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A reseach United States identifies the almond varieties most resistant to aflatoxin contamination

Almond Kernel
United States
Published Dec 2, 2021

Tridge summary

A team from the Department of Agronomy of the UCO in collaboration with the University of California classifies almond varieties according to their resistance to the pathogens that produce these toxins that are harmful to health. In 2013 Andalusian farmers had to destroy two million liters of milk due to to contamination by aflatoxins, toxins harmful to health that had been transmitted to livestock through the cereals used for their food.

Original content

These toxins are caused by fungi of the Aspergillus family (Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus), which also pose a problem for the almond tree. In California, the world leader in almond production, aflatoxins also cause the withdrawal of almond consignments, with consequent economic losses for the sector. For this reason, researchers from the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence - Department of Agronomy of the University of Córdoba (DAUCO) Juan Moral and María Teresa García, have worked for 3 years together with the team from the University of California led by the Professor Themis Michailides in search of solutions to this problem. As a result of their work, they now publish an article in the journal Plant Disease in which they collect their progress. This team analyzed, for the first time, the behavior of different almond varieties towards the pathogen, evaluating the level of aflatoxin contamination of the fruits of 29 different varieties (20 traditional and 9 from an advanced ...
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