Ahmadullah Zahir

• Master of Engineering
• Lecturer at Afghanistan National Agricultural Science and Technology University

Food safety concerns in Afghanistan are intricate, resulting from an intersection of inadequate infrastructure, widespread food insecurity, and the prevalent presence of foodborne pathogens including coliforms, Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, and the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, which have led to associated illn...

The overuse of antimicrobials in food-producing animals, particularly poultry, has led to growing concerns about multidrug microbial resistance, posing significant risks to both human and animal health. Subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics have traditionally been used to enhance growth and improve economic efficiency in poultry farming. However, the...

Signal transduction is crucial for communication and cellular response in microbial communities. Consortia rely on it for effective communication, responding to changing environmental conditions, establishing community structures, and performing collective behaviors. Microbial signal transduction can be through quorum sensing (QS), two-component si...

This study investigates CCHF epidemiological cases at a national level from 2007 to 2024, focusing on tick species identification, CCHFV molecular detection, intrinsic, and extrinsic factors associated with the disease's distribution in domestic animals (cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and chickens) in Kunduz and Takhar provinces of Afghanistan. Anal...

Guava fruit is widely cultivated around the world. This fruit is enriched in fibre, vitamins (A, B and C), minerals and bioactive compounds. This study is aimed towards increasing the nutritional quality of cookies by fortification with guava cultivar (Punjab Pink) flour. Guava flour (GF) was supplemented at 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% in whole wheat flou...

The agri-food sector is pressured to produce more livestock products with fewer resources due to global drivers like rapid population growth and challenging climate changes. Food insecurity can lead to hunger, malnutrition, and famine over time. Recently, half of Afghanistan’s population has been food insecure due to COVID-19 and climate change, as...

Thermal treatment of food can lead to the formation of potentially harmful chemicals, known as process contaminants. These are adventitious contaminants that are formed in food during processing and preparation. Various food processing techniques, such as heating, drying, grilling, and fermentation, can generate hazardous chemicals such as acrylami...

Thermal treatment of food can lead to the formation of potentially harmful chemicals, known as process contaminants. These are adventitious contaminants that are formed in food during processing and preparation. Various food processing techniques, such as heating, drying, grilling, and fermentation, can generate hazardous chemicals such as acrylami...

Antibiotics are natural, semi-synthetic, or chemical compounds that have anti-microbial activity and are used in livestock and poultry production for a variety of reasons, including therapeutic and growth promotion. The use of antibiotics in poultry production has been associated with the development of resistant bacteria. The present study attempt...

Background: In developing countries, one of the most prevalent parasitic diseases is Haemonchosis. This infectious disease mostly caused severe clinical symptoms and ultimately death in small and large-scale ruminants. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional investigation was carried out to seek the prevalence of Haemonchus spp. in slaughtered she...

opper (Cu) is an essential component of various metabolic enzymes and its inclusion in the poultry diets in the form of inorganic salts is a common practice. However, due to low bioavailability of Cu from inorganic sources, its high excretion to environment is a concern. This study was conducted to assess the reduced level of dietary organic and na...

Background: In recent years, the role of novel foods in public health has rapidly grown due to increased life expectancy, rising medication costs and consumers' focus on obtaining health benefits. Methods: This study evaluates the acid production, microbial growth, physicochemical and textural properties of common bean-fortified yogurt (CBWFY) duri...

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in developing novel foods with improved health and nutritional characteristics, particularly through the supplementation and development of dairy products with plant-based ingredients. In this study, the response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to optimize the ingredient formulation and proc...

Integrated metabolomic and metagenomic techniques were used to study the metabolite dynamics and phy-tochemistry of a soy whey-based beverage bio-transformed by water kefir consortium. The UPLC-MS/MS and HPLC-ESI-MS metabolite quantification and the OPLS-DA result showed that the kefir consortium induced a significant change in the metabolite compo...

This study aims to investigate the beneficial effects of two cultivars of bok-choy, ‘Suzhouqing’ (green cultivar) and ‘Ziluolan’ (purple cultivar), on growth performance, lipid metabolism and related gene expressions in Syrian golden hamsters.

Yogurt supplemented with plant source proteins are received increased attention but few studies investigated effect of plant source proteins supplementation on protein digestibility and releasing of bioactive peptides. In this study, a residue rich in protein derived from common beans starch production, Common Bean Whey (CBW), was applied in develo...

Simple Summary Denatonium benzoate is a strong bitter taste receptor agonist, extensively used for its activation of different cell pathways. Taste signals have been associated to food recognition and avoidance, and bitter taste provokes an aversive reaction and is assumed to protect chickens from consuming poisons and harmful toxic substances. The...