Fusarium proliferatum can occur on a wide range of economically important vegetable plants but its role in disease is not always well established. In 2000 and 2001, from forty-one field samples of wilting onion and garlic plants in Serbia, F. proliferatum as the predominant fungal species was isolated from root and bulbs. Seventy isolates were firstly characterized for their sexual fertility and were shown to be mostly members of Gibberella intermedia (sixty-seven of seventy isolates, the remaining three isolates were unfertile), the sexual stage of F. proliferatum (syn. mating population D of G. fujikuroi complex). A selected set of eleven F. proliferatum isolates from both hosts were also tested for their pathogenicity and toxigenicity. Although onion and garlic plants were susceptible to all isolates, onion plants showed a significantly higher disease severity index. Six of the eleven isolates of F. proliferatum produced fumonisin B 1 from 25 to 3000 mg g À1 , and beauvericin from 400 to 550 mg g À1 ; ten isolates produced fusaric acid from 80 to 950 mg g À1 and moniliformin from 50 to 520 mg g À1 . Finally, all isolates produced fusaproliferin up to 400 mg g À1 . These results confirm F. proliferatum as an important pathogen of garlic and onion in Europe and that there is a potential mycotoxin accumulation risk in contaminated plants of both garlic and onion.

Due to its divergent chemical composition and good nutritional properties, pollen is not only important as a potential food supplement but also as a good substrate for the development of different microorganisms. Among such microorganisms, toxigenic fungi are extremely dangerous as they can synthesize mycotoxins as a part of their metabolic pathways. Furthermore, favorable conditions that enable the synthesis of mycotoxins (adequate temperature, relative humidity, pH, and aw values) are found frequently during pollen collection and/or production process. Internationally, several different mycotoxins have been identified in pollen samples, with a noted predominance of aflatoxins, ochratoxins, fumonisins, zearalenone, deoxynivalenol, and T-2 toxin. Mycotoxins are, generally speaking, extremely harmful for humans and other mammals. Current EU legislation contains guidelines on the permissible content of this group of compounds, but without information pertaining to the content of mycotoxins in pollen. Currently only aflatoxins have been researched and discussed in the literature in regard to proposed limits. Therefore, the aim of this review is to give information about the presence of different mycotoxins in pollen samples collected all around the world, to propose possible aflatoxin contamination pathways, and to emphasize the importance of a regular mycotoxicological analysis of pollen. Furthermore, a suggestion is made regarding the legal regulation of pollen as a food supplement and the proposed tolerable limits for other mycotoxins.

In this study the presence of moulds and mycotoxins in samples of stored maize grains in the period from October 2011 to September 2012 was investigated. Mycological analyses of whole and broken grains showed the presence of species from the genera Alternaria, Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium, Rhizopus and others. Among the Aspergillus and Fusarium genera as potentially toxigenic fungi, Aspergillus flavus was identified with the highest percentage on broken grains (20.38%) whereas F. verticilioides was the predominant species in the whole maize grains (34.04%). In addition, it was obtained that tested samples of stored maize grains were 100% positive with aflatoxin B 1 (AFB 1), zearalenone (ZON), deoxynivalenol (DON) and fumonisin B 1 (FB 1) with an average concentration of 1.39 μg kg-1 , 71.79 μg kg-1 , 128.17 μg kg-1 , and 1610.83 μg kg-1 , respectively. A significant positive correlation was found between the moisture content and the presence of Fusarium spp. on the broken grains (r = 0.44) and between the moisture content and the concentration of DON (r = 0.61). However, a significant negative correlation was found between moisture content and FB 1 (r =-0.34), and between the concentration of ZON and DON mycotoxins (r =-0.58).

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