BACKGROUND Toxoplasma gondii is a zoonotic pathogen that can infect a range of animals and humans. Ingestion of T. gondii oocysts in soil is a significant transmission route for humans and animals acquiring toxoplasmosis. In the present study, we developed a new semi-nested PCR method to determine T. gondii oocysts distribution in soils in northwestern China. RESULTS The one tube semi-nested ...

Heavy metal contamination of soils has become a serious problem in industrial or agricultural areas. Soils polluted with heavy metals pose a significant health risk to humans as well as plants and animals, often requiring soil remediation practices. Synthetic chelates such as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) have been shown to enhance phytoextraction of some heavy metals from contaminated...

mulches bring several benefits to lettuce cultivation.a study on the lettuce ‘red rapids’ has been conducted to determine the influence of the different colored plastic mulch on its growth. the experiment consisted of five color treatments as follows; treatment 1- metallic silver (control), treatment 2- red, treatment 3- orange, treatment 4- yellow and treatment 5-green. results showed that the...

One of the main current concerns regarding soil quality is the presence of trace metals that constitutes a risk of toxicity for plants and animals [1, 5, 7, 11]. Trace metals in soils can have either a lithogenic origin when they inherit from the lithosphere or an anthropogenic origin when they result from man’s activities (mining, metallurgy of non-ferrous metals, combustion of fossil energy s...

The introduction of behavioural aspects of soil animals in ecological risk assessment would allow us to better assess soil quality, all the more if a range of animal populations are considered. We compared the avoidance behaviour of several strains of springtails (Arthropoda: Collembola) obtained from different soils. Naphthalene, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), widely represented in s...

The aim of this study was to estimate the bioavailability of essential (Zn, Cu) and non-essential metals (Cd, Pb) to the earthworm Lumbricus rubellus exposed to soils originating from a gradient of metal pollution in Southern Poland. Metal uptake and elimination kinetics were determined and related to soils properties. Experimental results were compared with tissue metal concentrations observed...