Cold Plasma: A Potential Alternative for Rice Grain Postharvest Treatment Management in Malaysia

Use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers is among the techniques to control insect pests and fungal pathogens. However, the technique is the major contributor to severe environmental implications in terms of air, water and soil pollution. Besides, variable inconsistency becomes an important issue in the implementation of inclined bed dryers, leading to significant rice grain loss. Cold plasma technology has been widely proposed as a potential alternative for rice grain postharvest treatment management due to the presence of generated ionised gas that eventually produces reactive oxygen species or reactive nitrogen species. These species are used to decontaminate foodborne pathogens, mycotoxins and bacterial diseases. This review explores the current literature regarding cold plasma treatment technology, focusing on its efficiency as the microbial decontamination medium and insect pest mortality medium, and on the enhancement functional, nutritional and cooking properties, especially in rice grains. Previous studies have successfully demonstrated the ability of cold plasma treatment to significantly reduce the microbial count of foodborne pathogens, detoxify mycotoxins, and control seedborne rice seedling bacterial diseases. Previous studies have also proved that the implementation of cold plasma technology in postharvest management should be seriously considered for improving rice grain quantity and quality in Malaysia.     

Identifying Trees Species Dominance in Hulu Sedili Forest Reserve,Peninsular Malaysia Based on Lithology Type Using Geographic Information System

Lowland tropical forest in Peninsular Malaysia consist a valuable dipterocarp timber species. In fact, dipterocarp tree species growth well when the ecology is maintained and their growth are dependent on the micro climate and also affected by lithology types. This study was carried out to identify and map tree species dominancy by lithology types at Hulu Sedili Forest Reserve （HSFR） using Geographic Information System （GIS） technique. Different lithology type maps were derived namely Igneous, Sedimentary and Limestone. Through GIS operations tree species data collected from pre-felling inventory and ground survey were overlaid with lithology features. Results showed that at Sedimentary and Igneous types, the presence of dipterocarpaceae family is only 3.09%, and non-dipterocarpaceae family was 96.91%. Syzygium spp. （19.83%） was the most abundance in Igneous and Sedimentary. Meanwhile, Elateriospermum tapos （9.92%） and Lauraceae＇s family （7.22%） were found to be the most dominant species in Sedimentary types, Macaranga spp. （11.21%） and Elateriospermum tapos （11.02%） in igneous types. However, a Limestone type was discarded from analysis due to unavailable pre-felling data. Thus, this study indicated that there was variation in species dominancy of different lithology types. On the other hand, GIS demonstrated its capability as a useful tool in identifying and maps the location of trees species based on lithology types.