Factors affecting the level of Fusarium mycotoxins in grain. Vestsі Natsyyanal’nay akademіі navuk Belarusі

Abstract

Mycotoxins accumulation in grain is one of the most widely analyzed problem nowadays, as soon as these metabolites are of high danger to health of warm-blooded animals and humans. Producing mycotoxins with Fusarium fungi beaing causal agents of Fusarium head blight, depends on range of factors, and among measures for their accumulation decrease, chemical method is one of the most effective ones. The paper presents the results of study on factors affecting mycotoxins accumulation under the field conditions. During the experiment with artificial inoculation of winter wheat heads by F. culmorum fungi, the influence of triazole fungicides on Fusarium head blight and mycotoxins content had been estimated. Higher biological efficiency (83,2-79,2 %) for disease severity decrease was higher with fungicide Osiris, EC. Use of fungicides led to increase in indicators of economic efficiency in comparison with the option with no treatment, including the yield, by 12.3-12.8%. In the variants with head protection, the DON content was 2.0-2.1 times lower than in the control. Under conditions of natural damage to various varieties of grain crops (winter wheat and triticale, spring barley) by Fusarium head blight, its depressive manifestation had been determined. It had been determined that spring barley, regardless of the variety, was more resistant to accumulation of mycotoxins, in particular ZEN. Level of mycotoxins in winter wheat and triticale grain varied depending on variety and storage duration. The data obtained will serve as the basis for substantiating measures to reduce the level of mycotoxins in grain. Acknowledgments. The research was carried out with the financial support of the Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental Research as a part of the scientific research project “Comprehensive assessment of mycotoxins accumulation during foodstuff storage” (treaty N Б19МЛДГ-009).