Explores toxin sources, mechanisms, routes of exposure and absorption, and their chemical and biochemical components to prevent contamination of food products and reduce epidemics of foodborne disease.

Since the classical work of Rosalyn Yalow and Solomon Berson on the radioim munoassay of insulin in the late 1950s, which so brilliantly opened new domains in the diagnostics sector, immunoassays have been well received as a diagnostic and research tool in several disciplines of life sciences. The economics, rapidity, sensitivity, specificity, and the easy-to-use approach of immunodiagnostic tests are widely recognized, and have had a tremendous impact on clinical, agricultural, food, veterinary, and environmental diagnostics. At present, in the clinical diag nostic sector alone, immunoassay...

The present world population of about five billion and its projected growth cre- ate enonnous pressures and demands for food and industrial raw materials. It is to crop plants, one of our precious few renewable resources, that we must look to meet most of these needs. Globally, about 88% of our caloric requirements and 90% of our protein ultimately derive from plant sources-ample evidence of their importance to humankind. Our survival will therefore continue to de- pend on the world's largest and certainly most important industry: agriculture. Yet in spite of our long history of domestication...