Abstract
Aflatoxin contamination of foodstuffs poses a serious risk to food security, and it is essential to search for new control methods to prevent these toxins entering the food chain. Several essential oils are able to reduce the growth and mycotoxin biosynthesis of toxigenic species, although their efficiency is strongly influenced by the environmental conditions. In this work, the effectiveness of Satureja montana and Origanum virens essential oils to control Aspergillus flavus growth was evaluated under three water activity levels (0.94, 0.96 and 0.98 aw) using a Bioscreen C, a rapid in vitro spectrophotometric technique. The aflatoxin concentrations at all conditions tested were determined by HPLC-FLD. Aspergillus flavus growth was delayed by both essential oil treatments. However, only S. montana essential oil was able to significantly affect aflatoxin production, although the inhibition percentages widely differed among water activities. The most significant reduction was observed at 0.96 aw, which is coincident with the conditions in which A. flavus reached the highest levels of aflatoxin production. On the contrary, the treatment with S. montana essential oil was not effective in significantly reducing aflatoxin production at 0.94 aw. Therefore, it is important to study the interaction of the new control compounds with environmental factors before their application in food matrices, and in vitro ecophysiological studies are a good option since they provide accurate and rapid results.
Highlights
Mycotoxins are fungal secondary metabolites with adverse effects on human and animal health
Environmental sustainability, as well as ensuring food safety, are important issues which have increased the search for new products that might be applied as fungicides or natural preservatives, to replace synthetic chemicals to control the growth of toxigenic species in agrifood products
We have demonstrated that Satureja montana (SM) essential oils (EOs) was able to retard fungal growth and reduce AF
Summary
Mycotoxins are fungal secondary metabolites with adverse effects on human and animal health. Toxins 2020, 12, 142 characterized [1] Because of their high toxicity, aflatoxins B1 , B2 , G1 , and G2 (AFB1 , AFB2 , AFG1 , and AFG2 ) are the most important, and are produced by the species of Aspergillus section Flavi, mainly Aspergillus flavus [2]. These toxins can contaminate a wide range of agricultural commodities, either in the field or during storage, and they are considered ubiquitous contaminants of the food supply throughout the developing world [3]. AFB1 has been described as the most toxic naturally occurring human carcinogen and as the cause of hepatocellular carcinoma in humans and animals [3,4].
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