Characterization of strains of Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus isolated from groundnut (Arachis hypogea), rice (Oryza sativa) and maize (Zea mays) in Senegal

The contamination of certain food crop with aflatoxin poses a real public health problem for consumers and causes many market losses for exporters. Thus, several research works are oriented in the direction of developing methods to combat aflatoxinogenic fungus. This study aimed at identifying and characterizing strains of Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus on groundnut, maize and rice seeds grown or imported into Senegal. Four species (A. niger, A. tamarii, A. flavus and A. parasiticus) were isolated from the seeds with incidences ranging from 0 to 100% depending on the samples and their provenance. Six strains of A. flavus and 3 strains of A. parasiticus have been identified and characterized on CYA and G25N culture media. The characterization focused on the morphological characteristics (color and appearance, mycelial growth) of the colonies on the different culture media, and on some microscopic characteristics such as the density of sporulation (production of conidia) and the appearance of the conidiophore. Strains of A. flavus were more frequent on groundnuts and isolates with the same traits were also identified from rice and maize samples, hence the 3 strains of A. parasiticus were isolated

Direct Spectrofluorimetric Method for the Analysis of Carbofuran and Fluometuron in Senegalese Natural Waters

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Development of thermochemically induced fluorescence (TIF) method for the determination of insecticide deltamethrin in Senegalese natural waters

International audienceA simple and sensitive thermochemically induced fluorescence (TIF) method was developed to determine deltamethrin, an insecticide which has toxic effects on human beings and animals. After optimisation at different pH, temperature was increased from 25 to 50°C. TIF method is based on the thermolysis transformation of naturally non-fluorescent pesticides into a fluorescent thermoproduct. The thermolysis kinetics reaction investigated in water at optimal pH 12 and after 4 minutes heating at 40°C made it possible to obtain a low mean half-life time (t1/2 = 1.41 ± 0.06 min), which shows that deltamethrin degrades very rapidly due to heat. The obtained calibration curve gave correlation coefficients close to unity. The limit of detection (LOD = 4.4 ng mL−1) and quantification (LOQ = 15 ng mL−1) values were very low, showing the high sensitivity of the TIF method. TIF method was applied to determination of deltamethrin residues in tap and well waters by standard addition procedure, with satisfactory recovery values between 107.6 and 111.4%. The relative standard deviation (RSD) value of the measured concentrations in spiked water samples was less than 6%, which demonstrated good reproducibility of the TIF method

Photodegradation study of insecticide fenvalerate by NMR and GC-MS and the structural elucidation of its metabolites

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Determination of Agmatine Rate by Spectrofluorimetric Method in Alkaline Medium: Optimization and Application on Shrimp.

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Photodegradation study of the fenvalerate insecticide by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, and GC-MS and structural elucidation of its transformation products

International audienceThe photolysis of fenvalerate, a pyrethroid insecticide, was studied in acetonitrile by 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and 13C NMR to identify the site of bond cleavage and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to establish the chemical structure of fenvalerate photoproducts. Ultraviolet (UV) irradiation of fenvalerate solutions was performed for 18 h with a solar light simulator, and the photolysis reaction obeyed first-order kinetics. Photolysis half-life time (t1/2) values ranged between 15.25 and 21.63 h (mean photodegradation percentage = 51.7 %) for 1H NMR and between 4.55 and 8.06 h (mean photodegradation percentage > 80 %) for 13C NMR. We observed five sites of bond cleavage, namely carbonyl-tertiary carbon, tertiary carbon-tertiary carbon, carbonyl-oxygen, carboxyl-tertiary carbon, and aromatic carbon-tertiary carbon, yielding photoproducts formation. GC-MS was associated with 1H NMR and 13C NMR to obtain a complete photodegradation mechanism. Before UV irradiation, two chromatogram peaks were obtained, due to the two fenvalerate isomers. Under irradiation, both peaks decreased, and new peaks appeared, corresponding to photoproduct formation. After a 12- to 13-h irradiation, 99.39 % of fenvalerate was degraded with a mean rate constant of 0.305 h–1. The chemical structure of the formed photoproducts was identified, either by using the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) mass spectral database or by interpreting the mass spectra. Finally, a detailed mechanism was proposed for fenvalerate photodegradation