Institut National Polytechnique Félix Houphouët-Boigny

Antimicrobial resistance is accelerating the search for sustainable alternatives to growth-promoting antibiotics (GPAs) in tropical poultry farming. The objective of this study was to evaluate three indigenous strains of lactic acid bacteria (LABs): Enterococcus faecium JK96, Pediococcus acidilactici JK148, and Lactobacillus pentosus JK151, isolated from the gastrointestinal tract of free-range, native Ivory Coast chickens, as probiotic candidates for commercial broiler production. To this end, in a 42-day completely randomized trial, 480 one-day-old Cobb 500 broiler chicks were divided into six treatment groups: three individual probiotic strains, a combination of several strains (1:1:1), an antibiotic growth promoter (Tylo-dox), and an untreated control group. Each group consisted of two pens of 40 chickens each. Freeze-dried probiotic powders (viable cell count: 1.0 × 10¹⁰ CFU/g) were administered daily in drinking water at a rate of 0.5 g per 10 L. Growth performance, blood biochemical parameters, and intestinal microbiota were assessed in 42-day-old chickens. The results of this study showed that probiotic supplementation significantly improved average daily gain (ADG) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) compared to the control and antibiotic-treated groups. The Lactobacillus pentosus JK151 strain achieved the highest ADG on day 28 (108.27 g/day vs. 83.83 g/day in the control group), maintained an FCR below 2.0 throughout the finishing period, and exhibited no cumulative mortality, compared to 5.0

Contexte : Les aliments pour poulet de chair en Côte d’Ivoire, comme dans d'autres régions du monde, sont préparés en utilisant le maïs comme principale source d'énergie. Cependant, compte tenu des conditions environnementales et des mauvaises conditions de conservation du maïs local, la contamination de cette matière première par les mycotoxines est fréquente et entraîne des effets négatifs sur la santé, ainsi qu’une baisse des performances de croissance des animaux. Objectif : L’objectif de cette étude était d’évaluer l’effet de la supplémentation d’un aliment contaminé par des mycotoxines par une solution anti-biotoxine multi-ingrédients à base de Bacillus subtilis sur les performances et l’état sanitaire des poulets de chair. Méthode : Un aliment positif aux mycotoxines (témoin) ou sa supplémentation avec une solution anti-biotoxine (SIB), associant plusieurs constituants (argiles, extraits de plantes, paroi de levures, bactéries de souche Bacillus subtilis) (témoin + un ajout de SIB à 0,15 %) ont servi à alimenter 600 poussins chair (Arbor acres) d’un jour durant 42 jours à Yamoussoukro (Côte d’Ivoire). Résultats : À 21 jours d’élevage, une réduction significative de 66 % des résidus de citrinine dans le sérum a été enregistré chez les poulets du lot (SIB) (p < 0,05). Par ailleurs, une réduction de 27 % de l’aspartate aminotransférase a été enregistrée chez ces mêmes poulets à 21 jour. Une augmentation de 3 % du poids vif individuel et une réduction des taux résiduels de citrinine et d’acide cyclopiazonique ont également été déterminées chez ces derniers au terme de l’essai (p < 0,05). Conclusions : Les résultats de cet essai indiquent que la supplémentation du régime témoin par la solution SIB à 0,15 % permet d’améliorer la santé et les performances pondérales des poulets de chair soumis à une alimentation contaminée par les mycotoxines.

Post-baccalaureate guidance has a lasting impact on learners’ trajectories. To address this challenge, the multinomial logistic regression model developed by previous authors recommends a post-baccalaureate track based on academic grades and transversal competencies, with high accuracy. Despite this performance, the RLM has three structural limitations: socio-contextual blindness, the absence of predictive uncertainty quantification, and temporal rigidity. To overcome them, this article proposes a Contextual Bayesian Model (MBC) that enriches the input vector with five socio-educational determinants (family income, parents’ socio-professional category and educational attainment, geographic area, digital access), treats the parameters as Gaussian random variables conditioned on context, introduces a confidence index based on Shannon entropy, and enables sequential -learning updates. Evaluated under conditions identical to those of the multinomial logistic regression model (RLM), on the same synthetic dataset, the MBC markedly improves accuracy and stability, eliminates cases of high predictive uncertainty, and its superiority is confirmed by a paired t-test. A first empirical validation on 209 candidates admitted to ESATIC, restricted to a binary SM/SP choice, confirms its operation beyond the synthetic setting. To our knowledge, it constitutes the first contextual Bayesian extension of an AI-based post-baccalaureate guidance system in the Ivorian context.

Much of the literature has associated women’s participation in household decision-making with better health outcomes. In Côte d’Ivoire, a plump body with particularly prominent hips and buttocks has long been the predominant standard of beauty for women. The prevalence of overweight is greater among women, thereby increasing their vulnerability to life-threatening illnesses. We investigated the association between women’s autonomy in household decision-making and overweight, using the most recent demographic and health survey. In our estimation models, we included region fixed effects to account for unobserved socioeconomic and cultural differences across geographic areas. Overall, we found that women with low autonomy and those with high autonomy were more likely to be overweight than those with no autonomy. Further investigations suggest no association between autonomy and overweight for women in urban areas. However, for women in rural areas, autonomy was associated with a higher likelihood of being overweight, particularly for those with no formal education. These findings suggest that programs promoting women’s autonomy in household decision-making should be accompanied by targeted health education for rural women, to raise awareness of the health risks associated with being overweight.

Abstract Secondary forest succession following agricultural abandonment is a dominant land-use transition across the tropics, yet whether soil microbial communities recover toward old-growth forest reference states remains poorly understood, particularly in West Africa. Here, we investigated the successional dynamics of bacterial and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal communities along post-agricultural chronosequences spanning 1 to 43 years across six classified forests in Côte d’Ivoire, using Bayesian hierarchical models applied to amplicon sequencing data. Both guilds attained moderate to high alpha diversity within the first decade of succession; AM fungal diversity showed moderate evidence of age-related increase thereafter while bacterial diversity showed no directional trend. Pairwise turnover analyses revealed progressive internal convergence in AM fungal communities with plots farther apart in successional time becoming more compositionally similar, while bacterial communities showed only a weak and uncertain tendency in the same direction. Beta-dispersion modelling further indicated progressive within-forest homogenisation of AM fungal communities across abundance-weighted metrics, while bacterial assemblages showed no such stabilisation. Despite this internal convergence, compositional distances to old-growth reference plots remained persistently high for both guilds throughout the chronosequence, with no statistical evidence of recovery toward old-growth states across any dissimilarity metric or guild within the 40-year window. Indicator species analysis identified no robust stage-specific taxa after correction for multiple testing. These results indicate that microbial succession in postagricultural West African forests is characterised by rapid early reorganisation followed by stabilisation into site-specific assemblages that remain persistently distinct from old-growth reference communities. This outcome challenges the direct application of classical vegetation successional theory to soil microbiomes and indicates that no detectable recovery toward old-growth microbial community states was observed within the 40-year chronosequence.