A decision tool for evaluating the agronomic risk of exposure to fumonisins of different maize crop management systems in Italy

Fumonisins constitute a group of carcinogenic metabolites produced mainly by Fusarium verticillioides, the most common fungi associated with maize grain. The limits fixed for fumonisins in maize for food and feed by the European Union (EU) could represent a serious problem for maize areas in the south of Europe where F. verticillioides encounters extremely favourable meteorological and environmental conditions for its life cycle. Prevention strategies through pre-harvest agronomic management can achieve the quality and safety standards required by EU regulations. On the basis of results from agronomic field trials conducted in the North of Italy, the first version of an agronomic decision tool has been created to help farmers, collectors and processors manage fumonisin contamination in order to respect the EU fumonisin limits and the constraints required by a given market outlet. The tool is based on the concept of agronomic exposure to fumonisin risk (AEFR), which is a qualitative evaluation of the impact that a crop management system can have on fumonisin contamination. The validation has shown the validity of the decision tool, which was able to correctly classify the crop management systems of real farms according to their agronomic exposure to fumonisin risk: increasing levels of fumonisin contamination corresponded to increasing AEFR levels.