The southwestern highlands forests of Ethiopia are the origin of the coffee plant Coffea arabica. The production of coffee in this area is affected by tracheomycosis caused by a soil-born fungus Gibberella xylarioides. The use of endemic antagonistic strains of mycoparasitic Trichoderma species would be a nature conserving means to combat this disease. We have used molecular methods to reveal t...

Four plants having known medicinal properties were screened for inhibition of goatpox virus (GTPV) replication in vitro. Of the 4 plants, extract of Acacia arabica (Babul) and Eugenia jambolana (Jamun) leaves had inhibition (%) 99.70 and 99.92 at their maximum non toxic concentrations, 99.93 +/- 0.38 and 1999.73 +/- 0.50 microg/ml, respectively in all cytopathic effect (CPE) inhibition assays. ...

BACKGROUND Over the past years, dust of green coffee beans has become known to be a relevant cause for occupational type I allergies. Up to now, allergy diagnostics is based on native green coffee bean extract which exhibits insufficient specificity due to interfering substances as well as batch-to-batch variations. No coffee allergen has been described on the molecular level so far. The aim of...

In vitro antioxidant activities and neuronal cell protective effects of ethanol extract from roasted coffee beans were investigated. Colombia arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) green beans were roasted to give medium (230°C, 10 min), city (230°C, 12 min) and french (230°C, 15 min) coffee beans. Total phenolics in raw green beans, medium, city and french-roasted beans were 8.81±0.05, 9.77±0.03, 9.9...

The montane rainforests of SW Ethiopia are the primary centre of diversity of Coffea arabica and the origin of all Arabica coffee cultivated worldwide. This wild gene pool is potentially threatened by forest fragmentation and degradation, and by introgressive hybridization with locally improved coffee varieties. We genotyped 703 coffee shrubs from unmanaged and managed coffee populations, using...

BACKGROUND Sponges are particularly prone to hiding cryptic species as their paradigmatic plasticity often favors species phenotypic convergence as a result of adaptation to similar habitat conditions. Hemimycale is a sponge genus (Family Hymedesmiidae, Order Poecilosclerida) with four formally described species, from which only Hemimycale columella has been recorded in the Atlanto-Mediterranea...

A new name, Piptochaetium fuscum, is provided for a taxon hitherto known as Piptochaetium setosum (Trin.) Arechav. Morphological, anatomical, and molecular studies that argue against including Piptochaetium in Stipa, and hence use of S. purpurata (Phil.) Columbus & J.P. Sm., are cited.