APPRECIATIONS REGARDING THE EFFECT OF SOME FUNGAL MYCOTOXINS ON DAIRY COWS FORAGE

Abstract

The contamination of the forage crops with mycotoxigenic fungi before and after harvesting is a world problem. Most of the species producing mycotoxins are filamentous ascomycetes, basidiomycetes or deuteromycetes. Aspergillus, Fusarium and Penicillium are the most important types. By analysing the proportion of different types of fungi in the 7 analysed forage samples, we found that 100% of the samples were contaminated with Aspergillus spp., 57,14% with Penicillium spp, 42,85% with Cladosporium spp. And Mucor spp., 44,28% with Rhizopus spp. The Aspergillus and Penicillium species were found on maize grains and sunflower seeds. There were 7x103 of them per forage gram. In general, we isolated more than 50 fungi species from the cereal seeds. It is worth to note that barley, sunflower meal and peas had fungal contamination of 2x103, 2x103 and 1x103 per forage gram and they respect the maximum limits of 5x103 colonies per forage gram.The great effect of 100% of the Aspergillus species and of 57,14% of the Penicillium species, both of them having mycotoxigenic potential, suggests that these forage samples should be further researched due to the natural presence of mycotoxins