DOI: 10.5937/FFR1701039P UDK 664.641.1/.2:633.11/.12+633.15]:582.28 Original research paper MYCOPOPULATIONS OF GRAIN AND FLOUR OF WHEAT, CORN AND BUCKWHEAT Dragana V. Plavšić *1 , Marija M. Škrinjar 2 , orđe B. Psodorov 1 , Ljubiša Ć. Šarić 1 , Dragan . Psodorov 3 , Ana O. Varga 1 , Anamarija I. Mandić 1 1 University of Novi Sad, Institute of Food Technology, 21000 Novi Sad, Bulevar cara Lazara 1, Serbia 2 University of Novi Sad Faculty of Technology, Bulevar cara Lazara 1, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia 3 College of Management and Business Communications, 21205 Sremski Karlovci, Mitropolita Stratimirovića 110, Serbia *Corresponding author: Phone: +381214853822 Fax: +38121450725 E-mail address: dragana.plavsic@fins.uns.ac.rs ABSTRACT: According to the nutritive characteristics, whole grain flour is a high quality product, due to its high vitamin, mineral, and dietary fiber content. However, the cereal grains are susceptible to the series of contamination during the ripening, harvesting, processing and storage. The aim of this work was to determine mold presence in grains and flour of wheat, corn and buckwheat. The determination of total number and identification of isolated genera and species of molds were the subject of this research. All samples were contaminated with the molds. The total number of molds per 100 cereal grains was between 60 cfu (wheat) and 120 cfu (buckwheat). The total number of molds in the samples of flour ranged from 6.0x10 1 cfu/g in white wheat flour to 5.0 x10 2 cfu/g in buckwheat whole grain flour (DG18 medium). Eight fungal genera (Alternaria, Aspergillus, Cladosporium, Chrysonilia, Fusarium, Penicillium, Rhizopus and Scopulariopsis) and fifteen species were isolated. The largest number of species of molds was isolated from the genus Aspergillus. About 66.7% of isolated fungi belonged to potentially toxigenic species. The results pointed out the necessity of grain surface treatment, preceding the milling of grains in wheat, corn and whole grain buckwheat flour production. Key words: wheat, corn, buckwheat, flour, molds INTRODUCTION Since ancient times, cereals present the most important group of agricultural pro- ducts, considering the human nutrition. Cereals are rich in carbohydrates, pro- teins, minerals, vitamins and other nutri- tious substances, and they are charac- terized by the high nutritional value. The most frequent cereals in human diet are wheat, corn and rice, while the other species such as oat, barley, rye, triticale, millet and pseudocereals – buckwheat and sorghum are present in a smaller amount. Whole grains of cereals and their products are an important part of human nutrition. Whole grains of cereals contain some very important phytochemicals. The most im- portant phytochemicals that originate from whole grain are polyphenolic compounds, carotenoides, vitamin E, lignans, ß-glu- cans and inulin (Bunzel, et al., 2001; Se- dej, 2011). The basic technological procedure of ce- real processing is the milling process. In the case of this process the basic raw ma- 39