Risk assessment and safety evaluation of mycotoxins in fruits

Relevant mycotoxins are signalled in fruits, with major problems in dried respect to fresh fruits. In order to study the risk of contamination by mycotoxins at global level, Aspergillus rot and ochratoxin A in grapes, Aspergillus and aflatoxins in pistachio nuts and peanuts and blue mould rot and patulin in apples and pears were considered as case studies. They were chosen as representative of all fruits because mycotoxins depend on the field period, both the field and the post-harvest period and mainly on post-harvest respectively in the 3 host-pathogen systems studied. In the three case studies, causal agent and symptoms, occurrence of fungi and mycotoxins and ecology of fungi were described with all details available. Then, data on crop distribution all over the world and meteorological conditions in the growing areas were collected and elaborated with a geostatistical approach to predict the level of risk for each mycotoxin in the considered crop; the outputs were drawn as risk maps that do not consider the effect of cropping systems. The approach followed cannot be very precise, because of the global dimension and the simulated approach, but surely it represents a good base for safety evaluation for fruits produced all over the world. This can be used a prototype approach and it can be transferred to other crops and mycotoxins/diseases. Anyway, maps show different high risk areas all over the world for all mycotoxins considered, mainly aflatoxins, that suggest high attention especially when the country of origin is a third country where fruits are not managed following the best practices.