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El-Nagerabi SAF, Elshafie AE, Al-Hinai UA. 2014. The mycobiota associated with paper archives and their potential control. Nusantara Bioscience 6: 19-25. Historical collections kept in archives and libraries represent a cultural and artistic heritage of innumerable value. Recently in Oman, more than seventy thousand documents were collected from different countries and displayed as archives showed evident sign of mold contamination. The objectives of the present study were to screen these archives for mold invasion and a test for the effective control measure. For this, 102 samples were collected from documents of different sources and incubated on potato dextrose agar (PDA) at ambient temperature (25 ○C±2). The isolated fungi were identified microscopically and confirmed with DNA extraction, PCR and DNA sequencing. Twenty-two fungal species belonging to 11 genera were recovered. The genus Penicillium (46.8%) was the most prevalent, followed by Aspergillus (30.7%), Cladosporium (7%), Rhizopus (4%), and Chaetomium (3.5%) whereas the remaining 6 genera represent only 8%. Eleven species were previously reported from similar substrates, whereas 11 species and one genus are new records for the mycoflora of archives. Sodium hypochlorite at 0.3-5.2% completely inhibited the fungal growth of the 10 tested fungal isolates with minimum inhibition concentration at 0.7%. Fumigation of books with 0.7-5.2% sodium hypochlorite completely inhibited all fungi without evident damage of the documents or ink discoloration. Therefore, sodium hypochlorite can be recommended as effective and eco-friendly disinfectant for archives comparable to other hazardous chemicals.

El-Nagerabi SAF, Elshafie AE, Alburashdi H. 2014. Hydrophysical, chemical and microbial properties of imported green waste composts. Nusantara Bioscience 6: 13-18. To study the hydrophysical, chemical and microbial properties of the imported green waste composts (GWCs) and their suitability as an alternative to agrochemicals, four types of GWCs (Florabella, Mikskaar, Potgrond, and Shamrock) were selected. All composts showed normal physical properties, except weed seeds in Shamrock. The germination indexes comparable to the standard (90%) were 100% for Mikskaar followed by Florabella (97%), Potgrond (95%), and Shamrock (92%). Variations in physicochemical properties were shown as acidic pH 5.1-6.5 (standard 5-8), electrical conductivity (EC) 0.8-1.8 mScm-1 (standard 0.0-4.0 mScm-1), moisture content (MC) 54-70.5% (standard 35-60%) and water holding capacity (WHC%) 400-800%. The chemical properties were expressed as ammonia concentrations 2871-6565 mg kg-1 (standard