Short communication Revision of ochratoxin a production capacity by the main species of Aspergillus section Circumdati. Aspergillus steynii revealed as the main risk of OTA contamination Jéssica Gil-Serna a , Covadonga Vázquez a , Noelia Sardiñas a ,M a Teresa González-Jaén b , Belén Patiño a, * a Department of Microbiology III, Faculty of Biology, University Complutense of Madrid, José Antonio Novais 2, 28040-Madrid, Spain b Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biology, University Complutense of Madrid. José Antonio Novais 2, 28040-Madrid, Spain article info Article history: Received 15 March 2010 Received in revised form 21 June 2010 Accepted 29 June 2010 abstract Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a highly toxigenic mycotoxin commonly present in a number of diverse agro- products. Aspergillus Section Circumdati includes some of the most important OTA-producing species: Aspergillus ochraceus, Aspergillus elegans and the recently described Aspergillus steynii and Aspergillus westerdijkiae. In this work, OTA production by several strains of these four species from diverse origins and food matrices was examined. Identification of all the strains was carried out by specific PCR assays. The strains were cultivated in CYA solid medium and OTA was measured by HLPC. This study demon- strated for the first time the high capacity of A. steynii strains to produce OTA at higher levels than A. westerdijkiae,A. ochraceus and A. elegans strains showed low levels or no production at all. In conclusion, the results of this study suggest that the occurrence of A. steynii and A. westerdijkiae might represent the major potential risk for OTA contamination due to their high production and the diversity of commodities that these species may contaminate. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Ochratoxin A (OTA) is one of the most important mycotoxins contaminating foodstuffs and beverages because of its potent nephrotoxic, immunotoxic, genotoxic and teratogenic properties (Pfohl-Leszkowicz & Manderville, 2007); additionally, it has been classified as a possible human carcinogen (group 2B) by the inter- national Agency of Research of Cancer (IARC, 1993). OTA is widely distributed, affecting diverse dietary products, such as cereals, grapes, coffee and spices, among others (Duarte, Pena, & Lino, 2009; Romani, Sacchetti, Chaves López, Pinnavaia, & Dalla Rosa, 2000; Varga & Kozakiewicz, 2006). The maximum OTA limits are regulated for an increasing number of raw and food substrates and countries (Van Egmond, Schothorst, & Jonker, 2007), including the European Union (Commission Regulation, 2006). The current strategies to reduce OTA risk are essentially based on prevention, since OTA is a highly stable compound that resists most of the usual food processing technologies and no efficient decontamination methods are currently available (Amézqueta, González-Peñas, Murillo-Arbizu, & López de Cerain, 2009). Filamentous fungi belonging to the genera Penicillium and Aspergillus Sections Circumdati and Nigri are recognized as the source of OTA in agroproducts. Occurrence of the different species greatly depends on environmental conditions and substrates, although information about these aspects is still scarce. This is also due to the several taxonomic revisions and the description of new species, in particular, in Aspergillus Section Circumdati (Frisvad, Frank, Houbraken, Kuijpers, & Samson, 2004). As a result of this and other studies, Aspergillus westerdijkiae and Aspergillus steynii acquired more relevance than Aspergillus ochraceus, considered for a long time as the main source of OTA in coffee (Taniwaki, Pitt, Teixeira, & Iamanaka, 2003; Urbano, Taniwaki, Leitão, & Vicentini, 2001) and an important contaminant of grapes and cereals (Bellí et al., 2004; Refai, Aziz, El-Far, & Hassan, 1996). However, the relative contribution of species from Section Circumdati to overall OTA contamination in a context of food safety, is far from be firmly established, since there are still few reports and often controversial, as in the case of Aspergillus elegans (Batista, Chalfoun, Prado, Schwan, & Wheals, 2003; Palumbo, O’Keeffe, & Mahoney, 2007; Samson, Hong, & Frisvad, 2006) On the other hand, discrimina- tion among these closely related species is difficult by conventional * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ34 913 944 969; fax: þ34 913 944 964. E-mail address: belenp@bio.ucm.es (B. Patiño). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Food Control journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodcont 0956-7135/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.foodcont.2010.06.018 Food Control 22 (2011) 343e345