br Conclusion br Introduction Cereals are

Conclusion
Introduction Cereals are the basic staple food of India and provide much of the order GDC-0199 and protein for majority of the population. They also have known to contain a range of micronutrients such as vitamin E, some of the B vitamins, sodium, magnesium and zinc. Contamination of cereals due to poor agricultural practices and intermittent rain at the time of harvest by fungal species of Aspergillus, Fusarium and Penicillium are often unavoidable and it is worldwide problem [1,2]. The most common mycotoxins present in cereals are aflatoxins, fumonisins, zearalenone, ochratoxins, T2 toxin and deoxynivalenol [3]. Contaminantion of cereals and cereal based products with fumonisins poses threat to agriculture and food safety throughout the globe. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that each year 25%–50% of the world\'s food crops are contaminated by mycotoxins [4]. Of the fungi involved, the most common are Fusarium species which are associated with cereals all over the world. Totally 70 different Fusarium species were isolated and identified from many substrates throughout the world [2]. Fusarium verticillioides is an important fungal pathogen with a wide range of plant hosts such as maize, paddy, sorghum, etc. [5]. The risk of contamination by fumonisins is related to the association of F. verticillioides species with cereals [6,7]. Fumonisins are considered as agriculturally important environmental toxins produced by F. verticillioides and other Fusarium species in the field or during storage [8]. Fumonisins cause several diseases such as blind staggers and leukoencephalomalacia in horses [9], pulmonary edema in swine [10] and hepatic cancer in rats [11], esophageal cancer, liver cancer [12], skin lesions [13], wound [14], keratitis and polycystic kidney disease in humans. More than ten types of fumonisins have been characterized among which B1, B2 and B3 are the major types produced [15]. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has indicated that FB1 is a possible carcinogen to humans. Rocha et al. [42] reported high frequency (96%) of F. verticillioides in maize grains collected from four different regions of Brazil. F. verticillioides and other Fusarium species are reported to cause ear rot in maize. F. proliferatum was reported along with F. verticillioides from Italy [16], Southern Europe [17] and Iran [18]. F. subglutinans was the species most frequently recovered from asymptomatic host tissue and was more frequent than F. verticillioides[19]. Many instances of asymptomatic infection of F. verticillioides in corn have been reported [20,21]. Levic et al., [39] reported dominance and frequency of Fusarium species isolated from corn kernels over years; F. subglutinans predominated in some years. High prevalence of F. verticilliodes associated with cereals consistently proved by molecular based study with species specific primers when compared to conventional methods. The most reliable method to distinguish between F. verticillioides and closely related species is DNA sequence comparison. DNA used included nuclear ribosomal DNA intergenic spacer (IGS), the nuclear ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer, genes encoding the translation elongation factor 1α (TEF), b-tubulin, calmodulin, cytochrome P450 reductase, and 28S ribosomal RNA [22,23]. One set of species specific primer VERTF-1 [24] and IGS based VERTR primer [25] have been used to differeniate Fusarium verticillioides from other Fusarium species. The other set of primer included VERTF-1 and VERTF-2 to discriminate fumonisin producing from non fumonisin producing isolates. Aim of the present work was to study the per cent incidence, frequency and relative density of F. verticillioides associated with maize, sorghum, paddy and pearl millet using conventional and PCR methods. Further, to know their ability to produce fumonisin by LC MS method.
Material and methods
Results Mycological analysis using standard blotter and agar plate methods showed that, among 135 cereal samples (maize-61, paddy-42, sorghum-24, pearl millet-8) collected (Table 1), 69 samples (maize-37, paddy-22, sorghum-9, pearl millet-1) were positive for Fusarium infection and 51 samples were having F. verticillioides contamination. Among these 42 samples were fumonisin producing F. verticillioides (Table 2).