Abstract
Aflatoxins (AFs) are harmful secondary metabolites produced by various moulds, among which Aspergillus flavus is the major AF-producer fungus. These mycotoxins have carcinogenic or acute toxigenic effects on both humans and food producing animals and, therefore, the health risks and also the potential economic damages mounted by them have led to legal restrictions, and several countries have set maximum allowable limits for AF contaminations in food and feed. While colonization of food and feed and AF production by A. flavus are highly supported by the climatic conditions in tropical and subtropical geographic regions, countries in the temperate climate zones are also increasingly exposed to AF-derived health risks due to climate change. In the present study, we have reviewed the available mathematical models as risk assessment tools to predict the possibility of A. flavus infection and levels of AF contaminations in maize in a changing climatic environment. After highlighting the benefits and possible future improvements of these models, we summarize the current agricultural practices used to prevent or, at least, mitigate the deleterious consequences of AF contaminations
Highlights
Aflatoxins (AFs) are dangerous secondary metabolites produced by various Aspergillus species, spoiling various crops, representing serious health threats to both humans and domestic animals and causing considerable economic losses worldwide
Growth of maize plants suffers a setback due to heat and drought stress. This facilitates the infection of maize plants by any pathogenic fungi while hot and dry atmospheric conditions proved to be utterly favourable for the growth of A. flavus [42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54]
By means of statistical tests, Moore and Lobell [72] introduced a novel method to substantiate that temperature and precipitation trends related to climate change caused a decrease in barley and wheat yields from the late 1980s, and a slight increase in that of sugar beet and maize
Summary
Aflatoxins (AFs) are dangerous secondary metabolites produced by various Aspergillus species, spoiling various crops, representing serious health threats to both humans and domestic animals and causing considerable economic losses worldwide. 0.1–12 μg kg−1 AFB1 in the EU, 20 ppb total AF in the USA or 5–20 μg kg−1 AFB1 in China [3,4,5].) Exceeding these acceptable limits may result in economic losses due to limited trade and economic opportunities: e.g., AFs are a major reason for rejecting imports of various products in the EU [6]. This has driven the development of various preventive measures, predicting tools and mitigation technologies (see Section 3). We summarize (c) the agricultural practices available to prevent and mitigate pre-harvest AF contamination when the models indicate an elevated risk
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