**1. Introduction**

318 Thermodynamics – Interaction Studies – Solids, Liquids and Gases

Yonetani, T., Park, S. I., Tsuneshige, A., Imai, K.&Kanaori, K. (2002). Global allostery model

of hemoglobin. Modulation of O(2) affinity, cooperativity, and Bohr effect by heterotropic allosteric effectors. *J. Biol. Chem.,* 277, 37, pp. 34508-34520, 0021-9258

> Now ecologists feel necessary to construct the theoretical building of system ecology, to break strong reductionistic tradition of ecology and to include the use of thermodynamics in a new holistic approach to study ecosystems, their structure, functioning and natural history. We tried to present here the current state of thermodynamic view on ecosystems.

> The first law of thermodynamics proclaims constancy of the total energy of isolated system for all changes, taking place in this system: energy cannot be created or destroyed. According to the second law of thermodynamics in isolated system entropy is always increasing or remaining constant. All processes in the Universe are oriented to the equilibrium state. Nevertheless, biological systems, and, consequently, ecological systems create order from disorder, they create and support chemical and physical non-equilibrium state – the basis they live on.

> In this chapter the general overview of ecosystem as thermodynamic system is given and the concept of Eco-Exergy is introduced. The use of this concept in ecology is demonstrated to be very fruitful. To make it easy for other researchers to use the Eco-Exergy the procedure of exergy evaluation for ecosystems is followed with special attention to dimensions used. The main applications of exergy in modern ecology are reviewed with special focus on practical use of Eco-Exergy, exergy index, and structural exergy for real ecosystem assessment and estimation of their health and disturbance.

> Another application of irreversible thermodynamics (Prigogine's inventions) is discussed. The theory of hypercycles, developed for cycles of autocatalytic reactions and widely accepted in biochemistry and molecular biology can also be applied for ecological systems. The model of conjugated hypercycles, applied to ecological systems explains many aspects of their non-linear dynamics and can be used for analysis of oscillating processes in ecological systems.


**5. Conclusion**

Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, curbside-pickup-from-store and home-delivery-from-store are growing explosively into the new normal and the postpandemic era beyond that. Curbside pickup will remain the larger option between the two, while home delivery is ripening quickly. This chapter not only provides a comprehensive review of the current advances of those important retail channel formats but also offers a set of new points of view, such as a set of new shopping channel typologies and frameworks, as well as making a list of predictions of their future directions. We hope that our discussion is of help to both scholars and practitioners to better understand the fast-evolving consumer behavior beyond the pandemic.


**8.2 Procedure: LAG laparoscopic assisted gastropexy**

This technique can be used in adults and children alike and in both cases of congenital or acquired wandering spleen. It can be done as an emergency procedure in case of splenic ischemia or scheduled for uncomplicated chronic cases.


**Author details**

Ketrell L. McWhorter School of Science, Health and Mathematics, Asbury University, Wilmore, Kentucky, United States

\*Address all correspondence to<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


What does this imply for peace and conflict studies? In comparative terms, the trusteeship territory of Togoland, where the transfer of state control occurred largely peacefully, is often likened to the trusteeship territory of Cameroon,5 where the transfer of power, however, was accompanied by violence.6 The claims that the political contexts of the two territories were completely different have already been rejected as unfounded.7 The present work indicates that a key difference lies in the fact that, other than the movements of the remaining trusteeship territories, the Ewe and Togoland unification movement pursued its strategy of intervening in international opinion at a very early stage and in a greatly capable manner. Yet, as evidenced by statements made at rallies, as well as various action plans, and the riots during Ghana's Independence Day, some elements of the unification movement did not completely reject the idea of using violence to achieve the long-sought objective of unification. Hence, the unification movement did not decide on a petition campaign because they were completely averse

5 Digre, "Ethnic Loyalties, National Choices, and International Oversight"

6 Ketzmerick, *Staat, Sicherheit und Gewalt in Kamerun*.

7 Michel, "The Independence of Togo," p. 317.

to violence, but because it represented a viable alternative for violence to achieve their goals. Furthermore, they strategically utilized the potential for violence by not explicitly ruling it out, all while expressing a steadfast commitment to a peaceful approach. This approach can be seen as employing the prospect of violence within the framework of a 'securitization as appeasement' strategy.

However, from the course of events it can also be deduced that the more their petition campaign was frustrated, the more likely the unificationists were considering resorting to violence. For what stands out: armed conflict only seemed to become a real possibility after the trusteeship powers withdrew. This had less to do with the fact that the trusteeship powers repressed the movement (which they did) and violence only broke its way when the former left. In British Togoland for example, even after the Togoland unificationists' frustrated disposition to participate in the Consultative Commission or the 1956 referendum in British Togoland, they remained peaceful as long as there was the possibility of making their voices heard before the venues of world opinion. Only when the Togoland Congress and Juvento were deprived of the opportunity to internationalize their quarrels in the venues of the Trusteeship System, they resorted to what Fasakin circumscribed as "the subaltern's use of protests and violence in making securitization moves."8 Simply put, these actors merely strove for a court of appeal. The disturbances surrounding Ghana's Independence Day on 6 March 1957 were thus an expression of the fact that with the end of the trusteeship status, the United Nations would no longer provide a statutory platform for the internationalisation of the unificationists' cause.

This allows a central theoretical conclusion: the Copenhagen School maintains a normative preference for *de*-securitisation.However, the study shows that unificationists refrained from the use of violence only as long as they had a credible means of securitising their cause. The postcolonial addendum to this study's theoretical framework expands the argument that the Copenhagen School's normative preference for *de*-securitisation is not always beneficial. It advances that actors might remain peaceful as long as there is a credible opportunity to securitise their concerns, and that the Copenhagen School's normative preference for *de*-securitisation may lead subaltern actors to become *frustrated* and drive them to resort to violence.

Was the ending of trusteeship thus premature? Nkrumah's annexation threats, the repression of the first years under the Olympio-Government, refugees on both sides of the Togo-Ghana border, and Olympio's assassination – all these events indicate that in terms of maintenance of peace and security, trusteeship proved to be a failure. Yet, if disappointment with the performance of the African state spread rapidly after decolonisation through trusteeship, one must wonder how it is that from the 1990s onwards so many voices called for recourse to the same trusteeship principles as a means of overcoming that disappointment. Rather,it is premature to conclude that the trustees should have pursued Eurocentric statebuilding even longer and more rigorously. They should have taken seriously the concerns expressed before the international fora, instead of establishing political orders serving their own interests. To understand why the unification movement failed, the silencing of securitisation moves is key, since by means of the latter

8 Fasakin, *Subaltern Securitization*, p. 93.

the petitioners challenged the Administering Authorities, who in turn employed securitising references to potential threats to negotiate the transfer of power and ultimately the maintenance of *their* established political order.

### Separatism in Ghana: Western Togoland

Finally, to what extent is the recent conflict over the attempted secession of 'Western Togoland' rooted in constructions of threat and (in)security from the time of trusteeship?

It is undeniable that the HSGF has been shaped by the history and the securitising rhetoric of Western Togoland nationalists, especially by those of the Togoland Congress and TOLIMO. However, given the inaction of Western Togoland nationalists since the mid-1970s, the HSGF has been accused of not being directly involved in the earlier political struggle of British Togoland seeking its way to separate statehood. The HSGF's historic references to the trusteeship period are often inaccurate. Its recourse to securitise 'Western Togoland's' identity and history is therefore considered a mere gambit or placeholder to lend historical legitimacy to its secessionist claims, which otherwise encompass at present 'only' alleged anti-Ewe sentiment and the relative underdevelopment of the Volta Region.9 Nonetheless, this work is careful not to claim, as other authors have done, that Western Togoland nationalism will disappear back into the history books, because already twice the spectre of Western Togoland nationalism has jumped right back out of the history books: in the 1970s, TOLIMO, and most recently the HSGF. At least judicially, the threat of Western Togoland separatism was addressed in foresight through the Prohibited Organisations Act. However, whether it is democratic to criminalize this political standpoint, even if it is a secessionist one, is another question.

Finally, I would like to end with a remark on the Togoland question and security in historical perspective. Mark Twain is credited with the phrase "History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme."10 This would seem to be the case at least with the recent interplay of the Western Togoland question and developments in the Ghanaian security apparatus. The WTRF attacks took the security apparatus by surprise, just as the Accra riots of 1948 did.Then, as now, the criticism was that the police had increasingly taken on civilian tasks. The increasing militarisation of police practices and the expansion of the intelligence structures of the police apparatus were part of the "management of unease" that the surprising moment of the attacks triggered. Back then it was the institution of the Special Branch, today the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB). Another rhyme of security history are continuities of the colonial intelligence and security command structures, such as the RegSeCs and DisSeCs. Hopefully, at the very least, the Ghanaian state's new approach of including human security and civil society in the authorities' security measures will defuse the conflict rather than exacerbate it.11

9 Kwawukume, "Revisiting the Road to Secession Agitation in the Volta Region."

10 The attribution is probably incorrect, as there is no reference to it in Twain's work.

11 Mensah Agbenou, "Ghana: Cinq Militants Du Togoland Occidental Emprisonnés," *iciLome*, 23 March 2023

#### **7.3 Potentials, Limits, Outlook**

This thesis applied theories of International Relations to the study of history and equally related a historiographical perspective to current problems in International Relations. It is precisely at this point of intersection that the selected case falls on fertile ground.

In the spirit of Frederick Cooper's call to focus on reclaiming paths not taken in history,12 the recent conflict over Western Togoland invited to a study with theories of International Relations to revisit and rethink the history of the Togoland question. As a historical case, the Togoland question offers insights into blind spots of Critical Security Studies, namely what can be learned from failed securitization.13 In the process, a key aim of the study was to showcase the potential of postcolonial approaches for Critical Security Studies in general and theories of securitisation in particular. A postcolonial perspective was taken to examine subjectivities and standpoints of actors vis-à-vis the colonial structures and power dynamics in international organizations. There is undoubtedly still a lot of need and potential to bring perspectives from the Global South more strongly into Western knowledge production, even if this is ultimately hampered by publishing practices. To test the developed theoretical framework of a postcolonial perspective on security in other contexts as well, a comparative design would be further useful.The latter could refer to other trusteeship territories, the most similar of which is Cameroon, but also to other cases, including the Global North.

Thus, it should be emphasized that the postcolonial-inspired analysis of security speech not only provided the impetus to look more closely at the Trusteeship System's petitioning system in the first place, but also to examine the practice more critically for counterintuitive silencing effects. It has been shown that the accountability mechanisms, which are provided by international organizations as an instrument to securitize grievances can be intentionally silenced by *locutionary silencing* and *illocutionary frustration*, or unintentionally silenced by *illocutionary disablement* – all three of which need to be highlighted by a decolonising critique. A limitation in the developed theoretical framework of a postcolonial perspective on security is the problem that disabling frames are difficult to grasp empirically. They can be interpreted in the data material, but rarely clearly identified.

Unfortunately, this work has not been able to analyse the debates and discussions within the Standing Committee on Petitions, as Cowan, Pedersen, or van Ginneken have done regarding the League of Nations' petitioning system.14 The present study dealt only with the 'products' of the Standing Committee. Since the Standing Committee on Petitions,where petitions were first examined,was composedin parity by Administering and non-Administering Authorities, an analysis of the Committee's verbatim records would likely shed light on the fault lines and silencing effects, which securitising petitions were exposed to.

12 Frederick Cooper, "Possibility and Constraint," *The Journal of African History* 49, no. 2 (2008): 196

13 Ruzicka, "Failed Securitization"

14 Cowan, "Who's Afraid of Violent Language?"; Pedersen, *The guardians*, pp. 77–95; van Ginneken, "Volkenbondsvoogdij"

It has also been shown that not only the historiography of international organizations, but also the discussion of theories of international relations benefit from the much-underutilized methods of historical and archival research. Archival research can inform debates of International Relations, both in relation to the debate on statebuilding and in the theoretical dimension, that is, the theories of Critical Security Studies,insofar as it can encourage interrogation of concepts and foster a more contextualised understanding of security dynamics in decolonising contexts. Yet, the theorized arguments remain, as usual in qualitative studies, limited to the situational context. Even though extensive material was collected, the conclusions must remain strongly case specific. Documents from seven archives were used, but mainly the colonial and not the anticolonial point of view was expressed. It remains to be hoped that with the eventual opening of the French archival holdings, a more detailed picture will emerge.

# **Bibliography**

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Austin, John Langshaw.*Howtodothingswithwords*. London:OxfordUniversity Press, 1962. Avoidance of Discrimination Act. 38. December 31, 1957.

ity." *Conflict, Security & Development* 16, no. 1 (2016): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/1467 8802.2016.1136137.

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Devereux, Annemarie. "Searching for clarity: A case study of UNTAET's application of international human rights norms." In *The UN, human rights and post-conflict situations*. Edited by Nigel D. White and Dirk Klaaasen, 293–321. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.

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"Togoland Facing Divergent Pulls." *New York Times*, 14 August 1956.

Toulabor, Comi M. "Togo." In *Challenges of security sector governance inWest Africa*. Edited by Alan Bryden, Boubacar N'Diaye and Funmi Olonisakin, 303–21.Wien, Zürich, Berlin, Münster: Lit, 2008.

Trotha, Trutz von.*Koloniale Herrschaft: Zur soziologischenTheorie der Staatsentstehung am Beispiel des "Schutzgebietes Togo"*. Tübingen: Mohr, 1994.

Trumann, Harry. "Inaugural Address." https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/in augural-address-4.

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VI, 425–399. legal.un.org/repertory/art87/english/rep\_orig\_vol4\_art87.pdf.

#### **Editorial**

Postcolonial research has brought critical perspectives on colonialism in history and its heritage nowadays into public and scholarly focus. Similarly, postcolonial theorists have shown how deeply European scholarship and education are intertwined with the history and present of colonialism. For quite some time now, this postcolonial critique has triggered important public debates on the colonial past and how it should be remembered. The series **Postcolonial Studies** offers an editorial platform to continue these important discussions in an interdisciplinary framework.

**Julius Heise**, born in 1989, completed his doctorate at the Center for Conflict Studies (CCS) at Philipps-Universität Marburg and the Collaborative Research Center "Dynamics of Security". His research encompasses post- and decolonial approaches to decolonisation and statebuilding, emphasizing Critical Security Studies within Conflict Studies.


*3.2. Blue Pigments*

Two main blue pigments were identified in the miniatures, i.e., azurite and ultramarine blue, according to their characteristic absorption bands at 640 and 600 nm, respectively. Two different cases were recognised in the spectra from the blue areas of the *Book of Hours*, each associated to a different blue hue. An exemplary case is reported in Figure 2a: the Virgin's mantle on f. 1r shows bright and dark blue hues employed to paint the drapery.

**Figure 2.** (**a**) Micro-photography (80×) of the mantle of the Virgin on folio 1r. The presence of different blue shades is made more evident by the white border line. (**b**) Selected FORS spectra representative of the different blue shades. The blue line represents spectra collected from darker blue areas within the miniatures and points to the presence of ultramarine, the red line represents spectra collected from lighter blue areas within the miniatures and of the blue areas in the decorations on page borders and capital letters and points to the presence of azurite.

The two different hues revealed by the FORS spectra can be related to the use of different pigments: the spectra from the brighter areas show a broad absorption band centred at about 635–640 nm, thus pointing to the presence of azurite, whereas the band centred at about 610–615 nm in the darker areas suggests the use of ultramarine blue (Figure 2b).

The presence of both pigments, and specifically of ultramarine blue applied over the azurite layer for darkening the colour in the miniatures, was confirmed by micro-Raman by focusing the analysis on grains of the two pigments. This was also was the case for the blue skies, for which the FORS spectra suggested the presence of azurite in the brighter areas and the use of ultramarine blue to darken the colour. The bathochromic shift of the absorption band for ultramarine blue (610–615 nm in place of the expected 600 nm) can be justified by considering the application of this pigment as a thin layer on top of the underlying azurite layer and therefore the final spectrum contained contributions from both pigments. This feature was verified with mock-ups prepared in the laboratory.

The blue decorations on the page borders instead gave FORS spectra that could be attributed to the presence of azurite alone, both in the lighter and darker areas: here the brightness of the colour was adjusted by mixing azurite with a white pigment.

All the XRF spectra collected from the dark and bright areas in the miniatures and from the blue decorations on the page borders showed intense copper signals, as well as signals of barium and zinc; these latter elements were indicated in the literature as possible impurities of natural azurite [11,21], since their presence can be related to the geo-chemical processes of formation of the deposits. A fairly linear relationship between the counts of copper and barium and between those of copper and zinc emerged (Figure 3) and seems to confirm the use of natural azurite throughout the manuscript. More evidence of the natural origin of azurite, as suggested by Aru et al. [22], could be the presence of iron oxides: we did not identify such accessory phases, but the counts of iron in the XRF spectra of the blue areas were on average 4 times higher than in the spectra of parchment.

**Figure 3.** Bivariate plot for XRF signals of copper (Kα line, 8.05 keV) vs. barium (red dots, Lα line, 4.47 keV) and zinc (blue dots, Kα line, 8.64 keV) recorded from blue areas in the miniatures. Regression lines with coefficients R are indicated.

The results obtained by XRF on those areas where ultramarine blue was present deserve some discussion. Portable XRF instruments, that do not operate under vacuum, are generally not able to detect weak XRF signals from light elements such as sodium, aluminium and silicon, which are the main constituents of lazurite—Na3Ca(Al3Si3O12)S i.e., the blue mineral that gives the pigment its rich colour. The intensity of the calcium signals from the dark blue areas did not significantly differ from those obtained from the parchment, where this element is present due to the alkaline treatments with calcium hydroxide that occurred in the production procedures. Signals from sulphur, which is present in the structure of ultramarine blue, were detected from the dark blue areas, but this element cannot be considered as a selective marker for this pigment because it can be present in parchment itself; moreover, it is difficult to separate the S Kα line at 2.31 keV from the Pb Mα line at 2.34 keV and lead is usually present as lead white to tune the blue colour. Nevertheless, the XRF spectra recorded in dark blue areas, in which FORS and spectra Raman indicated the presence of ultramarine in the superficial layer of the miniature, differed from those recorded from the bright areas of pure azurite because of the systematic presence of high signals of potassium. No further indication could be derived from the other analytical techniques employed; therefore, possible explanations for the presence of this element in the ultramarine layers could be related to the phenomenon of vicariance between the sodium ions present in lazurite and the potassium ions present in the environment of formation of the rock (similar to that occurring in pyroxenes between Mg2+ and Mg-vicariant ions [23]), or to the processes adopted for the purification of the pigment (that employed potash according to Cennini [4]) or even to the possible addition of extenders to the precious pigment. Ultimately, the presence of potassium can be considered a potential elemental marker for ultramarine blue in cases where Al, Si and S cannot be clearly detected.

### *3.3. Brown Pigments*

The brown colour was mainly used to depict architectural features, such as the inside of the huts on ff. 24r and 31v (Figure 1c,e). In all cases, the pigments used were iron oxides or iron-rich red earths, according to the features of the FORS spectra and to the dominant presence of iron evidenced by XRF. It was not possible to obtain a better identification by means of Raman spectroscopy. Some of these pigments, however, were probably related to later retouches (see Section 3.11 for further details).


**3.1 Pulping and paper manufacturing**

For papermaking, two main steps are followed in which the raw material is firstly cooked to obtain fibrous mass (pulp), and then the pulp is converted into paper. Mannai et al. [25, 26] were the first to find the preparation of pulp and papers from *Opuntia* trunk using semi-chemical and chemical pulping procedures, with yields of 80.8 and 41.1%, respectively [54]. Multistep pulping processes were followed to produce pulps and papers from *Opuntia* as shown in **Figure 1**. The manufacturing of pulp starts with raw material preparation [55], in which the dried *Opuntia* trunk was cut into chips (2–3 1–2 1.5–2 cm3 ) [25, 26]. Two processes have already been applied to the delignification of *Opuntia* chips. The semichemical procedure based on the chemical treatment of raw material using soda– hydrogen peroxide (soda–HP) mixture (with the control of pH11) and the delignification reaction steps are done under reflux [25, 54]; these steps are followed by mechanical deliberation operation of cooked chips to more individualize and deliberate the fibrous suspensions. The obtained soda–HP pulp was purified by the classification of fibers by applying the standard T275 sp-12 method. Likewise, it has already been applied to the delignification of *Opuntia* trunk chips in a procedure described by Mannai et al. [26, 54], which utilized a total soda alkali charge of 20% (w/w o.d.) and an anthraquinone concentration of 0.1% (w/w o.d.). The liquor to solid ratio was kept at 10, and the mixture was cooked for 120 min at 170°C with a temperature ramping rate equal to 2.4°C/min. All of their experiments were conducted in a 1 L reactor that took 1 h to reach a constant temperature.

The morphological fiber's dimensions of the obtained fibrous suspensions in terms of their average length (mm) and width (μm) and the percentage of fine elements were examined using a MORFI (LB-01) analyzer developed by Techpap. The obtained results are summarized in **Table 4**. The fiber length (and width) of the *Opuntia* semi-chemical and chemical pulps were 764 μm (38 μm) and 737 μm (54.6 μm), respectively, which are in the same range of hardwood fibers [56]. The

#### **Table 4.**

*Fiber and handmade paper produced from* Opuntia *(Cactaceae) pulps after semi-chemical and chemical pulping procedures.*

*Novel Trend in the Use of* Opuntia *(Cactaceae) Fibers as Potential Feedstock… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92112*

processing with semi-chemical procedure gives a thick individualized fiber. It was considered as short fiber species [54]. It is also necessary to note that the pulp obtained from chemical procedures (at high temperature 170°C) was characterized by a high content (29.3% of the length) of fine elements.

The semi-chemical and chemicals pulps obtained from *Opuntia* trunk after delignification were exploited to make hand sheets. Paper sheets have been successfully manufactured as shown in **Figure 1**. Papers from semi-chemical pulps are the whitish than the ones obtained from chemical pulp. This is explained by the treatment with hydrogen peroxide which oxidizes the color of chemical groups.

The given data of physical properties of hand sheet papers, as seen in **Table 4**, confirms that the studied raw material has potential for use in paper manufacturing using the soft delignification by applying the semi-chemical procedure which can affect the paper properties by increasing the fiber flexibility and strength [22, 25, 54]. Thus, these data suggest that *Opuntia* (Cactaceae) fibers can be used for producing paper from non-woody plants with various qualities (strength) and for future green product applications.


**Author details**

Albertine Leon1\*, Luiza Ungureanu2 and Cristina Puşcaşu3

\*Address all correspondence to<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
1 Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Odontology, Faculty of Dental Medicine, "Ovidius" University of Constanţa, Constanţa, Romania

2 Department of Odontology, Faculty of Dental Medicine, "Ovidius" University of Constanţa, Constanţa, Romania

3 Department of Oro-dental Diagnosis, Faculty of Dental Medicine, "Ovidius" University of Constanţa, Constanţa, Romania


*Article* **Inhibitory Activity of Shrimp Waste Extracts on Fungal and Oomycete Plant Pathogens**

**Soumia El boumlasy 1,2,†, Federico La Spada 2,†, Nunzio Tuccitto 3,4, Giovanni Marletta 3,4, Carlos Luz Mínguez 5, Giuseppe Meca 5, Ermes Ivan Rovetto 2, Antonella Pane 2, Abderrahmane Debdoubi 1 and Santa Olga Cacciola 2,\***

**Abstract:** (1) Background: This study was aimed at determining the *in vitro* inhibitory effect of new natural substances obtained by minimal processing from shrimp wastes on fungi and oomycetes in the genera *Alternaria*, *Colletotrichum*, *Fusarium*, *Penicillium*, *Plenodomus* and *Phytophthora*; the effectiveness of the substance with the highest *in vitro* activity in preventing citrus and apple fruit rot incited by *P. digitatum* and *P. expansum*, respectively, was also evaluated. (2) Methods: The four tested substances, water-extract, EtOAc-extract, MetOH-extract and nitric-extract, were analyzed by HPLC-ESI-MS-TOF; *in vitro* preliminary tests were carried out to determine the minimal inhibitory/fungicidal concentrations (MIC and MFC, respectively) of the raw dry powder, EtOAcextract, MetOH-extract and nitric-extract for each pathogen. (3) Results: in the agar-diffusion-assay, nitric-extract showed an inhibitory effect on all pathogens, at all concentrations tested (100, 75, 50 and 25%); the maximum activity was on *Plenodomus tracheiphilus*, *C. gloeosporioides* and *Ph. nicotianae*; the diameters of inhibition halos were directly proportional to the extract concentration; values of MIC and MFC of this extract for all pathogens ranged from 2 to 3.5%; the highest concentrations (50 to 100%) tested *in vivo* were effective in preventing citrus and apple fruit molds. (4) Conclusions: This study contributes to the search for natural and ecofriendly substances for the control of pre- and post-harvest plant pathogens.

**Keywords:** metabolites; phenolic compounds; inhibitory effect; citrus; apple; HPLC-ESI-MS-TOF; post-harvest diseases; mal secco disease; MIC; MFC