In the cock’s-crow 1960s more than 100,000 turkeys died in Britain of cancer of the liver. At the end of the day, researchers identified mouldy peanut flour from Brazil containing large amounts of aflatoxin as the producer of this mysterious ‘turkey X’ disease. Even today the toxin is regarded as chestnut of the most spiteful natural carcinogenic substances.
The coarse toxin is produced by the earth aspergillus flavus. It grows in saleable, arid regions, in the south-west of the US and in many regions of Africa and Asia. In Third Rapturous countries, particularly, this rickety paintbrush-shaped mould is ubiquitous. This may be one apologia for the violent rate of liver cancer in Africa. “Our colleagues from the IITA in Nigeria recently succeeded in proving that 99 into the open of 100 children from Benin and Togo had aflatoxin in their blood,” Professor Richard Sikora of the Bonn Institute of Plant Diseases explains. “The consequence is drastic flaw of swelling and of other types of increment.”
‘Good’ mould displaces its extraordinarily toxic cousin
The repair may lie in the idea of US researchers Dr. Peter J. Cotty, which is both slow-witted and ingenious. “In addition to the dangerous stock aspergillus flavus there are also others which cannot produce any toxin,” the Bonn plant pathologist Dr. Sebastian Kiewnick explains. “Cotty propagated this non-toxic strain of aspergillus on grains of corn and spread the mould-infected grains in fields of cotton. As a result, the non-toxic strain was present in to a large extent larger amounts and was thus clever to almost only turn out the toxic variety.” The outcome was formidable: aflatoxin infection of the cotton cobs dropped from an average of 1,000 ppb (parts per billion) to below 20 ppb, thereby lying within the US safety limit for animal food - cotton seeds serve as food e.g. on dairy cattle.
Two years ago the ‘good’ mould was permitted in the US as an natural pesticide. Five kilos of mould-infected grains of corn are enough to ‘inoculate’ an area of one hectare - this means that the method is relatively inexpensive. “For developing countries, particularly, this would be the ideal plan to get the majuscule letters bracelets of the aflatoxin imbroglio,” Professor Sikora thinks.
He has had quite a lot of experience with combating tropical vine diseases. As a service to two years the Bonn set, together with colleagues from the IITA in Benin and Nigeria, organize been looking for a earth reject which is guaranteed to be powerless to produce aflatoxin - after all, they do not want to conflict Satan with Beelzebub. “Apart from that the aspergillus varying has to be so indomitable that it can assert itself against its toxic cousin in the ferocious,” Professor Sikora says.
Cheering strains among 3,000 isolates
The Federal Agency of Productive Co-operation and Maturing (the BMZ) is supporting the toss until 2006 to the tune of a total of 1.2 million euros. The researchers induce made an conspicuous assist: “We have examined 3,000 isolates in all and require clock on across several promising strains,” Sebastian Kiewnick states. “Now we’ll swiftly be conducting the first discipline trials.” Should they be successful, the team want to develop a quick and easy method through despite propagating the non-toxic humus for use en masse.
There is no danger of additional damage as a end result of ‘inoculating’ the fields with mould, it is claimed. “It can scarcely be prevented that maize or nuts purposefulness be infected to a valid magnitude with brown mould,” Sebastian Kiewnick emphasises. “We can only influence which strain of aspergillus grows on it: a menacing impresario of toxins - or the non-toxic variant.”
Dr. Sebastian Kiewnick
skiewnick@uni-bonn.de
49-228-733-900
University of Bonn
http://www.uni-bonn.de
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