Advances in Food Mycology

MYCOBIOTA, MYCOTOXIGENIC FUNGI,
AND CITRININ PRODUCTION IN BLACK
OLIVES
Dilek Heperkan, Burcak E. Meric, Gülcin Sismanoglu,
Gözde Dalkiliç and Funda K. Güler *
1. INTRODUCTION
Olives have been reported to be a poor substrate for the production
of aflatoxins (Mahjoub and Bullerman, 1987; Eltem, 1996;
Leontopoulos et al., 2003). However Yassa et al., (1994) isolated A.
flavus and A. parasiticus from black table olives in Egypt, from which
nine strains of A. flavus and five strains of A. parasiticus were found
to produce aflatoxin B 1 on olive paste. Toussaint (1997) and
Daradimos et al. (2000) found aflatoxin B 1 in olive oil samples at levels
of 5-10 µg/kg and 3-46 ng/kg respectively.
Mahjoub and Bullerman (1987) found that mixing olive paste with
yeast extract sucrose agar caused a moderate increase of aflatoxin B 1
production compared with yeast extract sucrose medium alone, and
that heat and sodium hydroxide treatments stimulated growth and
aflatoxin production in olives. However, Leontopoulos et al. (2003)
found higher levels of aflatoxin produced in olives sanitized with
chlorine than in those sterilized by autoclaving.
* Dilek Heperkan, Burcak E. Meric, Gülcin Sismanoglu, Gözde Dalkiliç, and Funda
K. Güler, Istanbul Technical University, Dept. of Food Engineering Istanbul, Turkey,
34469 Maslak. Correspondence to: heperkan @itu.edu.tr
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