Natural and Natural-like Phenolic Inhibitors of Type B Trichothecene in Vitro Production by the Wheat (Triticum sp.) Pathogen Fusarium culmorum

Abstract

Fusarium culmorum, a fungal pathogen of small grain cereals, produces 4-deoxynivalenol and its acetylated derivatives that may cause toxicoses on humans or animals consuming contaminated food or feed. Natural and natural-like compounds belonging to phenol and hydroxylated biphenyl structural classes were tested in vitro to determine their activity on vegetative growth and trichothecene biosynthesis by F. culmorum. Most of the compounds tested at 1.5 or 1.0 mM reduced 3acetyl-4-deoxynivalenol production by over 70% compared to the control, without affecting fungal growth significantly. Furthermore, several compounds retained their ability to inhibit toxin in vitro production at the lowest concentrations of 0.5 and 0.25 mM. Magnolol 27 showed fungicidal activity even at 0.1 mM. No linear correlation was observed between antioxidant properties of the compounds and their ability to inhibit fungal growth and mycotoxigenic capacity. A guaiacyl unit in the structure may play a key role in trichothecene inhibition.

Structure-based virtual screening of hypothetical inhibitors of the enzyme longiborneol synthase—a potential target to reduce Fusarium head blight disease

“…Previous similar approaches, aimed at other synthases, were successfully validated [65,66]. Thus, we can reasonably expect that the chemicals proposed here would lead to a success story like the one we recently published [38].…”

Resistance against Fusarium graminearum and the relationship to β-glucan content in barley grains

“…On the one hand, a higher β-glucan content might enhance the resistance against DON accumulation thus contributing to type V resistance by antioxidant activity of β-glucan (Kofuji et al 2012). Indeed, several studies demonstrated the inhibitive potential of natural antioxidant compounds on the production of mycotoxins (Boutigny et al 2010;Pani et al 2014;Zhou et al 2007). On the other hand, a lower β-glucan content may allow the accumulation of DON.…”

2,4-Dihydroxy-7-methoxy-2 H -1,4-benzoxazin-3(4 H )-one (DIMBOA) inhibits trichothecene production by Fusarium graminearum through suppression of Tri6 expression

“…Phenolics are well-studied for their correlation with Fusarium resistance in wheat (Engelharclt et al, 2002;Pani et al, 2014), maize (Atanasova-Penichon et al, 2012;Bakan et al, 2003) and barley (Bollina and Kushalappa, 2011).…”