Fusarium head blight and associated mycotoxin occurrence on winter wheat in Luxembourg in 2007/2008

Frederic Giraud (1) , Matias Pasquali (2) , Moussa El Jarroudi (3) , Carine Vrancken (2) , Celine Brochot (2) , Emmanuelle Cocco (2) , Lucien Hoffmann (2) , Philippe Delfosse (2) , Torsten Bohn (2)

1 Environment and Agro-Biotechnologies
2 Environment and Agro-Biotechnologies
3 Sciences et Gestion de l'Environment

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is among the major causes for reduced quality of winter wheat and its products. In addition, the causal fungi produce a variety of toxins. A relatively high FHB infection rate of winter wheat was observed in 2007 and 2008 in Luxembourg. A fusariotoxin survey was carried out in n=17 different geographical locations. Three groups of Fusarium mycotoxins (trichothecenes A and B and zearalenone) were then analysed by a multi-detection HPLC-MS/MS method. In addition, Fusarium strains were investigated by morphological and molecular methods. In addition to this survey, questionnaires related to cultural practices were sent to the farmers managing the 17 fields investigated. FHB prevalence ranged from 0.3 to 65.8 % (mean: 8.5%) in 2007 and from 0 to 24.5 % (mean: 8.3%) in 2008. Results of the morphological and molecular identification showed that the most common species isolated from diseased wheat spikes was F. graminearum (33.1%), followed by F. avenaceum (20.3%) and F. poae (17.8%). The chemical analysis revealed that 75% of the investigated fields were contaminated by deoxynivalenol (DON, range 0-8111 g/kg). The preceding crop was highly and significantly correlated to the number of grains infected and had a significant impact on the disease prevalence (P=0.025 and 0.017, respectively, Fisher-F-test). A trend was found for maize as the preceding crop (P =0.084, Tukey's) to predict the amount of DON in the fields. This is the first report on the natural occurrence of DON and ZON in naturally infected wheat grains sampled from Luxembourg.

Mots clés: Life Sciences

Frederic Giraud, Matias Pasquali, Moussa El Jarroudi, Carine Vrancken, Celine Brochot, et al.. Fusarium head blight and associated mycotoxin occurrence on winter wheat in Luxembourg in 2007/2008. Food Additives and Contaminants, 2010, 27 (06), pp.825-835. ⟨10.1080/19440040903567232⟩. ⟨hal-00593892⟩