A field experiment was carried out in Erzurum (Turkey) on winter wheat to analyse the effect of water stress at different growth stages – fully irrigated (FI), rainfed (R), early water stress (EWS), late water stress (LWS) and continuous water stress (CWS), on some quality characteristics – in the 1995–96 and 1996–97 cropping seasons. Water stress had a substantial effect on most of the quality characteristics. As averages of cropping seasons, CWS, EWS, R and LWS treatments decreased grain yields by 65.5, 40.6, 30.5 and 24.0 %, respectively, compared with the FI treatment. CWS increased grain protein content by 18.1 %, sedimentation volume by 16.5 %, wet gluten content by 21.9 % and decreased 1000‐kernel weight by 7.5 g compared with FI treatment. LWS caused an increase of 8.3 % in grain protein content, 8.7 % in sedimentation volume, 10.8 % in wet gluten content and a reduction of 3.8 g in 1000‐kernel weight compared with FI. EWS and R increased sedimentation volume and wet gluten content, but decreased 1000‐kernel weight compared with FI. The effect of LWS on grain quality was more significant than that of EWS. The results suggest that soil moisture conditions increase grain yield and kernel weight of winter wheat but decrease its quality.

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Recent evidence indicates that boron and borates may have anticarcinogenic properties. In this study, we have investigated the incidence of adverse cytological findings in cervical smears and the micronucleus (MN) frequency in women living in boron-rich and boron-poor regions. Cervical smears were prepared from 1059 women with low socioeconomic status; 472 of the women lived in relatively boronrich rural areas, while 587 lived in relatively boron-poor regions. The average and standard deviation values for the age of the women screened with the cervical Pap smear test were 41.55 6 8.38. The mean dietary intake of boron was 8.41 mg/day for women from the boron-rich regions, and 1.26 mg/day for women living in the boron-poor regions (P < 0.0001). Women from the boron-rich regions had no cytopathological indications of cervical cancer, while there were cytopathological findings for 15 women from the boronpoor areas ( 2 ¼ 10.473, P < 0.05). Sixty women, 30 from each region, were chosen for evaluating MN frequencies in exfoliated buccal cells. MN frequencies for women from the boron-rich and boron-poor regions were not significantly different (t ¼ À0.294, P > 0.05). Also, there were no significant correlations between age and MN frequency for women from both the boron-rich (r ¼ 0.133, P ¼ 0.48, P > 0.05) and boron-poor (r ¼ À0.033, P ¼ 0.861, P > 0.05) regions. The results suggest that ingestion of boron in the drinking water decreases the incidence of cervical cancer-related histopathological findings. There was no correlation between the pathological findings from the cervical smears and buccal cell MN frequency suggesting that the two study populations were exposed equally to gentotoxic agents. Nonetheless, cervical cancer-related histopathological findings should be validated by other researchers. # 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 22: 17-25, 2007.

AbstractCarcinogenic and mutagenic properties of aflatoxin species are known in literature. Their intake over a long time period might be health-dangerous for human even at trace levels. It is well known that different foodstuffs can be contaminated by aflatoxin species through growing and storage. Due to the serious health effects, sensitive determination of aflatoxin species in any matrices related with the human being is very crucial at trace levels. In literature, there are sensitive techniques to analyze the different samples for the contents of their aflatoxin species. Each technique has some advantages and disadvantages over the other techniques. This review aims to summarize the different health effects of aflatoxin species, development of analytical techniques and applications of developed techniques in a variety of matrices.

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