Mycotoxins in nuts

Nuts are among the crops that can be contaminated by aflatoxins (AFs), mycotoxins mainly produced by A. flavus and A. parasiticus. These fungi are well adapted to tropical and sub-tropical areas and tend to contaminate damaged or stressed crops. Both peanuts and pistachio nuts are well protected by their shells during the growing season, but damage caused by parasites, or early split in pistachio nuts, can result in contamination by Aspergilli in field. The amount of AFs in nuts can also increase considerably during harvest/post-harvest. As well as careful crop management, promising results in reducing AFs contamination have been achieved applying biological control in field. Sorting can effectively reduce AFs, but a high percentage of production is discarded, which is not always contaminated at unacceptable levels. Decontamination is difficult; it frequently leads to limited results or variations in the edibility or quality of nuts.