Advances in Food Mycology

142 Birgitte Andersen and Ulf Thrane
Table 1. Fungal infection (%) in Danish apples and cherries during the growth seasons
2002 and 2001 respectively
Sour Sweet
Apples cherries cherries
(Jonagored) (Vicky) (Van)
Fl. a Imm. b Mat. c Fl. Imm. Mat. Fl. Imm. Mat.
Alternaria 77 80 88 68 33 60 66 22 18
Botrytis 35 0 0 4 0 5 78 1 2
Cladosporium 81 73 40 26 0 31 37 5 21
Fusarium 20 53 64 2 0 7 0 1 6
Penicillium 5 13 20 0 0 0 0 1 0
a Fl. = flowers; b Imm. = immature; c Mat. = mature
On the flowers of sweet cherries, Botrytis was the dominant genus,
whereas it was isolated in very low numbers from the flowers of sour
cherries (Table 1). In flowers of both cherry types, Alternaria and
Cladosporium were found in high numbers and Fusarium was found in
low numbers. After spraying, Botrytis was more or less eliminated in
both immature and mature cherries. The number of Cladosporium
colonies seen was greatly reduced in immature cherries after spraying,
but the numbers rose again as the cherries matured. Numbers of
Alternaria isolated were somewhat reduced in immature cherries after
spraying, but the numbers rose again in sour cherries while it fell in
sweet cherries as they matured. A Penicillium species was found in only
one sample of immature sweet cherries.
The dominant toxigenic fungi on apples were Alt. tenuissima
species-group, followed by Alt. arborescens species-group, F. avenaceum,
F. lateritium, P. crustosum and P. expansum. On cherries, the
dominant species were Alt. arborescens species-group followed by Alt.
tenuissima species-group, F. lateritium and P. expansum.
3.2. Fungal Development in Cereals
The dominant genera found in seed, immature (harvested by hand)
and mature (machine harvested) wheat and barley kernels are shown
in Table 2. In untreated wheat seed, Penicillium constituted the major
infection in the seed together with Alternaria, Eurotium and
Aspergillus. The same composition of fungi was seen in untreated barley
seed, except that Penicillium counts were less than 50% of those in
treated seed. In barley seeds that had been treated with fungicides
before sowing, only two out of 500 grains were found to be infected
with fungi. The changes in mycobiota in immature kernels compared
to the seed were most pronounced in barley, where the numbers of