Development of novel tests to evaluate the food safety risk associated with mycotoxigenic fungi

Between 2013 and 2021, 16% of the Food Safety Agency incidents of biological origin were due to mycotoxins - toxic fungal secondary metabolites1. Within the UK, wheat is the main food product subject to mycotoxin occurrence with up to 60% of the crops contaminated2. With wheat production representing £2.4B (2018)3

annually in the UK, there is a need to secure this production within the UK mycotoxin regulations4. In the UK, the mycotoxins of most concern are Fusarium deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZON) and Penicillium Ochratoxin A (OTA). There is a need to develop techniques that can give an accurate and

quantitative representation of the mycobiota and microbiota. The aim of this project is to develop a new technique to efficiently predict the mycotoxin-associated food safety risk. The objectives are: 1. At Cranfield University (CU), develop long-read sequencing-based DNA analysis protocol for wheat,

focussed on the detection of the relevant pathogenic fungi, with maximal resolution (ideally up to strain level), including both - experimental procedures and bioinformatics pipeline, 2. Validate the accuracy and quantification capacity of long-read data analysis on artificial in vitro trials, using in-house prepared mixes with varying known proportions of the fungal strains,

3. Analysis of real-life samples collected from wheat producing farms (available through connections with the National Farming Union) integrating the metagenomic data and mycotoxin quantification using the metabolite sensors techniques (Cranfield and Queen's University Belfast).