Mycotoxins in maize: mitigation actions, with a chain management approach
Maize is the principal staple food/feed crop exposed to mycotoxins, and the co-occurrence of multiple mycotoxins and their metabolites has been well documented. This review presents the infection cycle, ecology, and plant-pathogen interactions of Aspergillus and Fusarium species in maize, and current knowledge on maize chain management to mitigate the occurrence of aflatoxins and fumonisins. Preventive actions include at pre-harvest, as part of cropping systems, at harvest, and at postharvest, through storage, processing, and detoxification to minimize consumer exposure. Preventive actions in the field have been recognized as efficient for reducing the entrance of mycotoxins into production…
MycoKey Round Table Discussions of Future Directions in Research on Chemical Detection Methods, Genetics and Biodiversity of Mycotoxins
MycoKey, an EU-funded Horizon 2020 project, includes a series of “Roundtable Discussions” to gather information on trending research areas in the field of mycotoxicology. This paper includes summaries of the Roundtable Discussions on Chemical Detection and Monitoring of mycotoxins and on the role of genetics and biodiversity in mycotoxin production. Discussions were managed by using the nominal group discussion technique, which generates numerous ideas and provides a ranking for those identified as the most important. Four questions were posed for each research area, as well as two questions that were common to both discussions. Test kits, usually antibody based, were one major focus of the…
Open Field Study of Some Zea mays Hybrids, Lipid Compounds and Fumonisins Accumulation
Lipid molecules are increasingly recognized as signals exchanged by organisms interacting in pathogenic and/or symbiotic ways. Some classes of lipids actively determine the fate of the interactions. Host cuticle/cell wall/membrane components such as sphingolipids and oxylipins may contribute to determining the fate of host–pathogen interactions. In the present field study, we considered the relationship between specific sphingolipids and oxylipins of different hybrids of Zea mays and fumonisin by F. verticillioides, sampling ears at different growth stages from early dough to fully ripe. The amount of total and free fumonisin differed significantly between hybrids and increased significantl…
Mycotoxin mixtures in food and feed: a holistic, innovative, flexible modelling approach for risk assessment MYCHIF
Mycotoxin contamination can occur in many agricultural products both destined to food and feed. Mycotoxins are produced as the result of fungal metabolism and plant-pathogen interaction. Therefore, many structurally-related congeners, defined as modified mycotoxins are generated by plant &/or fungi metabolism, or food processing, and coexist with their native forms. Studies investigating the co-occurrence of multiple-mycotoxins reported 75%100% of samples containing more than one mycotoxin, referring to native compounds and 100% reported multiple modified forms. A major challenge in a risk assessment is to depict the biosynthesis of mycotoxin mixtures and their realistic occurrence. Over th…