Abstract
There is little information on secondary metabolites produced by Fusaria infecting crop plants other than cereals. Many members of Fusarium genus have the ability to colonise perennial crops with only scarce infection or disease symptoms or with no symptoms at all while still being detectable. Even in case of such asymptomatic infection, significant mycotoxin contamination of the plant tissues is possible. The aim of this study was to characterise the spectrum of Fusarium species isolates obtained from different plant hosts (like asparagus, garlic, pineapple, banana, rhubarb, peppers, rice, maize, wheat, and oncidium) and evaluate their ability to biosynthesize the most common mycotoxins in vitro. Among the F.proliferatum isolates, up to 57 % of them biosynthesized fumonisins at very high mass fractions, amounting to above 1000 μg g-1, while other Fusarium species such as F. verticillioides, F. lactis, F. polyphialydicum, F. concentricum, F. temperatum, and F. fujikuroi formed fumonisins mostly at much lower level. Only F.ananatum and F. oxysporum did not produce these toxins. Co-occurrence of FBs with other mycotoxins [moniliformin (MON) and beauvericin (BEA)] was often observed and it was mainly F. proliferatum species that formed both mycotoxins (0.4 μg g-1 to 41.1 μg g-1 BEA and 0.1 μg g-1 to 158.5 μg g-1 MON).