Food Safety Aspects of Breeding Maize to Multi-Resistance against the Major

Maize is the crop which is most commonly exposed to toxigenic fungi that produce many toxins that are harmful to humans and animals alike. Preharvest grain yield loss, preharvest toxin contamination (at harvest), and storage loss are estimated to be between 220 and 265 million metric tons. In the past ten years, the preharvest mycotoxin damage was stable or increased mainly in aflatoxin and fumonisins. The presence of multiple toxins is characteristic. The few breeding programs concentrate on one of the three main toxigenic fungi. About 90% of the experiments except AFB1 rarely test toxin contamination. As disease resistance and resistance to toxin contamination often differ in regard to