Today, given the paramount importance of food safety to human health, mycotoxins are considered especially important contaminants of foodstuffs. Among the mycotoxins, aflatoxins are potent food contaminants which are present in maize and wheat. Invasions of toxigenic fungi in the field and during storage are directly affected by climate and other environmental factors. A total of 129 samples of maize and grain harvested in 2022 were surveyed for mycological contamination. Aflatoxin B1 contamination was investigated using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method.Our study revealed the presence of fungi from five genera: Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium, Alternaria, and Cladosporium. We also found that maize was more frequently contaminated than wheat. Fungi of the Penicillium genus were the most abundant (77.89%), followed by Fusarium (74.73%) and Aspergillus (72.63%). Samples originating from the Korça region (10⁴ units) exhibited a higher fungal load on the three genera. AFB1 contamination is a more critical issue in maize than wheat. The incidence of AFB1 in maize was 88.23%, with a maximum concentration of 69.12 μg/kg; in contrast, the incidence of AFB1 in wheat was only 4.91%. In wheat, no samples had AFB1 concentrations above the EU Maximum Residue Level (MRL) of 2 μg/kg; in maize, 41.18% of samples exceeded the AFB1 MRL of 5 μg/kg for human food, and 32.25% exceeded the MRL for animal feed. These findings, together with other research results from the last decade, suggest that relevant information should be made available to farmers, and good agriculture practices encouraged, as a matter of priority.

Rapid proliferation of traditional gold mining sites in Kédougou a Southeast region in Senegal, led to mass population migration from the neighboring West African countries and rapid expansion of small mining villages with poor hygiene and sanitation conditions. An outbreak of hepatitis E was reported in 2014 with several cases of febrile jaundice among traditional mine workers. In this study, we analyzed both HEV IgM and IgG seroprevalence and the associated risk factors of infection by testing any suspected case and contacts collected from February 2012 to November 2014. RNA-negative sera from suspected cases and contacts were tested for anti-HEV IgM and anti-HEV IgG. A total of 799 sera were collected from 290 suspected cases, 470 contacts and 39 individuals with missing information. The median age of the cohort study was 19 years (1-88 years) with a male/female sex-ratio of 1.9. We found an overall prevalence of 43.68% (332/760) of anti-HEV IgM and 38.15% (290/760) of anti-HEV IgG sera. Our data provide new insights into the HEV epidemiology and point to the crucial need to estimate the disease’s burden in Kédougou and assess the viral mechanisms driving the disease’s severity in pregnant women.

Climate change has a inevitable impacts on tree radial growth, particularly at mountain timeberlines. To understand climate effects on conifer radial growth in the central Hengduan Mountains and potential impacts of future climate change on conifer forest, we studied growth responses to climate variables in Abies georgei, the major tree species of conifer forest in Hengduan Mountains. We collected tree ring samples from four sites near the timberlines and analyzed the relationship between principle components (PC#1) of four chronologies and climatic variables by using response function analysis (RFA), redundancy analysis (RDA) and moving interval analysis (MIA). A. georgei growth was affected by both temperature (positive effects) and precipitation (negative effects). Specifically, the radial growth of A. georgei was significantly and positively correlated with current July and previous November temperature (detected by both RFA and RDA), while precipitation of current June and September inhibited tree growth (detected by RDA). More rapid warming in recent 20 years (1990–2010) clearly enhanced growth responses to July and November temperature, whereas the relationship was weaken for June and September precipitation according to MIA. Under the climate trend of the study area, if the increasing temperature could offset the negative effects of excessive precipitation, A. georgei radial growth would likely benefit from warming, the dynamics of conifer forest should also consider indirect impacts of climate change.