Mycotoxins in nuts

Nuts are among the crops that can be contaminated by aflatoxins (AFs), mycotoxins mainly produced by A. flavus and A. parasiticus. These fungi are well adapted to tropical and sub-tropical areas and preferably contaminate damaged or stressed crops. Both peanuts and pistachio nuts are well protected during the growing season because their shell included seeds, but damages caused by parasites, or early split in pistachio nuts, can elicit contamination by Aspergilli in field. The amount of AFs in nuts can significantly increase also during harvest/post-harvest. Apart the attention in crop management, promising results in reducing AFs contamination were found applying biological control in field. Sorting is interesting to reduce AFs, but a relevant percentage of production is discarded, not always contaminated at unacceptable levels. Decontamination is difficult; it frequently leads to limited results or variations in edibility or quality of nuts.