Dear Colleagues,

Mycotoxin contamination is one of the most relevant and worrisome problems concerning food and feed safety, because it can cause a variety of toxic acute and chronic effects in animal and human health. Mycotoxins are fungal toxins produced by fungi, which occur globally in food and feed derivatives, and are produced under certain environmental conditions. Fungi can invade, colonize, and produce mycotoxins either during pre-harvest, or post harvest, during storage, transport, processing, and feeding. Inadequate and bad harvesting practices, and inappropriate drying conditions, handling, packaging ,and storage, contribute to the growth of fungi and increase the risk of producing mycotoxins. The contamination of agricultural products with mycotoxins is an important problem in tropical and subtropical areas, where the climate and bad storage conditions promote fungal growth and the production of mycotoxins. Fungi rank second as a cause of damage during the storage of cereals, while insects rank first. Mycotoxins are found in many types of important agricultural products, such as cereals (wheat, barley, rye, maize, rice, sorghum, and millet), bread, pasta, flour, nuts (peanuts, groundnuts), spices, grapes, currant, wine, beer, dried fruits (figs, dates, plums apricots, and raisins), juices, olives, vegetable oils, and cotton seeds, and also in rations of farm animals resulting in their appearance in milk, eggs, and the meat of these animals, resulting in severe economic loss at all levels of food production. According to FAO, mycotoxins contaminate nearly 25% of the world's agricultural commodities.

Increased knowledge and awareness of consumption of food and feed contaminated with mycotoxins has turned the focus of many investigations into the development of their inactivation and detoxification process in food. Various methods have been investigated in relation to their ability to inactivate mycotoxins in contaminated food and feed. These methods are aimed either at removing the toxin from the product or at its destruction, and are classified into physical, chemical, and biological. Performance and the efficacy of a method for inactivating mycotoxins depends largely on the nature of the product, the content of the product humidity, the type of mycotoxin, the level of infection, and the degree of attachment of mycotoxins with the products.

Adoption of preventive and control methods across all stages of the food supply chain can restrict the entry of mycotoxins and/or control their levels in human and animal systems.

Prof. Dr. Theodoros Varzakas
Dr. Nobile Maria
Guest Editors

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• mycotoxins in foods
• safety
• quality
• detection
• prevention
• detoxification