Presentation of the problem
The Fusarium head blight is a fongus disease which affects cereal in numerous regions of the world. Particular conditions of temperature and humidity during flowering favor the germination and the dispersal of the spores of the responsible fungis.
When it affects the ear, and when the infection is due to certain Fusarium species, the losses of return usually bound to the disease come along with a decrease of the quality of grains by the production of mycotoxins. These substances which, for the greater part, resist to the transformation processes, meet themselves in food, and present a toxicity for human and animal. The lack of toxicological data and long- term studies do not however allow, at the moment, to estimate the importance of the problem, nevertheless according to the destination of the cereal productions, numerous countries established rules or recommendations to avoid the contamination of foods.
To answer the request of the consumers and actors of the sector who wish guarantees at for the food security of the cereal products, procedures of control and traceability have to be set up all the levels of the sector, from the farmer up to the transformer. Already, private firms set up conditions of contract which impose certain cultural practices to reduce the risk of mycotoxins contamination of cereal productions.
In this particular context, the interest of the implementation of an indicator lies in the possibility of characterizing before the harvest the geographic zones according of production to their level of risk. It is thus possible to limit quantitative analyses of the DON to samples resulting from plots situated in geographic zones having a level of high risk and cultural history, which would be more favorable to Fusarium head blight (sensibility of the variety, cultural precedent, innoculum pressure in the environment). Knowing that analyses generally used for the dosage of mycotoxins are very expensive and very laborious to operate, the system which must be set up in operational conditions aims at planning the minimum number of samples required to report, with the smallest cost, all the situations where the risk of contamination is the highest.
The implementation of this traceability
geographic indicator also constitutes the first stage of a hierarchical
basis procedure of control allowing to reduce in a reasoned way the number
of mycotoxins analyses. By giving evidence of the quality of the Belgian
cereal productions, this method should allow producers to distance itself,
and to strengthen their position on certain specialized markets.
More info :
Elaboration of a contamination risk indicator
Estimation of the Fusarium head blight risk at the field level
