Evolving challenges and strategies for fungal control in the food supply chain

Abstract

Fungi that spoil foods or infect crops can have major socioeconomic impacts, posing threats to food security. The strategies needed to manage these fungi are evolving, given the growing incidence of fungicide resistance, tightening regulations of chemicals use and market trends imposing new food-preservation challenges. For example, alternative methods for crop protection such as RNA-based fungicides, biocontrol, or stimulation of natural plant defences may lessen concerns like environmental toxicity of chemical fungicides. There is renewed focus on natural product preservatives and fungicides, which can bypass regulations for ‘clean label’ food products. These require investment to find effective, safe activities within complex mixtures such as plant extracts. Alternatively, physical measures may be one key for fungal control, such as polymer materials which passively resist attachment and colonization by fungi. Reducing or replacing traditional chlorine treatments ( e.g. of post-harvest produce) is desirable to limit formation of disinfection by-products. In addition, the current growth in lower sugar food products can alter metabolic routing of carbon utilization in spoilage yeasts, with implications for efficacy of food preservatives acting via metabolism. The use of preservative or fungicide combinations, while involving more than one chemical, can reduce total chemicals usage where these act synergistically. Such approaches might also help target different subpopulations within heteroresistant fungal populations. These approaches are discussed in the context of current challenges for food preservation, focussing on pre-harvest fungal control, fresh produce and stored food preservation. Several strategies show growing potential for mitigating or reversing the risks posed by fungi in the food supply chain.

Supercritical CO2 Plant Extracts Show Antifungal Activities against Crop-Borne Fungi

“…Fungi are an integral part of the natural environment, and although they have many positive roles, such as for industrial exploitation in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, agricultural and food industries [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ], they are also major contributors to food spoilage. Pathogenic fungi are responsible for up to a 20% loss of global crop yields yearly, which includes the loss of 125 million tons of the five most cultivated food crops, while 10% of crops are destroyed during post-harvest [ 6 ]. Fungicides and fungistatics are therefore widely used chemicals that are typically of synthetic origin, and these kill parasitic fungi or their spores, or inhibit their growth, respectively.…”

Phages and Enzybiotics in Food Biopreservation

“…Many natural and eco-friendly methodologies for food preservation have been proposed in the last few years, but only limited data are available about the usefulness of most of them under industrial scale conditions, which needs proper attention to satisfy the requirements of the industry as well as the demand of the consumers [226][227][228][229][230]. Consequently, studies about the ability of the reported biopreservative agents to control the development of undesirable microorganisms when applied at the industrial scale are greatly required.…”

Antifungal Activity of the Dry Biomass of Penicillium chrysogenum F-24-28 and Is Application in Combination with Azoxystrobin for Efficient Crop Protection

“…Under the current conditions of the intensive agriculture, crop cultivation strongly requires efficient disease control systems to prevent significant crop losses [1][2][3]. Among the most dangerous plant pathogens, pathogenic fungi take one of the leading positions [4,5].…”

“…However, in spite of its biological and economical expediency, a wide use of various chemical fungicides resulted in the drop of their efficiency [9], as well as a significant accumulation of fungicide residues in the soil, water and agricultural production, which poses a serious threat for humans, animals and the whole ecosystem [10,11]. Moreover, a progressing resistance of plant pathogens to the chemicals used was revealed [2,3,12,13].…”