Moulds in food spoilage

There is an increasing knowledge and understanding of the role played by moulds in food spoilage. Especially the discovery of mycotoxin production in foods has highlighted the importance of moulds in food quality. It is, however, only within the last 5–10 years that major progresses have been made towards the prevention of spoilage caused by moulds. This is due to recent international agreements on taxonomy and analytical methods for foodborne moulds, which has led to the discovery, that a specific, very limited funga (= mycobiota) is responsible for the spoilage of each kind of food. This is called the associated or critical funga and has been shown to consist of less than ten species. In this paper the associated funga is described for the following foods: citrus and pomaceous fruit, potato and yam tubers, onions, rye, wheat, rye bread, cheese and fermented sausage and whenever possible the selective principle of the food is discussed. In the description only references which are using the new taxonomy and mycological methods have been used. The individual fungas are very different from each other, which again means that the potential appearance of a specific mycotoxin is restricted to a limited number of foods. The important mycotoxin pattern of each food is described including toxins which originate from ‘carry over’. For some foods examples are also given on spoilage of sensoric properties due to moulds. Finally, preventive action against the growth of the associated funga is described for some of the foods and it is concluded that optimization of the prevention and control of moulds in foods must be based on knowledge of the associated funga.