Associated-food-hazards: storage fungi and mites in poppy, mustard, lettuce and wheat

Abstract

Storage fungi and mites frequently cause injury of crops and contamination of crop agro-products (= “sensitive food ingredients”) by allergens and toxins. This may have serious practical consequences since currently the food safety is one of the most important priorities of EU-agricultural policy. However, the risk of occurrence of biotic-hazard in various agricultural product and food ingredients is not equal since they differ in their sensitivity to infestation/contamination by various fungi- and mite-hazards. Therefore, the goal of our study was to identify and review the fungi-hazards connected with occurrence of 5 key-species of mite-hazards, in 4 kinds of “sensitive food ingredients” that include poppy, mustards, lettuce and wheat grain. Different numbers of fungal-hazards (wheat: 44, poppy: 37, mustard: 13, lettuce: 31) were isolated from the tested 4 kinds of crop agro-product. This indicates that their sensitivity to mite-associated fungal infestation/contamination increases in the following order: mustard, lettuce, poppy, and wheat. Mite-hazards differ in their vector-capacity of various fungi-hazards. Generally, predatory mites (i.e. Cheyletus spp.) represent lower risk than fungivorous and herbivorous species of mites (i.e. Acarus siro, Tyrophagus putrescentiae, Lepidoglyphus destructor, Caloglyphus rhizoglyphoides) in terms of vectoring fungi hazards. Many of the mites and fungi hazards rarely occurred independently. We therefore propose that (i) such pest-hazard-systems (i.e. fungi-mite-hazard-systems) should be called “associated-hazards” (ii) the new and specific approaches to risk assessment of “associated hazards” should be developed and implemented into practice.