led to higher SS and starch content and, consequently, to the improvement of BM and, therefore, higher harvest index. Therefore, the reduced growth rate of both sink and source organs in response to water deficits indicated that the availability of carbon is a major growth constraint. The yield per plant of 50% ETc was lower than 100% ETc, but not as low as 25% ETc. However, canopy BM was greatly reduced in both 50% ETc and 25% ETc compared with 100% ETc. Accordingly, Field et al. reported that grapevine grown under warm soil conditions favored shoot and fruit development over carbohydrate reserve accumulation. In contrast, Candolfi-Vasconcelos et al. reported that a lower leaf area to fruit ratio increased the translocation of carbohydrates from permanent structures to reproductive organs to support grape ripening. The shoot to root ratio revealed a positive relationship with the total BM, leaf and root NSC, and N contents. Thus, the distribution of biomass relies on the C:N ratio as highlighted by the negative relationship between shoot to root and the sucrose:nitrogen ratios. Similarly, a linear relationship between NSC and root to shoot ratio in grapevines grown under stressful conditions was previously reported .

From a molecular point of view, the alterations of source:sink ratios led to transcriptional adjustments of genes involved in starch metabolism, including the upregulation of VvGPT1 and VvNTT for lower leaf area to fruit ratios . Furthermore, enhanced root biomass in 100% ETc likely resulted from higher sugar content in the roots as our data supported. It was recently reported that increases in root elongation and hexose contents were due to the VvSWEET4 over expression, a gene implied as a grapevine response to abiotic stress . Similarly, Medici et al. reported up- or down regulation of the genes encoding hexose transporters in grapevines subjected to water deficits corroborating this result. Therefore, although some genes may be expressed under water deficit, lack of carbon accumulation impaired the growth. The relationship between root to shoot ratio and plant nitrogen content was previously reported for grapevines, suggesting that dry matter partitioning is largely a function of the internal status of the plants . We found decreased N content in grapevines facing water deficits, which resulted in a decrease of total BM. Similarly, Romero et al. reported reductions in leaf nitrogen content when vines were subjected to water deficits. These authors suggested that nutrient uptake may be reduced due to deficits in soil water profile, and the slow root growth under these conditions consequently inhibited grapevine growth. In our study, N content was strongly related to photosynthetic pigments. Accordingly, previous studies reported lower leaf N and leaf chlorophyll in deficit-irrigated grapevines, suggesting quantitative losses in the photosynthetic apparatus and/or damage to the biochemical photosynthetic machinery, decreasing photosynthetic capacity as corroborated with the lower NSC leaf content with water deficits. Finally, molecular research over the last decades has suggested the important regulatory functions of sucrose and N metabolites in metabolism at the cellular and subcellular levels and/or in gene expression patterns, giving new insights into how plants may modulate over a longer period its growth and biomass allocation in response to fluctuating environmental conditions .

Optimism is a key facet of positive psychological well-being that is associated with reduced morbidity and mortality, independent of psychological distress . Despite accumulating evidence regarding the relationship between optimism and health, underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Prior work has linked optimism with higher levels of physical activity and better physiological adjustment to stress exposure . Potential beneficial effects of optimism on physical activity and stress response may be partly a function of its regulatory component. Optimism reflects having confidence in the future, which in turn results in a greater likelihood of employing strategies for achieving one’s goals, including effortful goal engagement, problem-focused coping with challenges, and goal adjustment when goals become unattainable . The ability to employ these strategies effectively and flexibly likely provides greater means with which to confront and manage life’s challenges and to adopt more health protective behaviors. Despite increasing evidence of optimism’s relationships with more physical activity and healthier physiological responses to stress, the vast majority of studies focusing on dispositional optimism and its associations with beneficial physical and physiological outcomes have been observational . As such, the direction of the effect is unclear,plastic flower buckets wholesale leaving open the question of whether optimism causally influences physical activity or physical activity increases optimism. Additionally, almost all previous studies have relied on self-reported optimism and positive affect which may be subject to social desirability and recall bias. Experimental research in which individuals are randomly assigned to an optimism intervention with targeted pathways related to improved health as outcomes – like physical activity and stress responses – is needed to establish the causal role of optimism in relation to these outcomes. While most research has focused on trait-based optimism, a growing number of studies have considered whether optimism can be encouraged, cultivated or modified, and if health-related effects of more deliberately cultivated optimism are similar . A number of studies have used experimental methods to manipulate optimism, typically through interventions involving writing tasks . These interventions successfully increase optimism and other self reported affective responses and decrease negative affect, depression, anxiety, and aggression, but a key outstanding question is whether these interventions can also sufficiently alter behavior and physiology in ways that explain downstream beneficial health effects. While some evidence suggests positive effects of these interventions, the generalizability of these effects to healthy community-dwelling adults is unclear. For example, many experimental studies to date have been conducted among patient populations with a recent disease diagnosis or acute event such individuals tend to be highly motivated to improve their health behaviors, willing to undergo relatively intensive intervention protocols, and also relatively unhealthy at the outset and therefore have substantial room to show improvement. Other studies testing short-term optimism manipulation strategies in non-patient populations also provide some evidence that writing task interventions could improve health and well-being; however, these have been conducted exclusively within student populations which may be more compliant than the general population .

Therefore, a key outstanding question is whether optimism levels can be altered to subsequently lead to changes in downstream health-relevant processes like physical activity and stress reactivity within the general population. The overall aim of this research was to examine the effects of an optimism intervention on physical activity and stress reactivity with community volunteers. We developed a short intervention designed to induce optimism in the short-term and randomized participants either to the optimism intervention or an active control condition. The same intervention was used in both studies, and we harmonized the self-reported dependent variables. We hypothesized that: 1) the intervention group relative to the control group would show increased self-reported optimism and positive affect, as well as decreased anxiety, depression, aggression, and negative affect; 2) in Study 1, the optimism intervention compared to the control group would show more engagement and persistence with physical activity tasks, as operationalized by a stepping task and a sit-stand task and self-reported exercise beliefs including perceived benefits and barriers of exercise as well as self-efficacy of exercising; 3) in Study 2, the optimism intervention compared to the control group would show healthier stress-related physiologic responses at rest and during an acute stressor; and 4) those who were rated as more optimistic would show more engagement and persistence in physical activity tasks and have better stress-related physiologic responses in the lab.Participants ages 22–60 years old were recruited through Craigslist, Student Employment Office websites at local universities, and flyers posted on community bulletin boards. Potential participants completed a telephone screening to determine their eligibility and willingness to adhere to the study protocol. Individuals with chronic diseases like heart disease, who were pregnant, had body mass index ≥30 kg/m2 , or had a current diagnosis of clinical depression or other major mental disorders were excluded. As a goal of Study 1 was to assess whether optimism has beneficial effects on willingness to engage in physical activity, further exclusions included not being able to engage in physical activity or self-reporting regularly spending more than 60-minutes per week doing strenuous or moderate exercise. Additionally, participants were asked to refrain from eating for a half-hour and exercising for 2 hours prior to lab visits. Eligible individuals completed secure online consenting procedures through Qualtrics. Written consent for the in-lab portion of the study was obtained from participants during their lab visits.The protocol for both studies included three online writing tasks and one phone interview prior to a lab visit. In the lab, participants completed another writing task and one in-person interview. All the writing tasks and the lab study were conducted over one to two weeks . The four writing tasks for the intervention group included a values assessment, remembering past achieved goals, writing a gratitude letter, and imagining one’s best possible self, all chosen based on prior literature suggesting such interventions may lead to greater optimism levels . The control condition provided comparable demands for attention and writing but focused on neutral and less future-oriented activities. Prompts for the intervention condition writing tasks were identical in both studies; however, the first three prompts in the control condition were slightly modified for Study 2 Table 1. After completing the first three writing tasks online, participants of both studies were invited to come to the lab to complete the final part of the study. At the lab, participants completed a brief final screening to confirm accuracy of previously self reported information, an imagery task, a fourth writing task, an in-person interview, and physical activity tasks or stress reactivity tasks . For Study 1, participants were asked to engage in a stepping task and a sit-to-stand task.

There is also the possibility of a loss of accessions occurring during the revival, either due to contamination or low recovery, especially for some specific Vitis varieties. Seed bank storage is also utilized for the ex situ conservation of trees, although the germinating progeny will show segregating genotypes. However, plants with recalcitrant and intermediate seeds cannot stand desiccation conditions and cold storage without losing viability; only orthodox seeds are highly suited to this procedure. Moreover, conservation via storing seeds is suitable only for wild grapevines, and not for cultivated ones. Therefore, field gene bank collections are important for such species. In field gene bank collections, tree species are maintained and multiplied indefinitely, using seeds or vegetative propagation; this emphasizes the importance of having a long-term plan for the sustainability of such collections. However, maintenance of such collections is costly , and extensive maintenance actions are required. Moreover, these collections are vulnerable to climate change, biotic and abiotic stresses, and sometimes natural disasters. The emergence of intense competition in the international wine market has encouraged the idea of recovering high-quality ancient and indigenous accessions. As a result, a large number of indigenous accessions have been collected from wild and old vineyards,procona system and maintained in the field collections of grapevine-growing countries, including Israel, the USA, Spain, Italy, and many other countries. For example, the United States Department of Agriculture—Agricultural Research Service collections of wild grapevines at the Plant Genetic Resource Unit and the National Clonal Germplasm Repository maintain around 5000 accessions as a field collection. The FEM grape germplasm collection at San Michele all’Adige, Italy, maintains 2273 accessions.

The IFAPA research center “Rancho de la Merced” hosts 930 accessions, and the “El Encín” Vine Varieties Collection, Spain, has 966 indigenous accessions. Finally, the Vitis International Variety Catalogue is a database of ~23,000 cultivars, breeding lines, and Vitis species, that provides a comprehensive overview of most international grapevine collections. The grapevine is one of the most sensitive cultivated plants; it is very responsive to its surrounding environment. Different varieties may have a wide range of responses to specific stressors; thus, maintaining a wide range of cultivars in a field collection using a uniform growth protocol is challenging. As mentioned above, grapevine field collections also require large spaces, are labor-intensive, expensive to maintain, and are exposed to natural disasters, climate change, and infection by pathogens. Therefore, the maintenance of field grapevine collections is challenging. In spite of these complications, the importance of maintaining grapevine field collections is growing in light of current and forecasted climate changes; the sustainability of current commercial grapevine varieties is under greater pressure as a result of global warming. New, resistant varieties will be greatly needed, and it is anticipated that the diversity found in germplasm collections will become increasingly valuable for future breeding programs . Genomics-assisted breeding will reduce the time and costs that are required to breed new cultivars that possess desirable traits. The methodical collection of data from a field collection can enhance our understanding of phenological variations, and of individual responses to various biotic and abiotic factors—for instance, in terms of cold hardiness, blooming time, drought stress , as well as important commercial traits such as wine characteristics. Due to the adaptability of such varieties in local microclimatic conditions, these varieties can provide root stocks that are resistant to the salt and drought stresses that are associated with climate change.

Israel is characterized by a dramatic climatic gradient, from the northern moderate temperature and humidity of the Golan Heights, to the southern hot and dry Negev. Here, we describe the advantages of maintaining a unique field indigenous collection in Ariel, Israel. This collection includes 96 accessions that were collected in Israel during the last decade, representing one of the most ancient grape populations in the world, and one that is suspected of having been domesticated from local Vitis sylvestris populations. Furthermore, individual grapevines in this collection were collected from very harsh ecosystems, including the Mediterranean Sea shore, the Negev desert, and dry mountainous areas; such grapevines represent a unique opportunity to study abiotic stress resistances. This collection was used to gain a better understanding of the genomic structure of the domesticated and wild grape populations in the south Levant. This study will argue the benefits of maintaining this unique in-field collection in order to study drought resistance, phenotypic and phenological variations, and grape aroma profiles of previously uncharacterized grape varieties. This study presents the physiological data retrieved from 33 varieties , measured at five time points during a drought stress experiment of 10 weeks. Using k-means analysis to classify the individual vines into groups [using the physiological information measured for each vine at all five time points—stem water potential , photosynthesis, and stomata conductance], we show that the vines, represented by dots, are divided into three groups that are based on their physiological behavior during the extended drought stress period . Next, we annotated every dot to the specific vine and variety, and left in the analysis only those varieties in which all four vines are classified into the same group. When looking into the physiological data for the vines represented in each group—the group of varieties marked by green dots—Nitzan 3 and Beer, which come from a group that is more separated from the other two groups, are varieties that are characterized by the most negative SWP and lowest stomata conductance at the later stages of the experiment . Meanwhile, the group of varieties marked by red dots—Shami and Batar Nitzamin—had improved parameters at the later stages. Finally, the intermediate group marked by the blue dots—Jandaly and Ramtania—showed moderate parameters at the late stages, and had some intermixing with the red group .The correlation between stomata conductance and photosynthetic efficiency of varieties under drought stress shows close to linear relations with high R 2 levels for most varieties.

Nevertheless, the slopes are higher for the stable varieties than for those drought-sensitive varieties that show a more extreme reaction , meaning that the red group transpires more water for the same photosynthetic efficiency. Next, we conducted a correlation between midday stem water potential and stomatal conductance for two representative varieties for each response strategy during all five measuring points . The correlation clearly shows the differences between the groups—the more stable varieties, Shami and Batar-Nitzanim, are only mildly affected by extended drought, reaching only circa -1MPa, and maintaining relatively high gs at the later stages of the experiment, while the sensitive varieties, Beer and Nitzan 3, are dramatically affected at the early stages, reaching more negative levels of SWP and with lower stomatal conductance. The Ramtania and Jandaly varieties represent the moderate group, dropping faster into a more negative SWP and lower gs than the stable group, but not as dramatically as the sensitive varieties.A comprehensive dating of the phenological stages for the accessions in the collection was conducted during the season of 2018. Determination of the phenological sequence is generally important for the characterization of each variety as an early, medium, or late blooming. When extended to the ripening period, it also enables planning for an extended harvest season for table grapes, and enables planning for early or late harvest for wine making purposes. Interestingly,procona valencia buckets when referring to the former division of the varieties by their drought stress reactions, we found that stable varieties show very late bud break and foliage development compared to sensitive varieties. By fruit set, most varieties show a similar development pattern.Studies of phenotypic variation using germplasm collections can improve our understanding of phenotypic plasticity in grapevine varieties, as they respond to changing climatic conditions. Therefore, it is essential to examine diverse germplasms to better understand variation in individual responses to changing conditions, and to identify germplasms that can withstand climatic variations for use in breeding programs. In this paper, we have shown that drought stress, applied uniformly to the whole range of the Israeli germplasm collection which contains six plants for each variety, enables the preliminary identification of drought-stable or drought-sensitive varieties. Stable varieties showed improved SWP and higher levels of stomata conductance under drought stress, while the sensitive varieties dropped in SWP rapidly, as well as in stomata conductance. This initial characterization should be followed by a deeper one, concentrating on the varieties that harbor the most pronounced phenotypes in larger dedicated plots and replications. Using a field germplasm collection for this initial screening has pros and cons. Advantageously, we can count the fact that one can conduct comprehensive surveys that encompass the entire range of varieties, to the trait in hand, and the ease of work, when all varieties are under the same conditions in one plot; this facilitates multiple analyses in a short time. In terms of disadvantages, a collection usually contains a very limited number of vines per variety, with no replicate vines spread in different parts of the vineyards, as we would in stationing a proper field experiment. Thus, when analyzing the plasticity of varieties to traits such as stress resistance, the data collected can serve only as preliminary observations to be verified by wider experiments.

Living germplasm collections can also be valuable resources for characterizing diversity in phenological sequences—bloom time, timing of bud break, and véraison, as well as fruit development, ripening processes, and cold hardiness, when responding to identical sets of environmental conditions on the same site across multiple years and conditions. As we have shown, our tracking of the early phenological sequence in some varieties in our collection is in concert with our findings during the drought stress experiment, and the separation of varieties into “stable” or “sensitive” to drought stress. It seems that the stable varieties are those which are late blooming, while those that are sensitive are early blooming . We suggest that the late bud breaking and foliar development of the “stable” varieties is possibly the mechanism that enables their mild reaction to the initiation of drought stress. The early varieties have around forty additional days to sustain their foliage, possibly causing rapid depletion of the soil water reservoir accumulated during winter. Thus, we suggest that at the point of drought stress initiation , their depleted soil water reservoir leads them into more profound stress, preventing them from keeping their stomata open; meanwhile, the late blooming varieties, which have much larger water reservoirs due to less time sustaining foliage, have improved water status. We will need to continue monitoring both phenological and physiological reactions of the stable and sensitive groups over an extended period of time, in order to understand and validate this suggestion; nevertheless, these surprising observations were possible only through maintaining an in-field collection, with meticulous data collection for different traits. Field germplasm collections can be utilized as reference materials for ampelographic studies. Recent research done at the indigenous grapevine collection at Ariel University revealed information about genetic diversity and single nucleotide polymorphisms among various accessions, which in combination with the ampelographic data collected in field, can enable the definition of varieties and clones. For example, we have previously shown that seed morphology analyses of three sets of SSR identical pairs of varieties—Shami and Tufahi, Karkashani and Zituni, Baluti and Bituni—found that the first two pairs are clearly distinguishable by seed morphology, while the third pair has very similar seed morphology, strengthening this pair’s definition assynonyms. The newly developed method for defining 3D seed morphology joins the more traditional straightforward traits of bunch and berry size and shape, berry color, and taste, which help distinguish synonyms from clones. Indeed, many such variations resulted in the development of popular cultivars such as ‘Pinot gris’ and ‘Pinot blanc’, which are lighter-colored variations of the grapevine cultivar, ‘Pinot noir’, which possesses 17 clones within the USDA grapevine germplasm collection. While such accessions may appear to be genotypic duplicates, especially when a limited number of genetic markers is used to evaluate their differences, they are actually valuable resources for studying plant developmental biology and gene function. Here, we deeply analyzed phenolic composition for some red varieties in the collection, and aroma profiles for the white ones. We show that most red indigenous varieties have relatively low anthocyanin and polyphenolics levels. Only four varieties, namely Marawani, Gilboa, Black Tzuriman, and Baluti, showed higher levels of anthocyanins and phenolic characteristics, which may indicate possible suitability for wine production.

Since these loci range in length from roughly 400 to 700 bp, this result would be consistent with an average recombination length of no more than a few kb, similar to the 2.6-kb average length observed by Nunney et al. in a comparison of two X. fastidiosa subsp. fastidiosa genomes . Similarly, the regions identified from the data of Parker et al. showed the same pattern, with a high proportion of recombination breakpoints identified within the sequenced loci . In this context, it is important to note that Rogers and Stenger have found a conjugative plasmid in X. fastidiosa. Furthermore, a high rate of transformation has been demonstrated in the lab , and it has been shown that this process can result in efficient recombination with only a few hundred bases of homologous sequence . Both conjugation and transformation may have been involved in the evolution of the recombinant group, since the data raise the possibility of both large-scale intersubspecific and smaller-scale intrasubspecific recombination . The results support the general conclusion that successful recombination is a rare but important event, a possibility emphasized by Wiedenbeck and Cohan in their review of bacterial adaptation to new environments. However, given the high rates of recombination observed experimentally in X. fastidiosa , this rarity is somewhat surprising, perhaps suggesting that in X. fastidiosa the majority of intersubspecific recombination events fail due to their negative fitness consequences. Fitness loss due to recombination is consistent with the high level of plant host speci- ficity observed among the genotypes of X. fastidiosa . On the other hand,blueberry in pot it is clear that recombination can create combinations that are beneficial to the species, enabling it to invade new plant hosts.

Specifically, the successful invasion of blueberry and blackberry appears to have resulted from large-scale recombination between two subspecies, a pattern that appears to be repeated in the invasion of mulberry . Furthermore, Nunney et al. suggested that introgression into X. fastidiosa subsp. pauca in South America from a donor may have enabled X. fastidiosa subsp. pauca to infect citrus, causing the economically devastating disease of citrus variegated chlorosis. This would help explain why CVC did not appear in Brazil until the 1980s , despite the presence of the native pathogen and vectors ever since citrus was introduced several hundred years ago. These observations raise an important concern: that mixing of genetically divergent forms of the same species can result in recombinant forms capable of invading new niches—in this case, new plant hosts. Thus, the presence of a pathogen in an area should not lead to the assumption that further introductions will cause no further harm; in fact, as a result of recombination, further introductions may result in a qualitative worsening of the problem.Agriculture is a key human activity in terms of food production, economic importance and impact on the global carbon cycle. As the human population heads toward 9 billion or beyond by 2050, there is an acute need to balance agricultural output with its impact on the environment, especially in terms of greenhouse gas production. An evolving set of tools, approaches and metrics are being employed under the term “climate smart agriculture” to help—from small and industrial scale growers to local and national policy setters—develop techniques at all levels and find solutions that strike that production-environment balance and promote various ecosystem services. California epitomizes the agriculture-climate challenge, as well as its opportunities. As the United States’ largest agricultural producing state agriculture also accounted for approximately 8% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions statewide for the period 2000–2013. At the same time, California is at the forefront of innovative approaches to CSA. Given the state’s Mediterranean climate, part of an integrated CSA strategy will likely include perennial crops, such as wine grapes, that have a high market value and store C long term in woody biomass.

Economically, wine production and retail represents an important contribution to California’s economy, generating $61.5 billion in annual economic impact. In terms of land use, 230,000 ha in California are managed for wine production, with 4.2 million tons of wine grapes harvested annually with an approximate $3.2 billion farm gate value. This high level of production has come with some environmental costs, however, with degradation of native habitats, impacts to wildlife, and over abstraction of water resources. Although many economic and environmental impacts of wine production systems are actively being quantified, and while there is increasing scientific interest in the carbon footprint of vineyard management activities, efforts to quantify C capture and storage in annual and perennial biomass remain less well-examined. Studies from Mediterranean climates have focused mostly on C cycle processes in annual agroecosystems or natural systems. Related studies have investigated sources of GHGs , on-site energy balance, water use and potential impacts of climate change on productivity and the distribution of grape production. The perennial nature and extent of vineyard agroecosystems have brought increasing interest from growers and the public sector to reduce the GHG footprint associated with wine production. The ongoing development of carbon accounting protocols within the international wine industry reflects the increased attention that industry and consumers are putting on GHG emissions and offsets. In principle, an easy-to-use, wine industry specific, GHG protocol would measure the carbon footprints of winery and vineyard operations of all sizes. However, such footprint assessment protocols remain poorly parameterized, especially those requiring time-consuming empirical methods. Data collected from the field, such as vine biomass, cover crop biomass, and soil carbon storage capacity are difficult to obtain and remain sparse, and thus limit the further development of carbon accounting in the wine sector .

Simple yet accurate methods are needed to allow vineyard managers to measure C stocks in situ and thereby better parameterize carbon accounting protocols. Not only would removing this data bottleneck encourage broader participation in such activities, it would also provide a reliable means to reward climate smart agriculture.Building on research that has used empirical data to compare soil and above ground C stocks in vineyards and adjacent oak woodlands in California, this study sought to estimate the C composition of a vine, including the relative contributions of its component parts . By identifying the allometric relationships among trunk diameter, plant height, and other vine dimensions, growers could utilize a reliable mechanism for translating vine architecture and biomass into C estimates. In both natural and agricultural ecosystems, several studies have been performed using allometric equations in order to estimate above ground biomass to assess potential for C sequestration. For example, functional relationships between the ground-measured Lorey’s height and above ground biomass were derived from allometric equations in forests throughout the tropics. Similarly, functional relationships have been found in tropical agriculture for above ground, below ground, and field margin biomass and C. In the vineyard setting, however, horticultural intervention and annual pruning constrain the size and shape of vines making existing allometric relationships less meaningful, though it is likely that simple physical measurements could readily estimate above ground biomass. To date, most studies on C sequestration in vineyards have been focused on soil C as sinks and some attempts to quantify biomass C stocks have been carried out in both agricultural and natural systems. In vineyards, studies in California in the late 1990s have reported net primary productivity or total biomass values between 550 g C m−2 and 1100 g C m−2 . In terms of spatial distribution, some data of standing biomass collected by Kroodsma et al. from companies that remove trees and vines in California yielded values of 1.0–1.3 Mg C ha−1 year−1 woody C for nuts and stone fruit species, and 0.2–0.4 Mg C ha−1 year−1 for vineyards. It has been reported that mature California orchard crops allocate, on average,plastic planters wholesale one third of their NPP to the harvested portion and mature vines 35–50% of the current year’s production to grape clusters. Pruning weight has also been quantified by two direct measurements which estimated 2.5 Mg of pruned biomass per ha for both almonds and vineyards. The incorporation of trees or shrubs in agroforestry systems can increase the amount of carbon sequestered compared to a monoculture field of crop plants or pasture. Additional forest planting would be needed to offset current net annual loss of above ground C, representing an opportunity for viticulture to incorporate the surrounding woodlands into the system. A study assessing C storage in California vineyards found that on average, surrounding forested wild lands had 12 times more above ground woody C than vineyards and even the largest vines had only about one-fourth of the woody biomass per ha of the adjacent wooded wild lands.The objectives of this study were to: measure standing vine biomass and calculate C stocks in Cabernet Sauvignon vines by field sampling the major biomass fractions ; calculate C fractions in berry clusters to assess C mass that could be returned to the vineyard from the winery in the form of rachis and pomace; determine proportion of perennially sequestered and annually produced C stocks using easy to measure physical vine properties ; and develop allometric relationships to provide growers and land managers with a method to rapidly assess vineyard C stocks.

Lastly, we validate block level estimates of C with volumetric measurements of vine biomass generated during vineyard removal.The study site is located in southern Sacramento County, California, USA , and the vineyard is part of a property annexed into a seasonal floodplain restoration program, which has since removed the levee preventing seasonal flooding. The ensuing vineyard removal allowed destructive sampling for biomass measurements and subsequent C quantification. The vineyard is considered part of the Cosumnes River appellation within the Lodi American Viticultural Area, a region characterized by its Mediterranean climate— cool wet winters and warm dry summers—and by nearby Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta breezes that moderate peak summer temperatures compared to areas north and south of this location. The study site is characterized by a mean summer maximum air temperature of 32 °C, has an annual average precipitation of 90 mm, typically all received as rain from November to April. During summer time, the daily high air temperatures average 24 °C, and daily lows average 10 °C. Winter temperatures range from an average low 5 °C to average high 15 °C. Total heating degree days for the site are approximately 3420 and the frost-free season is approximately 360 days annually. Similar to other vineyards in the Lodi region, the site is situated on an extensive alluvial terrace landform formed by Sierra Nevada out wash with a San Joaquin Series soil . This soil-landform relationship is extensive, covering approximately 160,000 ha across the eastern Central Valley and it is used extensively for wine grape production. The dominant soil texture is clay loam with some sandy clay loam sectors; mean soil C content, based on three characteristic grab samples processed by the UC Davis Analytical Lab, in the upper 8 cm was 1.35% and in the lower 8–15 cm was 1.1% . The vineyard plot consisted of 7.5 ha of Cabernet Sauvignon vines, planted in 1996 at a density of 1631 plants ha−1 with flood irrigation during spring and summer seasons. The vines were trained using a quadrilateral trellis system with two parallel cordons and a modified Double Geneva Curtain structure attached to T-posts . Atypically, these vines were not grafted to root stock, which is used often in the region to modify vigor or limit disease .In Sept.–Oct. of 2011, above ground biomass was measured from 72 vines. The vineyard was divided equally in twelve randomly assigned blocks, and six individual vines from each block were processed into major biomass categories of leaf, fruit, cane and trunk plus cordon . Grape berry clusters were collected in buckets, with fruit separated and weighed fresh in the field. Leaves and canes were collected separately in burlap sacks, and the trunks and cordons were tagged. Biomass was transported off site to partially air dry on wire racks and then fully dried in large ventilated ovens. Plant tissues were dried at 60 °C for 48 h and then ground to pass through a 250 μm mesh sieve using a Thomas Wiley® Mini-Mill . Total C in plant tissues was analyzed using a PDZ Europa ANCA-GSL elemental analyzer at the UC Davis Stable Isotope Facility. For cluster and berry C estimations, grape clusters were randomly selected from all repetitions. Berries were removed from cluster rachis. While the berries were frozen, the seeds and skins were separated from the fruit flesh or “pulp”, and combined with the juice .

Soil acidity can be adjusted to optimize plant growth, but adjusting acidity is not always the best course of action. Instead, it may be best to grow plants adapted to the native soil. For gardeners who decide to adjust the acidity of soil, it is important to understand when and how to do so. Acidity, measured on a logarithmic scale called pH, depends on the concentration of hydrogen in a solution. In the case of soils, acidity depends on how much hydrogen is dissolved in the liquid that soil particles hold. Possible pH values range from 0 to 14. A soil with a pH of 7.0 is considered neutral— that is, it is neither acidic nor alkaline. A pH value below 7 is acidic while a value above 7 is alkaline. Distilled vinegar used in cooking is very acidic and has a pH of about 2.4. Household chlorine bleach is very alkaline, with a pH of about 11. Each whole-number change in pH value represents a 10-fold change in acidity. For example, a solution with a pH of 6 is 10 times more acidic than a solution with a pH of 7.As noted, most crops perform best when the soil is neither too acidic nor too alkaline. For many crops, a soil pH somewhere between 5.5 and 7.5 works well. In this range, most plant nutrients are chemically available to plant roots , though some plants require a soil acidity outside this range. Soils in California generally range in pH from 5 to 8.5, but most are higher than pH 7.While it is possible to add amendments to soil to adjust the pH, doing so is not always the best course of action. Ideally, gardeners should select plants that are adapted to the native soil. If a gardener wishes to grow a plant that is not tolerant of local soil conditions,plastic planters bulk the best long-term solution may be to grow it in a container or raised bed filled with a suitable soil mix.

All soils have a natural pH that depends on the minerals in the soil and conditions that arise over very long time periods, during soil development. In a garden, fighting a soil’s natural pH can be challenging. When gardeners attempt to adjust soil acidity, the results are often temporary. Moreover, products that raise or lower pH are slow to react in the soil. If gardeners decide to adjust the pH in a garden, they should do so based on careful evaluation of the condition of their plants. A soil may not need pH adjustment, even if it is technically outside the ideal range for a garden, unless plants show symptoms of nutrient deficiencies or toxicities. The pH of the soil can influence whether a nutrient is chemically available to plants. An essential plant nutrient such as iron may be present in the soil but unavailable to the plant due to the soil pH. Plants unable to obtain essential nutrients, either due to soil pH or scarcity in the soil, show deficiency symptoms. When plants show symptoms associated with excessively alkaline or acidic soil conditions, such as yellowing between veins—known as interveinal chlorosis—gardeners should attempt to determine whether the pH of the soil is the cause. Urban and suburban soils can be significantly modified during housing construction, so their acidity may differ significantly from values available online. Other activities that disturb the soil, such as gardening, can affect soil pH. Therefore, a measurement of acidity in a soil sample taken directly from a garden is more accurate than online soil survey data. Though the most accurate way to determine soil pH is through a soil test conducted by a laboratory, gardeners can purchase equipment such as a chemical test kit, paper pH test strips, or a digital pH meter to evaluate soil pH. All of these products should come with instructions for use. With most soil chemical test kits, drops or tablets of specially selected chemicals are added to a solution extracted from soil, causing a color change or change of appearance. Chartsor cards included with the kit translate the results into numerical values. Some kits rely on paper test strips to measure soil pH. Paper test strips are easier to use than pH meters because they do not require setup or calibration, but they are less accurate.

Furthermore, they must cover the correct range of pH values expected in the soil; most test strips only cover a narrow measurement range. Digital meters can be purchased online or at tool supply stores for less than $20. Many devices are marketed as pH meters, but not all measure pH accurately. For the most reliable results, look for a device with a probe consisting of a glass orb and a small piece of metal at the end, similar to the item shown in figure 2. A new meter may be calibrated incorrectly, so follow the unit’s calibration instructions to improve accuracy before use. The calibration process may require gardeners to purchase an inexpensive buffer solution. The recommended technique for home gardeners to prepare a soil sample for a pH test is to collect a dry soil sample and add to it an equal amount of distilled water. Stir the mixture until it resembles a slurry and then let it set for 1 hour. Stir the mixture again and take the pH measurement .In many areas of California, particularly the drier regions, it may be necessary to increase the acidity of the soil—to lower the pH—to grow some popular garden crops. This is usually accomplished in gardens by adding elemental sulfur to the soil. Bagged sulfur products for acidifying soil can be purchased at garden centers and nurseries.Some plants, such as blueberries, are especially sensitive to high pH. A common symptom of plants grown in alkaline soil is yellowing of new growth, caused by a lack of available iron . This is called iron chlorosis. Correcting the soil pH usually solves the problem. In most cases, however, growing acid-loving plants in containers filled with a suitable soil mix is a better long-term solution than amending native, alkaline soil in a garden bed. See table 1 for suggested pH values for common plants.Table 2 shows how much elemental sulfur is needed to lower the soil pH to a desired level. Adding too much sulfur in one application can harm plants. Apply no more than 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet of soil in a single application. Wait 6 months, retest, and apply more sulfur if needed. Adjusting soil acidity for acid-loving plants is best performed prior to planting, when adjustments can be made quickly and plant damage is not as great a concern. Compost is sometimes recommended as an acidifying product for garden soils.

Compost can improve many aspects of soil health, including nutrient availability, but it probably will have little effect on soil pH when typical amounts are applied. Mature compost can range in pH from 6 to 8, so it is unlikely to lower soil pH into the range preferred by acid-loving plants. For an extensive overview of techniques for acidifying alkaline soils, see Locke et al. .While naturally acidic soils are rare in California, some fertilizers and amendments can, over time, cause soils to become acidic. But when naturally acidic soils do occur, as in some areas of California, it may be necessary to raise the pH of the soil to make it more alkaline. When soil pH needs to be increased in the home garden, the usual method is to amend the soil with pulverized limestone or dolomite. These materials react to neutralize the acid in the soil, much as an antacid works to relieve heartburn. Limestone and dolomite move into and react with soil very slowly. If these amendments are used to raise soil pH,collection pot the process should be begun before planting to allow time for the reaction to occur. The correct amount of limestone or dolomite to apply to a soil is difficult to determine without a laboratory soil test that characterizes the composition of the soil and identifies ions dissolved in the soil that can affect pH. The appropriate quantity of product to apply can be influenced by the amount of calcium in the soil, the soil texture , and other factors that are not easy to test at home. If a pH test indicates a need to raise the pH and a laboratory soil test cannot be obtained to determine the appropriate amount of limestone or dolomite, a good starting point is to attempt to raise the pH approximately 1 point by incorporating limestone or dolomite into soil as follows: for sand, incorporate 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet; for loam, 45 pounds per 1,000 square feet; for clay loam, 90 pounds per 1,000 square feet . Retest the pH value in 1 year to evaluate the results. As suggested above, these recommendations are less accurate than recommendations given by a laboratory because the amount of lime needed to decrease acidity depends on many factors beyond the pH value. The choice between using dolomite or limestone depends on the soil’s need for magnesium, an essential plant nutrient. California’s soils vary greatly in their magnesium content. If the decision is made to raise the soil pH, a product should be selected that matches plants’ nutrient needs. Dolomite should be used in soils low in magnesium. Limestone only provides calcium and is suitable for soils with ample magnesium. Without a laboratory soiltest, the only way to know if soil is deficient in magnesium or other elements is to identify plants’ nutrient deficiency symptoms. Gardeners are often tempted to apply wood ashes, hydrated lime, or other products to soil to alter the pH. While these amendments can be effective, they are easy to apply incorrectly and therefore should be avoided. A careful application of limestone or dolomite is less likely to cause unwanted effects in the garden.The growth of the “critical zone” paradigm has added impetus to closer investigation of soil-plant atmosphere interactions in ecohydrology . This follows from work emphasizing the importance of vegetation in regulating the global terrestrial hydrological cycle, with transpiration being the dominant “green water” flux to the atmosphere compared to evaporation from soils and canopy interception in most environments .

More locally, the role vegetation plays in partitioning precipitation into such “green water” fluxes and alternative “blue water” fluxes to groundwater and stream flow has increased interest in the feedbacks between vegetation growth and soil development in different geographical environments . The emerging consequences of climatic warming to changes in vegetation characteristics and the implications of land use alterations add further momentum to the need to understand where plants get their water from, and how water is partitioned and recycled in soil-plant systems . Stable isotopes in soil water and plant stem water have been invaluable tools in elucidating ecohydrological interactions over the past decade . Earlier work by Ehleringer and Dawson explained the isotope content of xylem water in trees in terms of potential plant water sources. Building on that, Brooks et al. showed that the isotope characteristics of xylem water did not always correspond to bulk soil water sources as plant xylem water was fractionated and offset relative to the global meteoric water line compared to mobile soil water, groundwater and stream flow signatures. This led to the “Two Water Worlds” hypothesis which speculated that plant water was drawn from a “pool” of water that was “ecohydrologically separated” from the sources of groundwater recharge and stream flow . Research at some sites has found similar patterns of ecohydrologic separation and suggested it may be a ubiquitous characteristic of plant-water systems . Others have found that differences between plant water and mobile water may be limited only to drier periods , or may be less evident in some soil-vegetation systems . Direct hypothesis testing of potential processes that may explain the difference between the isotopic composition of xylem water and that of potential water sources has been advanced by detailed experiments in controlled environments, often involving the use of Bayesian mixing models which assume all potential plant water sources have been sampled . However, as field data become increasingly available from critical zone studies, more exploratory, inferential approaches can be insightful in terms of quantifying the degree to which xylem water isotopes can or cannot be attributed to measured soil water sources .

“Sweet” or low acid pomegranates typically have been reported to have citric acid concentration less than 0.50% , but standards have not been established for low acid cultivars. Standards have been established for titratable acidity and total soluble solids of ‘Wonderful’ pomegranate. Generally, citric acid is the most abundant organic acid in pomegranate juice, so TA is expressed in citric acid equivalents. Minimum maturity of ‘Wonderful’ pomegranate fruit is 1.85% TA , so fruit are picked when fruit measure below that threshold. Maturity index is a measure of maturity in many fruit crops, including pomegranate, and is the ratio of °Brix to TA . The optimum MI for ‘Wonderful’ has been calculated to be greater than 8.1, at which point the fruit are ready for harvest. Other cultivars may have significantly different quantities of organic sugars and acids, so MI may be different for pomegranates harvested for different taste preferences and use which require fruit to be insipid, sweet, sweet-tart, tart, sour, bitter, etc. Fruit quality is not only related to sugar content, titratable acidity and spoilage, but also to phenolic compounds that lend to the fruit’s flavors, antioxidant activity, and colors . Cultivar is more influential in determining fruit juice composition than site of cultivation, year of harvest, or length of storage , so it is important to study differences among cultivars. In addition, it allows for a greater understanding of biodiversity of pomegranate germplasm. Knowing levels of phenolicsand the antioxidant activity of a cultivar’s juice is important to the beverage industry and consumers, because printed and televised commercials use antioxidant activity as the main selling point of their product. If any cultivar were to demonstrate a greater antioxidant activity than Wonderful,blueberry containers it would possibly be competitive in the pomegranate market or could be utilized by a breeder for increasing antioxidant activity. Having lower antioxidant activity than ‘Wonderful’ would make for an undesirable candidate for commercial production.

As previously mentioned, pomegranate germplasm in the United States is highly diverse and is comprised of hundreds of pomegranate cultivars sourced from domestic and international origins . Most cultivars are in the public domain with the potential to be developed into commercial cultivars. Stover and Mercure indicated that cultivars with softer seeds or lower acidity could increase consumer demand for the fruit. Wonderful, the industry standard in several countries, has relatively tart, bitter, acidic, moderately hard-seeded fruit and astringent juice compared to other cultivars previously analyzed from the USDA-ARS NCGR collection . Pomegranate cultivation in the United States is predominantly a monoculture of ‘Wonderful.’ The 14 cultivars included in the research presented herein have been described to have one or more of the following traits: unique color, soft seeds, low acidity, and/or unique flavor. Most of the cultivars in USDA germplasm have yet to be phenotyped for use by commercial growers, the food and beverage industries, and breeders. Recent developments in the California pomegranate industry have led to beverage companies predominantly desiring ‘Wonderful’ juice from growers for their products . This preference for ‘Wonderful’ juice is likely due to the clinical studies associated with this cultivar, such as the positive effect of ‘Wonderful’ juice used in conjunction with radiotherapy or surgery on men suffering from prostate cancer . Several methods exist to analyze the components and quality of fruit juices, including gas chromatography and liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy , acid titration, refractometry , and spectrophotometry . All of these methods are useful, but they can be quite different in terms of sensitivity, selectivity and specificity and have disadvantages including sample destruction, incomplete sample separation in a chromatography column, and inability to profile specific quantities or classes of metabolites.

The ability of nuclear magnetic resonance to universally and quickly detect organic compounds makes it an efficacious method for the identification of differences in metabolic profile among fruit juices from different cultivars without prior separation of compounds. Additionally, NMR is advantageous because it requires relatively easy sample preparation, and allows compound identification and quantification without authentic standards . The NMR methodology has proven useful to the food and beverage industries for juice beverage quality control, including such applications as the detection of adulterants, quality control of fruit juice products during mixture analysis, and determination of juice authenticity . The pomegranate juice industry in the United States has experienced high profile lawsuits and federal investigations involving both false advertising of commercial juice composition and human health benefits from its consumption . Therefore, it is important to be able to detect beverage adulterants, such as sucrose and high fructose corn syrup, and distinguish between the juices of different fruits, vegetables and cultivars for economic, quality evaluation and public health reasons. Knowledge of a particular cultivar’s metabolic and physicochemical juice profile allows for a better understanding of pomegranate fruit juice quality, diversity of flavors and fruit maturity. For example, profiles of organic acids are known to affect flavor stability, nutrition and consumer acceptability . In regards to climate, heat has been shown to influence pomegranate fruit juice acidity. Groves planted in climates that experience hot summers typically result in fruit with reduced acidity and groves planted in climates with mild summers typically result in fruit with higher acidity . The amino acids glutamine and glutamate not only play very important physiological roles in plants, which include biochemical pathways related to amino acid synthesis, nitrogen metabolism, and ammonium detoxification, they are also important components of the human diet, with glutamine consumption becoming essential during major trauma, major surgery, sepsis, and radio- and chemotherapies .

Metabolic juice profiles might also be useful in determining fruit maturation and targeted harvest windows of pomegranate cultivars, which may be variable depending on climate and other agroecological factors. Additionally, pomegranate cultivars have differences in harvest dates, and this information is important for growers: 1) it allows them to pick fruit during harvest windows which afford the highest fruit quality for the fresh fruit, food and beverage industries; and 2) it allows growers to choose cultivars that have different maturity periods than Wonderful so they are not competing with Wonderful in domestic and international markets. Additionally, if growers start growing earlier cultivars, it could diversify the market and increase the length of the season during which high quality pomegranate fruit are available to both the food industry and consumer. The primary research objective of this dissertation was to evaluate a diverse set of preselected USDA-ARS pomegranate cultivars to determine which would meet and expand grower, consumer, and industry demands for the crop. This objective was met by: 1) conducting experiments to determine the capacity of cultivars to be propagated using conventional,best indoor plant pots inexpensive propagation methods; 2) evaluating the germplasm in field trials in hot inland and cool coastal climates to test for early orchard establishment rates, tree precocity and yield to determine commercial suitability and to aid in regional cultivar selection for growers; and 3) evaluating fruit and juice quality of the germplasm to compare important quality and nutritional traits to the industry standard ‘Wonderful.’ The pomegranate cultivars used in the following studies were: Ambrosia, Desertnyi, Eversweet, Golden Globe, Green Globe, Haku Botan, Ki Zakuro, Loffani, Nochi Shibori, Parfianka, Phoenicia, and Wonderful. All cultivars used in this experiment were located at the USDA NCGR, but the cultivars conserved in this national germplasm collection were originally sourced from different countries. ‘Ambrosia,’ ‘Eversweet,’ ‘Golden Globe,’ ‘Green Globe,’ ‘Loffani,’ ‘Phoenicia,’ and ‘Wonderful’ originated in the United States. ‘Desertnyi’ and ‘Parfianka’ originated in Turkmenistan. Haku Botan, Ki Zakuro, and Nochi Shibori originated in Japan, with Haku Botan a fruiting edible ornamental cultivar with no red pigment and Ki Zakuro and Nochi Shibori sterile cultivars, producing no fruit. All three Japanese cultivars have “double flowers” with up to hundreds of petals per flower and an upright growth habit.

Eversweet and Desertnyi have dwarf-like growth characteristics in the field, with trees typically being approximately 20% to 30% shorter or less vigorous than Wonderful as measured in the University of California, Riverside, pomegranate cultivar trials. Parfianka has a canopy with a bushy growth habit and is thornier than many other cultivars. There were no differences in bark characteristics. The first experiment included all above mentioned cultivars, and the second experiment consisted of the following cultivars: Ambrosia, Green Globe and Wonderful. Cuttings were sourced from the USDA NCGR in Winters, CA. Dormant stems were collected from basal suckers in February of two successive years for Experiments 1 and 2, respectively, placed in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel to keep them moist, driven to Davis, CA, boxed, and shipped via private delivery service from Davis, CA, to Riverside, CA, for second-day delivery. Upon arrival, the plant material was unwrapped and rew rapped with new moistened paper towels and stored at 5 to 6 °C in the dark for approximately 2 months before preparation of cuttings. All cuttings were sourced from one-year-old growth and mean stem diameter ranged from 3.8 to 5.8 mm among cultivars. Cuttings were 10.5 ± 1.0 cm long with a minimum of two nodes , treated with IBA or control, and inserted 3 to 5 cm deep in 2.5 cm x 2.5 cm plastic pots containing #4 Sunshine potting mix and perlite . Treatments were separated by block in plastic flats. Both experiments were conducted in a greenhouse at the University of California, Riverside , with mean temperatures of 24.1 °C and 26.3 °C for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively, and natural photoperiod. Cuttings were hand-watered with deionized water every day for 5 weeks and then watered as needed . Starting at week 10, the water source was switched to municipal water and all plants were treated with PlantexTM water soluble fertilizer, which contained N-P-K plus micronutrients, at a rate of 0.2 g·L-1 nitrogen. This experiment was conducted to determine if differences in rooting percentages and vegetative growth attributes exist among cultivars. The experiment ran from 11 March until 09 August of year 1 and consisted of a randomized complete block design with eight blocks. Each block included four hardwood stem cuttings of each cultivar, totaling 32 cuttings per cultivar. All cuttings were treated for 5 s to a depth of 2 to 4 cm in a gelatinous formulation of 3 g×L -1 IBA before insertion in the rooting medium. This experiment was conducted to test effects of IBA concentration on rooting percentages and vegetative growth attributes of Wonderful , Green Globe, and Ambrosia . Experiment 2 ran from 02 April until 28 December 2014 and used a RCBD with four blocks, each with four cuttings per cultivarIBA combination, totaling 48 cuttings for each of the three cultivars. IBA was applied in the same manner as in experiment 1, except that cuttings were dipped in either DI water or IBA at 1.5 g×L -1 or 3 g×L -1 IBA before insertion in potting mix. Attributes measured in both experiments included initial stem diameter, rooting percentage, plant height, number of shoots, and total shoot growth . Rooting percentages were based on cuttings that successfully rooted and developed into plants. Plant height, number of shoots, and total shoot growth were assessed at the end of each experiment: day 154 for Experiment 1 and day 270 for Experiment 2. Experiment 2 was conducted over a longer time to allow for assessment of growth after a full growing season. Plant height was measured using the top of the potting container as the reference point to determine if there were differences among cultivar phenotypes for upright versus drooping growth habit. Wonderful pomegranate grows in willowy tree form, with a tall, often thin, spreading and bending branching pattern but there are cultivars with upright growth habit, so this growth habit trait was assessed by measuring both apical shoot growth and plant height. Number of primary shoots represented a count of shoots growing from above ground, lateral buds on the cutting. Attributes measured at the end of Experiment 1 were apical shoot growth , branching , and relative chlorophyll content . SPAD values were used to assess plant health by quantifying leaf relative chlorophyll content using a SPAD-502 chlorophyll meter . Attributes measured at the end of Experiment 2 were total leaf area and root dry mass. Total leaf area was measured with a LI-COR Model 3100 Area Meter . Dry root mass was determined by removing the roots from the plant, drying the roots in a forced air oven to constant weight, and weighing the dried roots.

A recent comprehensive review paper on nutritional management of CKD by Kalantar-Zadeh and Fouque has suggested an intake of 4.7 g/day in the early stages of CKD without risk of hyperkalaemia, but a dietary potassium restriction of less than 3 g per day in CKD patients who tend to develop hyperkalaemia . A low potassium diet is defined as a dietary intake of 2–3 g/day as shown in Table 1.The majority of the regulation of potassium balance occurs at the renal level. Following a dietary potassium load, renal excretion increases after a few minutes reaching maximum levels after 2 h, thus preventing hyperkalaemia. This occurs by means of increased aldosterone production. Potassium secretion may also be facilitated by a recently postulated enteric sensor that reduces sodium reabsorption in the proximal tubule and facilitates potassium secretion by increased delivery of sodium to the distal tubule. Additional renal responses to potassium loading include reduced sodium reabsorption and increased potassium-channel conductance. In patients with advanced CKD the kidneys’ ability to adapt to increased potassium intake diminishes and in ESRD the renalmechanisms of potassium excretion often become negligible, making these patients extremely prone to hyperkalaemia. Dietary potassium is absorbed mostly in the duodenum and jejunum and the net intestinal potassium absorption is approximately 90%. Under physiologic circumstance faecal excretion is quite constant at about 10 mmol/day,blueberries in pots with a maximum level of 15–20 mmol/day. The capacity of the colon/rectum to secrete potassium is inversely related to residual kidney function and becomes the main route of potassium excretion in patients with ESRD. Potassium concentration in the faeces is very high , so that diarrhoea may lead to profound hypokalemia. Hence, it is conceivable that slow faecal transit time along the intestinal tract favours potassium absorption, whereas faster intestinal transit time reduces potassium absorption.

This suggests that constipation, instead of potassium dietary load, is the main determinant of hyperkalaemia in CKD and ESRD patients. Potassium is present in a large variety of foods, both from animal and plant sources. Potassium is found mainly intracellularly in animals, where it has a crucial role in determining the electric potential of cell membranes and then the excitability of nervous system and muscle cells. Hence it is not surprising that food rich in cells, such as meat or fish, are relevant sources of potassium. Indeed a recent study showed that high protein intake in maintenance dialysis patients has direct correlation with hyperkalaemia. In this study higher dietary potassium intake was associated with increased death risk in long-term haemodialysis patients, even after adjustments for serum potassium level; dietary protein; energy and phosphorus intake; and nutritional and inflammatory marker levels. The potential role of dietary potassium in the high mortality rate of dialysis patients warrants clinical trials. Notwithstanding the importance of protein intake, fruits and vegetables are supplying the majority of dietary potassium in most diets. Potassium is crucial for many processes in a plant’s life cycle, with its importance considered second only to nitrogen for plant growth and composition. Plants require potassium ions for protein synthesis, enzyme activation and maintenance of cation/anion balance in the cytosol. Potassium is also involved in the opening and closing of stomata regulating proton pumps; it plays an important role in photosynthesis and in photo-protection and it takes part in protein synthesis and in downward solute transport from the leaves. Potassium is important for crop yield as well as for the quality of edible parts of crops; its deficiency has a strong impact on plant metabolism. Plant responses to low potassium involve changes in the concentrations of many metabolites as well as alteration in the transcriptional levels of many genes and in the activity of many enzymes.

Potassium levels in plants are also associated with disease resistance through its effects on decreased cell permeability and decreased susceptibility to tissue penetration. When adequate levels of potassium are present a greater amount of silica is incorporated into the cell walls, strengthening the epidermal layer which represent a physical barrier to pathogens. Moreover, potassium seems to directly contribute to an adequate thickening of cell walls. Purely plant-based LPD may or may not lead to a more consistent potassium load than animal-based LPD. Therefore, in the case of a need for a protein restricted diet in advanced CKD, animal-based LPD could be favoured over vegetarian LPD, combined with educational strategies to reduce the effective potassium load and close monitoring of serum potassium level. However, such a strategy entails a therapeutic compromise, as it would abandon the additional cardiovascular benefits of a plant-based diet. Plant-based foods have favourable effects on systemic hypertension, on glomerular hemodynamics and perm-selectivity, leading to reduction of proteinuria. They supplylessbio-available phosphorus with favourable effect on the CKD mineral and bone disease and they are associated with effective renal protection probably by means of the reduced acid load. However, plant-based foods also supply a high content of fibres and alkali as well as anti-oxidant vitamins and trace elements. Of consequence, a lower net acid load and favourable effects on intestinal motility and microbiota are expected. Prevention or correction of metabolic acidosis and of constipation represent mechanisms that counteract the hyperkalaemia-inducing effects of high potassium intake, and may explain why vegetarian diets, more or less associated with a reduction in protein intake did not induce increase of serum potassium or overt hyperkalaemia in CKD patients. Similarly, during high-fruit intake, no changes in serum potassium levels were reported. Fibre intake has a major role in the modulation of intestinal microbiota, with high-fibre diets promoting the growth of bacteria with saccharolytic metabolism and lowering proteolytic-derived uremic toxins and also leading to faster bowel transit time.

Conversely, reduced bowel motility and constipation can induce dysbiosis of the intestinal microbiota, contributing to uremic intoxication and increase net absorption of potassium, leading to hyperkalaemia. Therefore, a high fibre content in the diet should be preserved even when the potassium intake is to be lowered. In clinical practice, a common dilemma in the management of advanced CKD patients with chronic hyperkalaemia is the patients’ deprivation of the beneficial effects of RAAS inhibitors or of the favourable effects of vegetarian diets in order to control hyperkalaemia. A solution may be the use of intestinal potassium binders. However, the capacity of intestinal potassium -binders to remove potassium is limited and they could be expensive in the long run. Therefore, a careful control of the dietary potassium load is in an important aspect of the management of CKD and heart failure patients with, or at risk of hyperkalaemia. In patients with stage 4–5 NDD CKD and ESRD, dietary potassium management also has to be synchronized with additional nutritional goals, namely the amount of protein intake , high fibre intake, reduced net fixed acid production and cardiovascular effects and the favouring of a heart-healthy diet. Another method of food selection may be based on the potassium content normalized for unit of fibre, namely the reporting of the potassium content of vegetables and fruits also as “mg per 1 g fibre”. Foods with low potassium to fibre ratio may be allowed whereas foods with very high potassium to fibre ratio should be avoided . Similarly, since protein intake must be increased in haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis patients,square plant pots food selection should be addressed to reduce potassium intake without reducing dietary protein intake. Hence, reporting potassium intake per unit of protein may be another method that can make it easier to limit the intake of foods that supply more potassium for the same protein intake in ESRD patients. Additional aspects useful to limit effective potassium intake is education about the use of cooking procedures in order to obtain food demineralization: boiling is able to remove up to 60–80% of the potassium content of several raw foods Jones analyzed the mineral content of a wide variety of foods after different processing procedures. Food samples were subjected to aqueous mineral extraction after a pre-treatment which was different depending on the food group . They were then exposed to different water temperatures and time depending on cell type and the initial state : for example, vegetables were placed in 2 liters of hot tap water , stirred vigorously for 15–20 s and allowed to stand for a predetermined time period. Ham and hot dogs were placed in boiling water bath, stirred and allowed to boil for 3 min. Avocado and banana from the fruit group were placed in cold tap water, stirred gently and allowed to stand for the predetermined time period.

The reduction range for potassium was 59% ± 40% for vegetables, 78.5% ± 20.5% for legumes, 57% ± 41% for meats, 94% ± 3% for flours, 99% for cheddar cheese and 43% ± 16% for fruits.Burrows and Ramer confirmed these results, finding that soaking was not effective in the leaching of significant amounts of potassium from tuberous root vegetables while the double cooking method leached more potassium than did the normal cooking method. Similar results were found also by Aiimwe et al. who showed that soaking did not change potassium content in a particular type of banana while boiling at 200 ◦C reduced potassium concentration from 1.4 ppm to 1 ppm after 60 min. Poor results with soaking were found also by Picq et al. with various types of foods. Preparation of food seems to be important: boiling potatoes after cubing or shredding results in a much greater loss of potassium. These procedures are generally considered “negatives” as they can affect food nutritional properties, taste and appearance but giving patients appropriate instructions on how to process food after boiling this obstacle can be overcome with the advantage that many restricted foods become permissible.Finally, attention should be paid to hidden sources of potassium, such as salt substitutes and certain food additives. The former contain potassium instead of sodium and are usually recommended in hypertensive patients to reduce sodium intake and to increase potassium intake. However, in the case of treatment with RAASi and/or in patients with reduced renal function the risk of hyperkalaemia from these agents may be considerable. Two categories of salt substitutes are available on the market: low-sodium salts and sodium-free salts. In the low-sodium salt the sodium chloride content must not exceed 35% and cannot be less than 20% with a potassium: sodium ratio of at least 1.5:1. In the sodium-free salts potassium content ranges between 20% and 30% and sodium content is fixed at a maximum value of 0.12%. Hence, for instance, 5–6 g of a current salt substitute can supply from 1000–1200 mg to 1500–1800 mg of extra-potassium. This represents a significant potassium load on top of the potassium derived from food intake, which is of concern in patients with reduced capacity of potassium excretion. Special attention should be paid to the use of these salt substitutes because people believe that they are safer than regular salt and they tend to use greater amounts of them. The effect of potassium-based additives on potassium burden is not widely recognized, with limited literature. Sherman and Mehta found that potassium content in foods with additives varied widely and that uncooked, enhanced meat and poultry products had potassium levels up to threefold greater than similar unenhanced food products. The use of additives in packaged poultry, fish or meat foods can increase the effective dietary potassium load and of special concerns in patients with CKD, are sodium-reduced products. For instance, additive-free products had an average potassium content <387 mg/100 g, whereas five of the 25 products with additives analyzed in that investigation contained at least 692 mg/100 g with a maximum of 930 mg/100 g. Table 5 reports the most frequently used potassium-based additives and their acceptable daily intake. A temporary ADI of 3 mg/kg is currently established, while an ADI of 25 mg/kg for potassium sorbate is under evaluation. Paying attention to the food labels may be useful although the quantity of potassium added as an additive is not generally available.Nutritional therapy in CKD is very complex, as it has to consider concomitantly the intake of protein, energy, sodium, phosphorus and potassium. Individualized nutritional education programs and regular counselling are all important aspects of clinical management, which also look to improve patients’ lifestyle.