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.

A number of metabolic adaptive processes have been evolved in higher plants to cope with environmental stresses. Being sessile organisms unable to escape stressful conditions, plant survival is critically dependent by the rapid establishment of metabolic and physiologic responses that collectively attenuate or block the harmful effects of environmental injuries. Drought, cold and salt stress, in particular, are major threats for plant life, and cause, on a worldwide scale, dramatic losses in crop yields, especially in many developing countries and arid or semi-arid regions.