IDENTIFICATION OF THE MYCOTOXIGENIC FUNGI GROWING ON MARKETED RAW ALMONDS - CASE STUDY.

Almonds can be infected by mycotoxigenic fungi both during the vegetation and during storage after harvesting. Most of the times the almonds are healthy, but during the improper storage they can be contaminated by fungi from the genus Aspergillus, Fusarium and Penicillium. The mentioned fungi are very dangerous for health because they are producing carcinogenic mycotoxins. The purpose of the work was to identify the fungi that are growing on the marketed almonds when they are placed on culture media after a previous sterilization. The biological material consisted in raw almonds bought from supermarket. The almonds were chosen in such manner to originate from different countries, respectively USA, Italy, Spain, South Africa and Germany, there being obtained six samples with three replicates. The almonds from all the 18 samples were placed on culture media in Petri plates and were introduced in incubator at a temperature of 25 ℃ for 7 days. On the almonds from the culture media were developed after seven days the following fungi: Fusarium sp., Aspergillus flavus, Penicillium sp., Aspergillus niger and Rhizopus sp. High contamination rate was noticed in the case of the fungus A. niger. There was highlighted the variant originating from USA with 93.18%. In the opposite situation is the variant of bio almonds from Spain contaminated in a 14% rate. The samples from Germany and Spain were massively contaminated, respectively between 72 and 83%. Regarding Aspergillus flavus fungus, the lowest contamination rate was registered in the variant from USA (18%) and the highest in the sample from Spain conventionally cultivated (79%). The variants of bio almonds were contaminated in different rates, respectively 30% (Italia) and 66% (Spain). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]