Evaluation of Seven Essential Oils as Seed Treatments against Seedborne Fungal Pathogens of Cucurbita maxima

Essential oils are gaining interest as environmentally friendly alternatives to synthetic fungicides for management of seedborne pathogens. Here, seven essential oils were initially tested in vivo for disinfection of squash seeds (Cucurbita maxima) naturally contaminated by Stagonosporopsis cucurbitacearum, Alternaria alternata, Fusarium fujikuro, Fusarium solani, Paramyrothecium roridum, Albifimbria verrucaria, Curvularia spicifera, and Rhizopus stolonifer. The seeds were treated with essential oils from Cymbopogon citratus, Lavandula dentata, Lavandula hybrida, Melaleuca alternifolia, Laurus nobilis, and Origanum majorana (#1 and #2). Incidence of S. cucurbitacearum was reduced, representing a range between 67.0% in L. nobilis to 84.4% in O. majorana #2. Treatments at 0.5 mg/mL essential oils did not affect seed germination, although radicles were shorter than controls, except with C. citratus and O. majorana #1 essential oils. Four days after seeding, seedling emergence was 20%, 30%, and 10% for control seeds and seeds treated with C. citratus essential oil (0.5 mg/mL) and fungicides (25 g/L difenoconazole plus 25 g/L fludioxonil). S. cucurbitacearum incidence was reduced by ~40% for plantlets from seeds treated with C. citratus essential oil. These data show the effectiveness of this essential oil to control the transmission of S. cucurbitacearum from seeds to plantlets, and thus define their potential use for seed decontamination in integrated pest management and organic agriculture.     

Uranium microdistribution in renal cortex of rats after chronic exposure: a study by secondary ion mass spectrometry microscopy

For a few years, the biological effects on ecosystems and the public of the bioaccumulation of radionuclides in situations of chronic exposures have been studied. This work, in keeping with the ENVIRHOM French research program, presents the uranium microdistribution by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) technique in the renal cortex of rats following chronic exposure to this low level element in the drinking water (40 mg/L) as a function to exposure duration (6, 9, 12, and 18 months). The SIMS mass spectra and 238U+ ion images produced with a SIMS CAMECA 4F-E7 show the kinetic of uranium accumulation in the different structures of the kidney. For the rats contaminated up to 12 months, the radioelement is mainly fixed in the proximal tubules; then after 18 exposure months, uranium is detected in all the segments of the nephron. This work has also shown that ion microscopy is an analytical method to detect trace elements and give elemental cartography at the micrometer scale.     

Potato By-Products as a Source of Natural Chlorogenic Acids and Phenolic Compounds: Extraction,Characterization, and Antioxidant Capacity

Total phenolic compounds (TPC) and the chlorogenic acids content of potato by-product extracts of two hydro alcoholic solvents (methanol, ethanol) and two extraction methods (maceration and heating-assisted extraction) were studied. The content of TPC in the extracts was determined spectrometrically according to the Folin–Ciocalteu procedure and calculated as chlorogenic acid equivalents. Soluble phenolic acids, especially the chlorogenic acids, were performed by HPLC. The antioxidant activity of potato by-product extracts was determined by using the total oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) method. The highest content of TPC was found in raw and lyophilized red waters when using ethanol as a solvent around 57 mg/g fresh weight. Heating-assisted extraction enhances this quantitative increasing. At the given operating conditions, unpeeled potato samples exhibit a higher TPC than peeled ones, showing that TPC are accumulated in skin tissue. The greatest amount of chlorogenic acid (Caffeoyl-Quinic Acids, 3, 4, 5 CQA), mainly the 5-CQA (870 ± 39.66 µg/g WM for wet matter versus DM dry matter), was obtained in the pellets and lyophilized fresh peels (skin vs. flesh). In addition, the greatest amounts of chlorogenic acids were found when potato peels were extracted with methanol. Heating-assisted extraction improved the chlorogenic acid concentration of the potato peel extracts. The total ORAC amounts recorded in the different potato fractions varied between 1500 and 1650 µM TE/g. They were higher than those of some fruits, vegetables, nuts, cereals, and sweet potato cultivar. The good correlation coefficient found between TPC, chlorogenic acids determination, and the ORAC capacity indicates that the TPC can be used as a good indicator of the antioxidant capacity of potato by-products.     

Recent radiation damage studies and developments of the Marlowe code

Radiation damage in materials relevant to applications evolves over time scales spanning from the femtosecond – the characteristic time for an atomic collision – to decades – the aging time expected for nuclear materials. The relevant kinetic energies of atoms span from thermal motion to the MeV range.The question motivating this contribution is to identify the relationship between elementary atomic displacements triggered by irradiation and the subsequent microstructural evolution of metals in the long term. The Marlowe code, based on the binary collision approximation (BCA) is used to simulate the sequences of atomic displacements generated by energetic primary recoils and the Object Kinetic Monte Carlo code LAKIMOCA, parameterized on a range of ab initio calculations, is used to predict the subsequent long-term evolution of point defect and clusters thereof. In agreement with full Molecular Dynamics, BCA displacement cascades in body-centered cubic (BCC) Fe and a face-centered cubic (FCC) Fe\bond Ni\bond Cr alloy display recursive properties that are found useful for predictions in the long term.The case of defects evolution in W due to external irradiation with energetic H and He is also discussed. To this purpose, it was useful to extend the inelastic energy loss model available in Marlowe up to the Bethe regime. The last version of the Marlowe code (version 15) was delivered before message passing instructions softwares (such as MPI) were available but the structure of the code was designed in such a way to permit parallel executions within a distributed memory environment. This makes possible to obtain N different cascades simultaneously using N independent nodes without any communication between processors. The parallelization of the code using MPI was recently achieved by one author of this report (C.J.O.). Typically, the parallelized version of Marlowe allows simulating millions of displacement cascades using a limited number of processors (<64) within only few hours of CPU time.