This study aimed to develop a precision model between inputs and yield, and also between inputs (indirect emissions) and environmental final index (EFI) in onion farms through regression models (classic computing) and artificial intelligence models (soft computing). Required data were collected through direct measurement and questionnaire. To this end, 85 and 70 questionnaires were distributed among onion farmers in Fereydan and Falavarjan regions (Isfahan province, center of Iran), respectively. In the Fereydan region, the total energy input, onion yield, and water use efficiency (WUE) were obtained as 239496 MJ.ha-1, 97658 kg.ha-1, and 9.08 kg.m-3, respectively, while for Falavarjan region, these were obtained as 232221 MJ.ha-1, 94485 kg.ha-1, and 10.8 kg m-3, respectively. Electricity and diesel fuel were the most widely used inputs in the study areas. Based on the results related to the environmental indices, EFI was obtained as 547.38 and 363.54 pPt.t-1 for Fereydan and Falavarjan regions, respectively. The contribution of direct (such as CO2 and NH3) and indirect emissions (especially electricity) to the total EFI was 74 and 26% in Fereydan and 63 and 37% in Falavarjan region, respectively. Results related to the Cobb-Douglas regression model (CDR) showed that the effects of seed, manure, and labor on the onion yield were significant at 1% level of confidence. However, despite meeting the regression assumptions, the CDR model has predicted the yield and EFI with lower accuracy and higher error compared to artificial neural network models (ANNs), multi-layer perceptron (MLP), and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). Soft computing (artificial intelligence) modeling showed that the ANFIS model (Grid Partitioning (GP)) has higher computational speed an lower error compared to multi-layer perceptron (MLP) models. Therefore, the comparison of the best GP and MLP models showed that the root-mean-square-error (RMSE) was obtained as 10.649 and 52.321 kg.ha-1 for yield and 25.08 and 40.94 pPt.ha-1 for EFI, respectively.

Health conscious and environmentally aware consumers are purchasing more organically produced foods. They prefer organic fruits and leafy vegetables as these are much less likely to have been exposed to contaminants such as pesticides. The detection of fraudulent activity in this area is difficult to undertake, because many chemical plant protection treatments degrade very quickly or can be washed off to remove evidence of their existence. It was found that when combining DART-MS with a compact, inexpensive and robust single quadrupole mass spectrometer, it was possible to differentiate organic from conventional leeks with 93.8% to 100% accuracy. ICP-MS results showed similar performance, with an ability to differentiate conventional from organic leeks with 92.5% to 98.1% accuracy. This study has paved the way for the certification of vegetables as being organically produced. The next step is to create data libraries to support the roll out of the methodologies described.

The carbamazepine (CBZ) is one of the most frequently detected anticonvulsant drugs in water bodies. Although there are reports of its ecotoxicological effects in the scientific literature, toxicity studies have not focused on establishing the mechanism by which CBZ produces its effect at environmentally relevant concentrations. The objective of this work was to evaluate cyto-genotoxicity and its relationship with oxidative stress produced by carbamazepine in the Allium cepa model. The cytotoxicity and genotoxicity, as well as the biomarkers of oxidative stress were analyzed in the roots of A. cepa, exposed to 1 and 31.36 μg L-1 after 2, 6, 12, 24, 48 and 72 h. The results show that genotoxic capacity of this drug in the roots of A. cepa is related to the generation of oxidative stress, in particular with production of hydroperoxides and oxidized proteins. Also, the cytotoxic effect has a high correlation with DNA damage. The results of the present study clearly indicate that bioassays with sensitive plants such as A. cepa are useful and complementary tools to evaluate the environmental impact of emerging contaminants.

Studies show an inverse association between onion and garlic intake and risk of cancers of the lung, prostate, and stomach. There is limited evidence on the association between onion and garlic intake and breast cancer. We assessed this association in a population-based, case-control study in Puerto Rico. Incident, primary breast cancer cases (n = 314) were identified among women aged 30-79 from hospital and clinic records. Controls (n = 346) were women with no history of cancer other than nonmelanoma skin cancer, residents of the same area. Dietary intake was estimated using a food frequency questionnaire. Total onion and garlic intake included sofrito (a popular garlic- and onion-based condiment) intake frequency. Unconditional logistic regression assessed the association between onion and garlic consumption and breast cancer adjusting for age, education, parity, family history, body mass index, age at menarche, total energy, and smoking. Inverse associations with breast cancer were observed for moderate (OR (odds ratio) = 0.59, 95% CI (confidence interval): 0.35, 1.01) and high consumption (OR = 0.51, 95% CI: 0.30, 0.87) compared to low consumption of onion and garlic (Ptrend = 0.02). Results were similar when stratified by menopausal status. Study results suggest that high onion and garlic consumption is protective against breast cancer in this population.

Toxic trace element (TTE) contamination in urban soils may pose potential health risks, especially in cities with previous industrial activities. This study aimed to investigate soil contamination in urban allotments in Sheffield, the uptake of TTEs in autumn and spring sown onions (Allium cepa), and their potential risks on human health via consumption of the crops. Paired soil and plant samples were taken in triplicates from four private allotments to assess potentially elevated levels of lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), arsenic (As), and chromium (Cr). These elements in soils exceeded the ambient background levels for England. Both Pb and As exceeded some UK and EU soil tolerable limits. Concentration factors (CF) were calculated as the ratio of trace element in the plant as compared to that in the soil, and uptake rates were in the order Zn>Cu>Cr>Pb>As. Concentrations were higher for most TTEs in spring sown onions (SSO), and had significantly higher CF (p < 0.05) for Pb and Cr than autumn sown onions (ASO), whereas the opposite was true for As. Toxic elements in plants did not exceed FAO/WHO intake limits when considering TTE content per plant and consumption rates. Human health risk assessment calculations using target hazard quotients (THQ) and hazard indexes (HI) indicated that consuming onions alone did not pose an immediate health risk.

In this study, we were interested in comparing the amino acid profile in a specific variety of onion, Rossa da inverno sel. Rojo Duro, produced in two different Italian sites: the Cannara (Umbria region) and Imola (Emilia Romagna region) sites. Onions were cultivated in a comparable manner, mostly in terms of the mineral fertilization, seeding, and harvesting stages, as well as good weed control. Furthermore, in both regions, the plants were irrigated by the water sprinkler method and subjected to similar temperature and weather conditions. A further group of Cannara onions that were grown by micro-irrigation was also evaluated. After the extraction of the free amino acid mixture, an ion-pairing reversed-phase (IP-RP) HPLC method allowed for the separation and the evaporative light scattering detection of almost all the standard proteinogenic amino acids. However, only the peaks corresponding to leucine (Leu), phenylalanine (Phe), and tryptophan (Trp), were present in all the investigated samples and they were unaffected from the matrix interfering peaks. The use of the beeswarm/box plots revealed that the content of Leu and Phe were markedly influenced by the geographical origin of the onions (with *** p.

Red ceramic industry in southern Brazil commonly uses wood biomass as furnace fuel generating great amounts of gas emissions and ash. To avoid their impact on atmospheric environment, wet scrubbing is currently being applied in several plants. However, the water leachate formed could be potentially toxic and not managed as a common water-based effluent, since the resulting wastewater could carry many toxic compounds derived from wood pyrolysis. There is a lack of studies regarding this kind of effluent obtained specifically and strictly from wooden-based biomass furnaces. Therefore, we conducted an evaluation of toxic and genotoxic potentials of this particular type of wet gas scrubber effluent. Physical-chemical analysis showed high contents of several contaminants, including phenols, sulphates and ammoniacal nitrogen, as well as the total and suspended solids. The effluent cause significant toxicity towards microcrustacean Artemia sp. (LC50 = 34.4%) and Daphnia magna (Toxicity Factor = 6 on average) and to higher plants (Lactuca sativa L. and Allium cepa L.) with acute and sub-acute effects in several parameters. Besides, using plasmid DNA, significant damage was observed in concentrations 12.5% and higher. In cellular DNA, concentrations starting from 12.5% and 6.25% showed significant increase in Damage Index (DI) and Damage Frequency (DF), respectively. The results altogether suggest that the effluent components, such phenols, produced by wood combustion can be volatilized, water scrubbed, resulting in a toxic and genotoxic effluent which could contaminate the environment.

In order to choose a sensitive, selective, simple, rapid, cost-effective and reliable analytical method for a given complex sample, a strategy was proposed for the evaluation of an analytical approach to determining multi-pesticide residue in complex agricultural product matrices, using leek as an example. In this work, the matrix effect of most of pesticides were in the range of -50% to -90%. A simple thin layer chromatography (TLC) was used to evaluate the effect of cleanup. The results agree well with that of matrix effect described above. More than 91% of the investigated compounds achieved recoveries were in the range of 70-120%. The limits of detection and limits of quantification were in the range of 0.1-3.5ng/g and 0.4-11.5ng/g, respectively. The strategy can be used to analyze multi-pesticide residue or related chemicals in diverse agricultural product matrices to provide technical guidance in choosing an analytical approach.

The protective effect of Allium vegetables against carcinogenesis has been reported in experimental studies particularly focusing on the gut. Therefore, we conducted a hospital-based matched case-control study to explore the association between dietary Allium consumption and risk of breast cancer among Iranian women in northwest Iran.
A validated, quantitative, food frequency questionnaire was completed in 285 women (aged 25-65 years old) newly diagnosed with histopathologically confirmed breast cancer (grade II, III or clinical stage II, III) in Tabriz, northwest Iran, and the completed questionnaires were included in an age- and regional-matched hospital based-control study. The odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were estimated using conditional logistic regression models.
Multivariate analysis showed that there was a negative association between the consumption of raw onion and risk of breast cancer after adjustment for covariates (OR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.40-1.00); however, this association was insignificant. On the other hand, there was a positive association between consumption of cooked onion and risk of breast cancer, after adjustment for covariates (OR, 1.54; 95% CI, 1.02-2.32). However, reduced risk of breast cancer was associated with higher consumption of garlic and leek with adjusted ORs of 0.41 (95% CI, 0.20-0.83) and 0.28 (95% CI, 0.15-0.51), respectively.
Our findings suggest that high consumption of certain Allium vegetables, in particular garlic and leek, may reduce the risk of breast cancer, while high consumption of cooked onion may be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.

METHODS: To provide new epidemiological data and summarize evidence on the association between allium vegetable intake and gastric cancer risk.
RESULTS: Data were from an Italian case-control study including 230 cases and 547 controls. Odds ratios were derived using multiple logistic regression. We combined results from all published studies using random-effect models. In our case-control study, the odds ratios were 0.59 (95% confidence interval, CI, 0.25-1.41) for ≥2 portions of onion per week, 0.69 (95% CI, 0.41-1.15) for high garlic intake, and 0.70 (95% CI, 0.39-1.28) for frequent use of both onion and garlic. Besides our study, 22 case-control and four cohort studies were included in the meta-analyses (>10 000 cases). The pooled relative risks for the highest versus lowest intake category were 0.78 (95% CI, 0.67-0.91) for allium vegetables (ten case-control and four cohort studies), 0.60 (95% CI, 0.47-0.76) for garlic (12 case-control studies), and 0.55 (95% CI, 0.41-0.73) for onion (13 case-control studies). The pooled relative risk for high allium vegetable intake from the four cohorts was 1.02 (95% CI, 0.88-1.18).
CONCLUSIONS: High allium vegetable consumption is likely to reduce gastric cancer risk. This evidence is derived mainly from case-control studies. Further data from large cohorts are desirable for conclusive confirmation.