Rising atmospheric CO 2 concentration may imply higher risk of Fusarium mycotoxin contamination of wheat grains

AbstractIncreasing atmospheric CO2 concentration not only has a direct impact on plants but also affects plant –pathogen interactions. Due to economic and health-related problems, special concern was given thus in the present work to the effect of elevated CO2 (750  μmol mol−1) level on theFusarium culmorum infection and mycotoxin contamination of wheat. Despite the fact that disease severity was found to be not or little affected by elevated CO2 in most varieties, as the spread ofFusarium increased only in one variety, spike grain number and/or grain weight decreased significantly at elevated CO2 in all the varieties, indicating thatFusarium infection generally had a more dramatic impact on the grain yield at elevated CO2 than at the ambient level. Likewise, grain deoxynivalenol (DON) content was usually considerably higher at elevated CO2 than at the ambient level in the single-floret inoculation treatment, suggesting that the toxin content is not in direct relation to the level ofFusarium infection. In the whole-spike inoculation, DON production did not change, decreased or increased depending on the variety × experiment interaction. Cooler (18 °C) conditions delayed rachis penetration while 20 °C maximum temperature caused striking increases in the mycotoxin contents, resulting in extremely high DON values and also in a dramatic triggering of the grain zearalenone contamination at elevated CO2. The results indicate that future environmental conditions, such as...
Source: Mycotoxin Research - Category: Toxicology Source Type: research