Aspects of the ecology of Fusarium toxins in cereals.

Species of the genus Fusarium account for three of the five agriculturally important mycotoxins which are deoxynivalenol, aflatoxin, fumonisin, zearalenone and ochratoxin. The toxigenic fusaria have been complicated to study because morphologically-similar strains represent different biologies: saprophytes, pathyotypes and endophytes. This might explain the difficulties with systems of taxonomy for Fusarium species and increasing reliance on molecular techniques to characterize taxa. Another remarkable feature of the toxigenic fusaria is that each species produces compounds that cross several species as well as families of compounds that are species specific. In addition, reproductively-isolated strains (from different continents) of important species such as F. graminearum produce different compounds, and even produce the same compounds by different biosynthetic pathways.