Mycotoxins and flours: Effect of type of crop, organic production, packaging type on the recovery of fungal genus and mycotoxins

Heat-stable mycotoxins are widely detected in flour and produced by Aspergillus spp., Fusarium spp. and Penicillium spp.. Forty different flours purchased in Italy are used to assess potential risk factors via a systematically screening of a number of variables: the type of flour, organic, whole and white wheat, types of packaging (paper, plastic and weight). Fungal recovery and co-occurrence of specific mycotoxins was also assessed. The results showed that flour originated from fruits had a significant higher recovery of fungi, while seed/pseudocereals had the highest mycotoxins detection. Flours originating from organic agriculture are more prone to higher fungal recovery and mycotoxins detection when compared with not-organic flours. Packaging is also important: packaging weighting less than 376 g supports significantly more fungal recovery and the plastic packages was observed to retain more fungi and mycotoxins detection when compared with paper. Recovery measured as Log(CFU/g) of fungal genera is not directly proportional to the amount of mycotoxins. Finally, linear regression and mixed logit regression models show that the mean level of aflatoxins B1 (ng/g on the logarithmic scale) reduces by 0.485 when moving from an organic to a non-organic flour, while a significant increase of 0.369 when moving from paper to a plastic packaging.