Ethnoveterinary Knowledge and Biological Evaluation of Plants Used for Mitigating Cattle Diseases: A Critical Insight Into the Trends and Patterns in South Africa

Cattle farming is a traditional agricultural system that contributes to the rural economic, social, and cultural values of the communities. Cattle as common with other livestock, are affected by many diseases that cause mortality and economic losses. In many rural households, the use of plants and associated knowledge are popular for managing cattle diseases, especially in areas experiencing challenges with conventional veterinary medicine. Evidence on the documentation of indigenous knowledge and biological evaluation of plants used against cattle diseases remain understudied and fragmented. The aim of the review is to collate and analyze the ethnoveterinary knowledge and biological evaluation of plants used against cattle diseases in South Africa. Different scientific databases were systematically explored to extract data from 37 eligible studies. A total of 310 medicinal plants from 81 families were used to treat 10 categories of cattle diseases across seven (7) provinces in South Africa. Leguminosae (Fabaceae), Compositae (Asteraceae), Asparagaceae, and Xanthorrhoeaceae were the most frequently used plant families. Common plant parts used were leaves and roots. Twenty-seven (27) combination remedies involving 2–6 plants were identified as treatment regimes against cattle diseases. Common preparation methods were infusion and decoction while the administration mode was predominantly unspecified (52%) while oral and topical contributed 26 and 22%, respectively. In terms of diseases, the most treated ones were general systems infection, reproduction disorders, and gastrointestinal problems. Currently, an estimated 21% of the 310 plants have been evaluated for diverse biological activities using relevant bioassays related to cattle diseases. Antibacterial activity remained the most studied biological activity. Evidence from the review revealed the significance of ethnoveterinary medicine against cattle diseases especially in rural areas of South Africa. Nevertheless, the use of plants for cattle diseases among other ethnic groups, particularly in the Northern Cape and Western Cape, remains understudied

Editorial : alternative and complementary methods for the control of infectious diseases in animals

No abstract available.https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-sciencedm2022Paraclinical Science

Anthropometric studies for designing to fit gari-frying workers

 Work system and product design require anthropometric data of the user population relevant to the facility in order to have safe operation in service as well as increase user satisfaction and efficiency. Designing to fit gari-frying workers in each of the southwestern states in Nigeria is geared towards this end. The age, weight and twenty-five body dimensions of 120 gari-frying workers in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti, selected by random sampling, were measured. The body dimensions include stature, shoulder height, sitting height, eye height, forward grip reach, buttock-popliteal height, buttock-knee length, knee height, thigh clearance, forearm-to-forearm breadth, waist depth, elbow rest height, knuckle height, elbow grip length, hip breadth, hand length, hand breadth, hand thickness, grip span and lumbar height. SPSS 20 software was used to perform statistical analysis to determine the mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values, 2nd, 5th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 95th percentiles for each state. Ogun state was used as a control, against which means of body dimension data, collected from other states, were compared using paired sample t-test. The results revealed that some of the body dimensions showed significant difference across the states at P≤0.05 with Oyo having more anthropometric parameters that differ from that of Ogun and Ondo having the least. Between 11.42% and 24.25% difference in the mean age, weight and lumbar height was observed in all the states. Osun state has the highest mean BMI and BSA values of 32.38 kg/m2 and 1.82 m2, respectively. These results are the required data for the design of facility and products for gari-frying workers as well as in similar women workspaces, especially in processing centres

Sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza juncea var. sericea) for sustainable small ruminant production: feed, helminth suppressant and meat preservation capabilities

CITATION: Mahachi, L. N. et al. 2020. Sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza juncea var. sericea) for sustainable small ruminant production: Feed, helminth suppressant and meat preservation capabilities. Animal Feed Science and Technology, 270. doi:10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2020.114688The original publication is available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/animal-feed-science-and-technologySmall ruminants significantly contribute towards livelihood, food and nutrition security for people living in semiarid low-to-middle-income countries. However, their productivity is largely constrained by feed shortages, prevalence of gastrointestinal nematodes (GIN) and postharvest meat losses. The current review explores the possibility of using sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza juncea var. sericea) as a natural helminth suppressant, feed ingredient and meat preservative for improving small ruminant health, meat production and shelf life. Sericea lespedeza has moderate contents of crude protein, fibre, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and diverse composition of physiologically active substances such as condensed tannins, sterols and flavanols from which it derives nutritional, anti-bloat, helminth suppressant, antimicrobial and antioxidative properties. Overall, the present review demonstrates the potential of feeding sericea lespedeza to small ruminants as a sustainable means of controlling GIN and enhancing meat production and shelf life, while also reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, more research is required to determine optimal feeding strategies and doses for reducing GHG emissions while improving health, meat production and quality of small ruminants.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377840120305927?via%3DihubPublishers versio

Applications of cytokinins in horticultural fruit crops : trends and future prospects

CITATION: Aremu, Adeyemi O. et al. 2020. Applications of cytokinins in horticultural fruit crops : trends and future prospects. Biomolecules, 10(9):1222, doi:10.3390/biom10091222.The original publication is available at: https://mdpi-res.comCytokinins (CKs) are a chemically diverse class of plant growth regulators, exhibiting wide-ranging actions on plant growth and development, hence their exploitation in agriculture for crop improvement and management. Their coordinated regulatory effects and cross-talk interactions with other phytohormones and signaling networks are highly sophisticated, eliciting and controlling varied biological processes at the cellular to organismal levels. In this review, we briefly introduce the mode of action and general molecular biological effects of naturally occurring CKs before highlighting the great variability in the response of fruit crops to CK-based innovations. We present a comprehensive compilation of research linked to the application of CKs in non-model crop species in different phases of fruit production and management. By doing so, it is clear that the effects of CKs on fruit set, development, maturation, and ripening are not necessarily generic, even for cultivars within the same species, illustrating the magnitude of yet unknown intricate biochemical and genetic mechanisms regulating these processes in different fruit crops. Current approaches using genomic-to-metabolomic analysis are providing new insights into the in planta mechanisms of CKs, pinpointing the underlying CK-derived actions that may serve as potential targets for improving crop-specific traits and the development of new solutions for the preharvest and postharvest management of fruit crops. Where information is available, CK molecular biology is discussed in the context of its present and future implications in the applications of CKs to fruits of horticultural significance.Publisher's versio

MasakhaNER 2.0: Africa-centric Transfer Learning for Named Entity Recognition

African languages are spoken by over a billion people, but are underrepresented in NLP research and development. The challenges impeding progress include the limited availability of annotated datasets, as well as a lack of understanding of the settings where current methods are effective. In this paper, we make progress towards solutions for these challenges, focusing on the task of named entity recognition (NER). We create the largest human-annotated NER dataset for 20 African languages, and we study the behavior of state-of-the-art cross-lingual transfer methods in an Africa-centric setting, demonstrating that the choice of source language significantly affects performance. We show that choosing the best transfer language improves zero-shot F1 scores by an average of 14 points across 20 languages compared to using English. Our results highlight the need for benchmark datasets and models that cover typologically-diverse African languages

AfriQA:Cross-lingual Open-Retrieval Question Answering for African Languages

African languages have far less in-language content available digitally, making it challenging for question answering systems to satisfy the information needs of users. Cross-lingual open-retrieval question answering (XOR QA) systems -- those that retrieve answer content from other languages while serving people in their native language -- offer a means of filling this gap. To this end, we create AfriQA, the first cross-lingual QA dataset with a focus on African languages. AfriQA includes 12,000+ XOR QA examples across 10 African languages. While previous datasets have focused primarily on languages where cross-lingual QA augments coverage from the target language, AfriQA focuses on languages where cross-lingual answer content is the only high-coverage source of answer content. Because of this, we argue that African languages are one of the most important and realistic use cases for XOR QA. Our experiments demonstrate the poor performance of automatic translation and multilingual retrieval methods. Overall, AfriQA proves challenging for state-of-the-art QA models. We hope that the dataset enables the development of more equitable QA technology

Antioxidant and acetylcholinesterase-inhibitory properties of long-term stored medicinal plants

Abstract Background Medicinal plants are possible sources for future novel antioxidant compounds in food and pharmaceutical formulations. Recent attention on medicinal plants emanates from their long historical utilisation in folk medicine as well as their prophylactic properties. However, there is a dearth of scientific data on the efficacy and stability of the bioactive chemical constituents in medicinal plants after prolonged storage. This is a frequent problem in African Traditional Medicine. Methods The phytochemical, antioxidant and acetylcholinesterase-inhibitory properties of 21 medicinal plants were evaluated after long-term storage of 12 or 16 years using standard in vitro methods in comparison to freshly harvested materials. Results The total phenolic content of Artemisia afra, Clausena anisata, Cussonia spicata, Leonotis intermedia and Spirostachys africana were significantly higher in stored compared to fresh materials. The flavonoid content were also significantly higher in stored A. afra, C. anisata, C. spicata, L. intermedia, Olea europea and Tetradenia riparia materials. With the exception of Ekebergia capensis and L. intermedia, there were no significant differences between the antioxidant activities of stored and fresh plant materials as measured in the β-carotene-linoleic acid model system. Similarly, the EC50 values based on the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging assay were generally lower for stored than fresh material. Percentage inhibition of acetylcholinesterase was generally similar for both stored and fresh plant material. Stored plant material of Tetradenia riparia and Trichilia dregeana exhibited significantly higher AChE inhibition than the fresh material. Conclusions The current study presents evidence that medicinal plants can retain their biological activity after prolonged storage under dark conditions at room temperature. The high antioxidant activities of stable bioactive compounds in these medicinal plants offer interesting prospects for the identification of novel principles for application in food and pharmaceutical formulations.</p

Indigenous Knowledge on the Uses, Sustainability and Conservation of African Ginger (<i>Siphonochilus aethiopicus</i>) among Two Communities in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

Harvesting of medicinal plants in the wild has an impact on sustainability of medicinal plants, which leads to the need for intervention in terms of conservation strategies. Siphonochilus aethiopicus, commonly known as African ginger or wild ginger is used to cure a variety of health conditions/illnesses, such as coughs, colds, asthma, nausea, headaches and pains. This study explored the potential role of indigenous knowledge on the uses, sustainability, and conservation strategies for African ginger among two communities in Mpumalanga province. Qualitative method entailing in-depth interviews were used for this research. We used a non-probability sample (snow-balling) to recruit ten (10) participants that comprised of four traditional health practitioners, four knowledge holders and two herbalists, considered as experts on African ginger in the study area. The data was analysed using thematic analysis. The diverse indigenous knowledge on the uses of African ginger were divided into two categories (diseases and spiritual/cultural purposes) among the local communities. African ginger is indigenous to South Africa and the plant species in the wild is mainly lost to commercial trade. As revealed by the participants, the multiple uses of African ginger are major contributing factors exacerbating the demands for the plant. The uses of African ginger have resulted in the scarcity and possibly extinction of this plant species in the wild, which remain a major concerns to several stakeholders especially traditional health practitioners. Harvesting of the rhizomes of African ginger is recommended instead of the root given the relative ease and higher chances for survival and regeneration. To ensure the sustainable utilisation of African ginger, its cultivation was recommended by the participants. However, there is a need for further intervention to assess how the community members can be assisted with developing and adopting indigenous conservation protocols for the continuous sustainability of African ginger. In addition, it is pertinent to strongly discourage the indiscriminate destruction of natural habitats and create more awareness on the importance of designating protected areas among local communities