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Growth indices (WG and SGR), food (FCR) and protein efficiency (PER and PCE) of fingerling Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus,were evaluated in 3 synchronous examinations with 12 treatments in triplicates. Groups of control, canola meal (at rates of 25, 50, 75 and 100%), cottonseed meal (at rates of 15, 25, 35 and 45%), as the replacements of expensive protein sources (fish meal and soybean meal), and azolla (at rates of 13, 21 and 29% of diet) were studied. Growth indices, total food intake and protein intake of the control were the highest of all. They decreased with increase in plant protein in every group (p<0.05). FCR and protein efficiency indices didn’t show significant differences (p>0.05) between control and canola meal (at rates of 25 and 50%), cottonseed meal (at rates of 15, 25 and 35%) and azolla (at rates of 13 and 21%). Total food intake, protein consumption and growth indices decreased, because all plant protein ingredients were unpalatable. If the problem of palatability is solved, it seems that the expensive protein sources replace with canola meal and cottonseed meal at the rates of 50 and 35% respectively, and azolla can be used at the rate of 21% in diets. 

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Molten dark chocolate is a dispersion of solid particles including sugar and cocoa powder in a continuous phase of cocoa butter. Hence, the rheological properties as well as the particle size distribution of ingredients in chocolate are very important for obtaining high-quality products with well-defined texture. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the effects of sugar substitutes on rheological characteristics and particle size distribution of prebiotic dark chocolate. For doing this, a prebiotic compound (inulin) in combination with bulking agents (polydextrose and maltodextrin) at different levels (0–100 %) along with sucralose were used. Based on our findings, all the treateded samples showed thixotropic and pseudoplastic behavior and the Casson mathematical model most closely fitted to the rheological data. Furthermore, the sucrose replacement slightly affected the viscoelastic properties and the viscosity of the samples was time independent. In terms of the particle size, they were somewhat larger than the commercial one but still below the taste threshold.

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In order to estimate heritability and gene action for grain yield and its related traits in lentil, six basic generations were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with three replications in a field experiment. Besides seed yield per plant, plant height, pod length, and 100-seed weight, the number of pods per plant, primary branches, clusters per plant, nodes per main stem, secondary branches, and the number of seeds per pod were recorded. Generation mean analysis using A, B, C and joint scaling tests indicated that additive [a], dominance [d] and at least one of the epistatic effect (additive×additive [aa], additive×dominance [ad] and dominance×dominance [dd]) were involved in the inheritance of the studied traits. However, simple additive-dominance model was sufficient only for pod length. Significant dominance [d] and dominance×dominance [dd] interactions with opposite sign indicated duplicate epistasis for all traits except pod length. Narrow-sense heritability was low for seed yield per plant, pod length, number of seeds per pod and 100-seed weight and moderate for other traits. Average dominance ratio was more than unity for seed yield per plant, number of primary and secondary branches, pod length, and 100-seed weight, which showed the high importance of dominance gene effect in control of these traits. Due to the presence of greater non-additive gene effects combined with low narrow-sense heritability, selection for almost all of the studied traits in this cross, especially in early generations, would be complex in conventional methods.