Starch and the environment

Food and feed quality and safety must be controlled early in the production chain. Fusarium Head Blight, FHB, caused by Fusarium species reduces grain yield and causes mycotoxin contamination leading to severe health problems in production animals. The mature cereal grain contains 60% starch providing the major food source for the fungus. We suggest a new approach based on modulated grain starch composition to starve the fungus and inhibit mycotoxin production and transgenic barley genotypes provide a new strategy for the production of safe grain.

 

F. graminearum grew poorly on B-type crystalline starches whereas three to five fold higher accumulation of biomass was found for A, C and V-type crystalline polymorphs. Fusarium amylolytic activity increased in the presence of all types of native starch granules.

 

Interestingly, the highest amount of amylolytic activity was found for the B-type resistant starches indicating that F. graminearum interacts with B-type granules although only limited degradation occur. Amylolytic activity was also found for maltose and malto-oligosacharides indicating that starch breakdown products may induce amylolytic activity.

 

Further biotechnological designing can be managed without severely affecting yield and performance. Starch analysis and metabolite profiling combined with studies of fungal nutrient regulators and toxin profiling during grain filling provide the necessary information to support our approach.

 

 

Recent publications:

Carciofi, M., Shaik, S.S.,  Jensen, S.L. Blennow, A., Svenson J.T., Vincze, E. and  Hebelstrup, K.H. (2011) Hyperphosphorylation of cereal starch J. Cereal Sci (in press)

 

Svensson, J.T., Olas, J.J., Skibior, R., Giese, H. and Blennow, A. (2012) Suppression of Fusarium graminearium growth by differently structured starch types Starch/Starke (in press)