POSTHARVEST
Niels O. Maness
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Professor, Postharvest Physiology
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Address: Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Department, 360 AG Hall,
Stillwater, OK 74078- 6027
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phone: 405-744-5423
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email: niels.maness@okstate.edu
Teaching Activities: Niels Maness teaches two graduate level courses
on an alternating year basis: Postharvest Physiology, HORT 5433 (even years)
and Basic Laboratory Experimentation, HORT 5443 (odd years). Advisement
activities include undergraduate advisement and M.S. and Ph.D. chair and
committee member.
Research Activities: Activities involve natural products and
nutraceuticals; mechanisms involved in shelf life extension of horticultural
products; processing technologies for adding value to horticultural commodities;
new crops and crop improvement. Current projects involving nutraceuticals
include capsaicinoids in peppers, lycopene from watermelon, thujone/camphor
from sage and thymol/carvacrol from oregano. Shelf life extension projects
include defining the mechanism of opalescence in pecans and evaluating
technologies to prevent it. Processing technologies under development include
filtration processing for lycopene segregation from watermelon and collaboration
on a project to develop x-ray as a non-destructive means for pecan grading
and sorting. New crops under investigation include sage and oregano, both
targeted for nutraceutical processing. Associated cropping systems for
these crops, and for mechanized watermelon harvest for lycopene production,
are also under development. Crop improvement activities involve selection
for specific nutraceutical production potential for peppers, sage and oregano.
Development of integrated production, harvesting, postharvest handling
and processing systems for horticultural crops is a focus of research activities.
Selected publications:
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*Maruthavanan, J., N. Maness, J. Dillwith, M. Wilkins and R. Ingraham.
2006. Evaluation of Fatty Acid and Fatty Acid Sterol Ester Precursors in
Relation to Capsaicinoid Accumulation in Pepper Fruits. J. Amer. Soc. Hort.
Sci., accepted.
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Jones, C.L., N.O. Maness, P.R. Weckler, R. Jayasekara, M.L. Stone, J. B.
Solie, D. Chrz and T. Kersten. 2006. Remote Sensing to Estimate Chlorophyll
Concentration in Spinach Using Multi-Spectral Plant Reflectance. Trans.
Amer. Soc. Agr. Engr., submitted.
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Jones, C.L., N. O. Maness, M. L. Stone, J. B. Solie and R. Jayasekara.
2006. Chlorophyll Estimation Using Multi-spectral Reflectance and Height
Sensing. Trans. Amer. Soc. Agr. Engr., submitted.
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Leskovar, D.I., H. Bang, K. Crosby, N. Maness, J.A. Franco and P. Perkins-Veazie.
2004. Lycopene, carbohydrates, ascorbic acid and yield components of diploid
and triploid watermelon cultivars are affected by limited irrigation. J.
Hort. Sci. and Biotech., in press.
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Bosma, T.L., J.M. Dole and N.O. Maness. 2004. Optimizing marigold (Tagetes
erecta L.) Petal and pigment yield. Crop Sci., in press.
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Bosma, T.L., K.E. Conway, J.M. Dole and N.O. Maness. 2003. Sowing dates
and priming influence African marigold field emergence. HortTechnology
13:487-493.
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Acuna-Maldonado, L.E., M.W. Smith, N.O. Maness, B.S. Cheary, B.L. Carrol
and G.V. Johnson. 2003. Influence of nitrogen application time on nitrogen
absorption, partitioning and yield of pecan. J. Am. Soc. Hort. Sci. 128:155-162.
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Perkins-Veazie, P., Maness, N., and Roduner, R. 2002. Composition of orange,
yellow, and red fleshed watermelons. Cucurbitacea pp. 436-440.
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Russo, V.M. and N. Maness. 2002. Carbohydrates in near-isogenic shrunken
2 sweet maize kernels. Cereal Research Communications 30:411-414.
