Ricerc@Sapienza

Mycotoxins can contaminate various food commodities, including cereals. Moreover, mycotoxins of different classes can co-contaminate food, increasing human health risk. Several analytical methods have been published in the literature dealing with mycotoxins determination in cereals. Nevertheless, in the present work, the aim was to propose an easy and effective system for the extraction of six of the main mycotoxins from corn meal and durum wheat flour, i.e., the main four aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, and the mycoestrogen zearalenone.

During the second half of the twentieth century, agricultural practices in Italy underwent a fast transition from
extensive and traditional to intensive and specialized. Weed assemblages colonizing cultivated fields were thus
subjected to major shifts, mainly driven by the increased use of herbicides and chemical fertilizers. Moved by the
early intuition that the fight against weeds could deeply alter the balances of arable agroecosystems, already in the

Oxylipins are a newly emerging group of signals that serve defence roles or promote virulence. To identify specific host and fungal genes and oxylipins governing the interactions between maize and Fusarium verticillioides, maize wild-type and lipoxygenase3 (lox3) mutant were inoculated with either F. verticillioides wild-type or linoleate-diol-synthase 1-deleted mutant (?Fvlds1D). The results showed that lox3 mutants were more resistant to F. verticillioides.