Biodiversity of toxigenic fungi in the food chain and the co-occurrence of mycotoxins
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abstract
Filamentous fungi are ubiquitous in Nature and may be found in any food crop, either in the field or during storage. With the exponential growth of the population,
there is a worldwide challenge to reduce food losses. Food contamination by fungicauses great economic costs and seve ral health threats due to the toxicity and
pathogenicity of some species. The biodiversity of this community, and the
dynamics of the water activity, temperature and availability of carbon sources
e volution, durillg the growing season, as well as in storage, determines the
competitiveness of each species against ot her co-occurring fungai species.
Some of these fungi are capable of producing a wide range of secondary
metabolites - mycotoxins, which may accumulate in food chain, be resilient during
food processing, and persist in the final food product. Contamination of food
products with fungi is frequent , affecting food security and food safety. lhe ability
of the different fungai species to compete under available conditions will influence
the cocktail of mycotoxin that may occur.
lhe study of the funqal biodiversity have been mainly carried out by surveyinq
culturable strains (culture-dependent approaches), but recently metage nomics
approaches have been used, enabling the possibility of spotting mycotoxigenic
fungai strains, that are not easy to detect and isolate by conventional means.
In this presentation, the biodiversity of fungai species in the food chain will be
discussed, under a perspective of the co-occurrence of mycotoxins.
This st udy was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and lechnology (FCT)
under the scope of the strategic funding of UIDB/04469!1020 (CEB) and UID/AGR/oo69o!101.9
(CIMO) unit s. We also thank the FCl for the Ph.D. s.cholarship given to Teresa Vale Dias
(202o.oS849·BD).
