The cereals crops in Belgium are not safe from serious contaminations by mycotoxins. Theyears 1997 and 1998 for example were very favourable to the development of Fusariumhead blight. On that account, the project main objective consists in assessing the risk ofmycotoxins contamination and studying the environmental factors that contribute to increasethe rate of wheat contaminati...

Seeds have well-established passive physical and chemical defense mechanisms that protect their food reserves from decay-inducing organisms and herbivores. However, there are few studies evaluating potential biochemical defenses of dormant seeds against pathogens. Caryopsis decay by the pathogenic Fusarium avenaceum strain F.a.1 was relatively rapid in wild oat (Avena fatua L.) isoline "M73," w...

The preservation of a large collection of bacterial cultures is often a task of major proportions, especially if one wishes to maintain weakly viable and/or fastidious species. Variation in physiological or in morphological characteristics is frequently an undesirable consequence when stock cultures are held for some time, unless special methods are used in the preservation process. The method ...

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is one of the most destructive diseases of wheat. Repeated screening of genetic resources has led to the identification of several resistant cultivars of spring wheat, such as Frontana from Brazil, Sumai 3 from China and Nobeokabouzu-komugi from Japan. It is known, however, that several morphological and ecological variations with different responses to FHB exist with...

The occurrence of ice-nucleating particles (INPs) in our atmosphere has a profound impact on the properties and lifetime of supercooled clouds. However, the identities, sources and abundances of airborne particles capable of efficiently nucleating ice at relatively low supercoolings (T > -15 °C) remain enigmatic. Recently, several studies have suggested that unidentified biogenic residues in so...