Genetic Diversity of Fungi Producing Mycotoxins in Stored Crops

Abstract

Mycotoxins are a variety of critical secondary metabolites for the defense, that produced by multiple types of fungi. These metabolites are toxins where metabolic pathways that produce these toxins are found in adjacent gene groups in the fungal genome when they have adequate environmental and dietary conditions. Mainly, they found in commodities stored by the wrong ways. Mycotoxins are the most potent known toxins that cause serious diseases with minimal concentrations. Genetic diversity was detected using polymorphic randomized amplification technique for DNA fragments between fungal isolates from different crops. This review article aims to review the current status of genetically diverse of mycotoxigenic fungi in various contaminated food. Several studies that have focused on the determination of prevalence and frequency of varies types of toxic fungi were reviewed. Also, the articles that study the toxicity of stored crops such as cereals and oilseeds were considered. The high contrast between findings of these works was presented in terms of the genetic diversity of fungal isolates produced toxins. Aspergillus, Fusarium, and Penicillium were observed among the most common fungus producing toxins. This study which derived from previous researches observed that Aflatoxin was the most toxin produced by most fungi. Aspergillus was the most genetically modified fungus, carrying the most genes responsible for producing the fungal toxins.

Keywords

• stored crops
• mycotoxins
• genetic diversity
• aspergillus
• penicillium
• fusarium