Fungi of the genus Fusarium are economically significant pathogens in most wheat-growing regions worldwide. The biocontrol agents Bacillus velezensis BZR 336 g and BZR 517 were tested for growth inhibition of F. graminearum BZR 4. The results demonstrated that the strains are capable of deforming and destroying hyphae. The modified bioautography technique showed that the strains produce iturin A and surfactin, which probably explains the mechanism of pathogen inhibition. Furthermore, lipopeptides were detected and identified in two samples by the HPLC-HRMS. Compounds such as surfactin and their isomers and homologues were found in both samples. An experiment on an artificial infectious background in a climatic chamber established that the biological effectiveness of strains is close to that of chemical and biological references. Cultivation of plants with B. velezensis showed that the strains are likely to reduce the stress load. An efficacy of up to 45.0% was determined for bioagents BZR 336 g and BZR 517 in field trials, while the yield was up to 7.9 t/ha. The use of B. velezensis BZR 336 g and BZR 517 as biocontrol agents provides an environmentally friendly approach to the control of Fusarium rots on wheat, reduction of the pesticide load, and hence quality harvest.

Arylazoimidazoles are important dyes which were intensively studied in the past. In contrast, triarylazoimidazoles (derivatives which carry aryl substituents at the imidazole core) received almost no attention in the scientific literature. Here, we report a new family of simple and easily accessible triarylazoimidazole-group 12 metal complexes, which feature highly efficient photo-luminescence emission (Φ up to 0.44). Novel compounds exhibit bright red emission in solution, which could be excited with a visible light.

2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) is one of the popular herbicides that is widely used in agriculture and can be found in food and water. A rapid and sensitive fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA) was proposed for the detection of 2,4-D in juice and water. New tracers, 2,4-D-buthylenediamin fluoresceinthiocarbamyl (2,4-D-BDF) and 2,4-D-glycine aminofluorescein (2,4-D-GAF), were obtained and characterized. Monoclonal antibodies (MAb) obtained against 2,4-D were used as a recognition reagent. The kinetics of the interaction of MAb and tracers were studied, and the kinetic parameters of their binding were calculated. High specificity of binding of tracers and MAb was shown. In this work, an approach was elaborated on to reduce the detection limit of 2,4-D by the FPIA method by changing the volume of the studied sample. The optimized FPIA in a competitive format was characterized by the LODs of 2,4-D 8 and 0.4 ng/mL and the working ranges 30–3000 ng/mL and 3–300 ng/mL for juice and water, respectively. The entire test cycle (from sample receipt to evaluation of the analysis results) took only 20 min. The test for the recovery of 2,4-D in juice and water gave values from 95 to 120%, which demonstrated the reliability of the herbicide determination in real samples.

Mass spectrometry has been an essential technique for the investigation of the metabolic pathways of living organisms since its appearance at the beginning of the 20th century. Due to its capability to resolve isotopically labeled species, it can be applied together with stable isotope tracers to reveal the transformation of particular biologically relevant molecules. However, low-resolution techniques, which were used for decades, had limited capabilities for untargeted metabolomics, especially when a large number of compounds are labelled simultaneously. Such untargeted studies may provide new information about metabolism and can be performed with high-resolution mass spectrometry. Here, we demonstrate the capabilities of high-resolution mass spectrometry to obtain insights on the metabolism of a model plant, Lepidium sativum, germinated in D₂O and H₂¹⁸O-enriched media. In particular, we demonstrated that in vivo labeling with heavy water helps to identify if a compound is being synthesized at a particular stage of germination or if it originates from seed content, and tandem mass spectrometry allows us to highlight the substructures with incorporated isotope labels. Additionally, we found in vivo labeling useful to distinguish between isomeric compounds with identical fragmentation patterns due to the differences in their formation rates that can be compared by the extent of heavy atom incorporation.

The administration of low doses of D₂O to living organisms was used for decades for the investigation of metabolic pathways and for the measurement of the turnover rate for specific compounds. Usually, the investigation of the deuterium uptake in lipids is performed by measuring the deuteration level of the palmitic acid residue using GC-MS instruments, and to our knowledge, the application of the modern untargeted LC-MS/MS lipidomics approaches was only reported a few times. Here, we investigated the deuterium uptake for >500 lipids for 13 organs and body liquids of mice (brain, lung, heart, liver, kidney, spleen, plasma, urine, etc.) after 4 days of 100% D₂O administration. The maximum deuteration level was observed in the liver, plasma, and lung, while in the brain and heart, the deuteration level was lower. Using MS/MS, we demonstrated the incorporation of deuterium in palmitic and stearic fragments in lipids (PC, PE, TAG, PG, etc.) but not in the corresponding free forms. Our results were analyzed based on the metabolic pathways of lipids.