says John Bowman, a senior agricultural advisor with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), development experts worry that aflatoxins undermine efforts to base food aid on local agriculture--a cheaper, more sustainable approach to aid that both avoids flooding developing country markets with imported grain and breaks dependencies on foreign imports. According to Gary Payne, a plant pathologist and professor at North Carolina State University, A. flavus has an unusual heat tolerance; it thrives in temperatures approaching 100°F and continues to grow even at 118°F, which is much hotter than most other fungi can tolerate.