Research Publications (Food Safety)

The contamination of food and feeds with mycotoxins poses a global health risk to humans and animals, with major economic consequences. Good agricultural and manufacturing practices can help control mycotoxin contamination. Since these actions are not always effective, several methods of decontamination have also been developed, including physical, chemical, and biological methods. Biological decontamination using microorganisms has revealed new opportunities.

Author(s): Zsolt Csenki, Edina Garai, Zelma Faisal, Rita Csepregi, Kitti Garai, Dóra Kánainé Sipos, István Szabó, Tamás Kőszegi, Árpád Czéh, Tamás Czömpöly, Krisztián Kvell, Miklós Poór

by Xueqian Dong, Wei Wang, Tianyi Jiang, Yanmin Zhang, Hongyu Han, Yonggang Zhang, Chunyu Yang

Author(s): Kiomars Sharafi, Behzad Karami Matin, Abdullah Khalid Omer, Borhan Mansouri, Hamed Soleimani, Nazir Fattahi, Houshmand Sharafi, Amir Kiani

Ochratoxins (OTs) with nephrotoxic, immunosuppressive, teratogenic, and carcinogenic properties are thermostable fungal subordinate metabolites. OTs contamination can occur before or after harvesting, during the processing, packing, distribution, and storage of food. Mold development and mycotoxin contamination can occur in any crop or cereal that has not been stored properly for long periods of time and is subjected to high levels of humidity and temperature.

The main component of creosote obtained from dry wood distillation—guaiacol—is a natural antioxidant that has been widely used in pharmaceutical and food preservation applications. However, the antifungal mechanism of guaiacol against phytopathogens remains unclear. In this study, we found that guaiacol exerts inhibitory effects against mycelial growth, conidial formation and germination, and deoxynivalenol (DON) biosynthesis in Fusarium graminearum in a dose-dependent manner.

The aim of this study was to identify and compare surface mycobiota of traditional and industrial Croatian dry-fermented sausage Kulen, especially toxicogenic species, and to detect contamination with mycotoxins recognized as the most important for meat products.

Journal of Food Safety, EarlyView. Data regarding ochratoxin A (OTA) and zearalenone (ZEA) contamination in feed in South China are limited. Here, we evaluated OTA and ZEA contamination in 514 poultry feed samples collected from South China. We validated a modified QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) method and the mycotoxins were quantified by high-pressure liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry.

Abstract

Fusarium graminearum and Fusarium verticillioides are fungal pathogens that cause diseases in cereal crops, such as Fusarium head blight (FHB), seedling blight, and stalk rot. They also produce a variety of mycotoxins that reduce crop yields and threaten human and animal health. Several strategies for controlling these diseases have been developed.

Bottle gourd seeds are surrounded by innumerable bioactive components of phytochemicals. This work aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of bottle gourd extracts as antimicrobial and an-ti-mycotoxigenic against toxigenic fungi and mycotoxins. Polar and nonpolar extracts were made from the seeds. The polar eco-friendly extract was prepared by an ultrasonication-assisted technique utilizing aqueous isopropanol (80%), whereas the non-polar extract was obtained using petroleum ether (40–60).

International Journal of Food Science & Technology, Accepted Article. Mycotoxins are a significant threat to food safety and quality. Over the years, mycotoxins have been detected in almost all food and feed crops without any regional barrier. Conventional techniques for decontamination of mycotoxin involve physical, chemical, and biological methods, but these technologies often impact the quality of food in terms of changes in nutritional and sensory attributes.

Author(s): J. Tolosa, Y. Rodríguez-Carrasco, M.J. Ruiz, P. Vila-Donat

Cereals represent a widely consumed food commodity that might be contaminated by mycotoxins, resulting not only in potential consumer health risks upon dietary exposure but also significant financial losses due to contaminated batch disposal. Thus, continuous improvement of the performance characteristics of methods to enable an effective monitoring of such contaminants in food supply is highly needed.

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is widely used in the routine screening of mycotoxin contamination in various agricultural and food products. Herein, a cascade-amplifying system was introduced to dramatically promote the sensitivity of an immunoassay for ochratoxin A (OTA) detection.

Harmful secondary metabolites produced by fungi, mycotoxins, are found worldwide in a multitude of products. Roquefortine C (ROQ-C) is a mycotoxin produced by Penicillium roqueforti, the major fungus used to ripen blue-veined cheeses. To facilitate the screening of cheeses for ROQ-C, a method based upon the ambient ionization technique of direct analysis in real time-mass spectrometry (DART-MS) was developed.

Maize expressing Cry1Ab insecticidal toxin (Bt maize) is an effective method to control Sesamia nonagrioides and Ostrinia nubilalis, the most damaging corn borers of southern Europe. In this area, maize is prone to Fusarium infections, which can produce mycotoxins that pose a serious risk to human and animal health, causing significant economic losses in the agrifood industry.

Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, EarlyView. Mycotoxin contamination in foods has posed serious threat to public health and raised worldwide concern. The development of simple, rapid, facile, and cost-effective methods for mycotoxin detection is of urgent need.

Dry fermented sausages are produced worldwide by well-controlled fermentation processes involving complex microbiota including many bacterial and fungal species with key technological roles. However, to date, fungal diversity on sausage casings during storage has not been fully described.

ABSTRACT Essential oils can be a useful alternative to the use of synthetic fungicides because they have biological potential and are relatively safe for food and agricultural products. The objectives of the present study were to evaluate the antifungal and antimycotoxigenic activities of the essential oils from Satureja montana L., Myristica fragrans H. and Cymbopogon flexuosus S.

Author(s): Yuhao Wu, Jiayi Sun, Xiaolin Huang, Weihua Lai, Yonghua Xiong

Background
Immunochromatographic test strip (ICTS) has become one of the most widely used rapid diagnostics platforms for the point-of-care testing of various contaminant residues in food. However, traditional gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-based ICTSs suffer limited sensitivity ranged from ng/mL to μg/mL, thus severely hindering them from meeting the increasing demand for trace target detection.

Fumonisins (FB) are mycotoxins known to exert most of their toxicity by blocking ceramide synthase, resulting in disruption of sphingolipid metabolism. Although the effects of FB on sphinganine (Sa) and sphingosine (So) are well documented in poultry, little information is available on their other effects on sphingolipids. The objective of this study was to analyze the effects of FB on the hepatic and plasma sphingolipidome in chickens.

Journal of Separation Science, Accepted Article. High-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) coupled with the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe method was established for the qualitative and quantitative detection of twenty mycotoxins in milk. The linear range of this method was 0.01-10μg/L, and the correlation coefficients were all greater than or equal to 0.9933.

by Wadha Al Attiya, Zahoor Ul Hassan, Roda Al-Thani, Samir Jaoua

Author(s): Gesiane da Silva Lima, Gabriel Franco dos Santos, Ruver Rodrigues Feitosa Ramalho, Deborah Victoria Alves de Aguiar, Jussara Valente Roque, Lanaia Itala Louzeiro Maciel, Rosineide Costa Simas, Igor Pereira, Boniek Gontijo Vaz