Common bunt is a major disease of wheat worldwide that reduces crop yields and grain quality. Rapid and sensitive quantitative detection methods are required to diagnose and monitor this disease in wheat management programs and to ensure seed quality. In this study, an immunomagnetic beads-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (IMBs-ELISA) was developed for the detection of Tilletia foetida teliospores in wheat and flour. An anti-T. foetida teliospores polyclonal antibody bound to immunomagnetic beads was used as the capture probe, and a polyclonal antibody labeled with horseradish peroxidase was used as the detector probe. The capture and detection conditions for the target spores were optimized to achieve the best determination results. Under optimal conditions, the proposed method took less than 2 hours to complete. Its limit of detection was 300 teliospores per gram. The critical reaction in this IMBs-ELISA occurred on magnetic beads. This not only simplified the traditional ELISA process, but also shortened the detection time. This study has expanded the application of the IMBs-ELISA method to fungal spore detection. This method has potential applications in agriculture and seed management.

The conversion of electromagnetic energy into heat by nanomagnets has the potential to be a powerful, non-invasive technique for cancer therapy by hyperthermia and hyperthermia-based drug release, while temperature controllability and targeted heating are challenges to developing applications of such magnetic inductive hyperthermia. This study was designed to control the hyperthermia position and area using a combination of alternating current (AC) and a static magnetic field. MnZn ferrite (MZF) nanoparticles which exhibited excellent hyperthermia properties were first prepared and characterized as an inductive heating mediator. We built model static magnetic fields simply using a pair of permanent magnets and studied the static magnetic field distributions by measurements and numerical simulations. The influence of the transverse static magnetic fields on hyperthermia properties was then investigated on MZF magnetic fluid, gel phantoms and SMMC-7721 cells in vitro. The results showed a static magnetic field can inhibit the temperature rise of MZF nanoparticles in an AC magnetic field. But in the uneven static magnetic field formed by a magnet pair with repelling poles face-to-face, the heating area can be restricted in a central low static field; meanwhile the side effects of hyperthermia can be reduced by a surrounding high static field. As a result we can position the hyperthermia area, protect the non-therapeutic area, and reduce the side effects just by using a well-designed combination of AC and static field.