EFS12- Book of abstracts - Contact

KEYNOTE LECTURE SESSION 6: FUTURE CHALLENGE FOR EUROPE AND
WORLWIDE
The risks related to Fusarium mycotoxins at global
level: emerging problems and possible solutions
A. F. Logrieco
Institute of Sciences of Food Production, CNR, Via Amendola 122/O, 70126, Bari, Italy
E-mail: antonio.logrieco@ispa.cnr.it
Fusarium mycotoxins are still a very hot topic because of the high frequency of
their occurrence on a wide range of crops, especially cereals, which are the main
staple food, worldwide. Several reasons are responsible of such occurrence,
among which some are determined directly by human choices and other are
related to natural events such as climatic changes. The need to increase the
cultivation profitability for farmers is related to the extension of some crops such
as durum wheat in geographical areas inappropriate for its cultivation, since this
crop becomes more sensitive to Fusarium pathogenicity. On the other hand, food
security to the increasing amount of the world population is causing the extension
of some crop cultivation such as maize, in some emerging countries of Africa,
where maize is replacing traditional crops (e.g. finger millet and sorghum) and is
more exposed to the contamination of toxigenic Fusarium species. As further
reason of concern, the climatic change can significantly induce the appearance of
emerging problems influencing the distribution of toxigenic Fusarium species and
related mycotoxins. Therefore, new mycotoxin/commodity combinations are
emerging, providing evidence of a great plasticity and capability of these fungi to
continuously select new genotypes provided of higher aggressiveness and
mycotoxin production. In order to better control the risks related to Fusarium
mycotoxin contamination of food commodities, an approach along the whole food
chain, “farm to fork”, is extremely important to identify the critical points along the
chain, where the major risks for mycotoxin contamination occur. Global
networking, awareness and dissemination activities together with a survey on the
main effective pre- and post-harvest solutions, carried out in EU project MycoRed
will be provided in the presentation. The MycoRed outcome may represent
effective integrated strategies for Fusarium mycotoxin minimization in food and
feed chain at the global level.
This presentation has been supported by the EU Project MycoRed 222690 FP7-
KBBE-2007-2A
Keywords: Fusarium, mycotoxins, pathogenicity
85