PRESENCE OF FUSARIUM SPECIES AND OF DON AND T-2 MYCOTOXINS IN SEVERAL MALTING BARLEY VARIETIES IN FIELD PLOT EXPERIMENTS IN 2013

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is an important disease of barley and its causal agents are able to biosynthesize mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON) and T-2 toxin that could be transferred to malt and other processed food such as beer, with a consequent strong negative impact on malt quality and on consumer’s health. A study was conducted in order to detect fungal infections and DON and T-2 toxin contamination in the kernels of 16 commercial malting barley varieties harvested in 2013 in field plot experiments. Grain samples were subject to fungal isolation and the strains belonging to the Fusarium genus were molecularly identified by species-specific PCR assays. Quantification of DON and T-2 toxin was performed by ELISA assays. Climatic conditions during the anthesis time proved to be favorable to FBH infections in the surveyed year. Alternaria spp. was present with an incidence of 59%, followed by Fusarium spp. (17%) and Epiccoccum sp. (6%). Some varieties showed a significantly lower Fusarium spp. incidence. F. avenaceum was the most frequently isolated Fusarium species (37%), followed by F. poae (26%), F. graminearum (15%), F. culmorum (6%) and F. equiseti (1%). Low DON concentrations (average 360 µg kg-1; range <LOQ-700 µg kg-1) were detected in barley kernels, not exceeding the EU legal limits. T-2 toxin levels (average 134 µg kg-1; range 52-318 µg kg-1) were found to be above the value of 200 µg kg-1 recommended by the EU in three of the experimented varieties.