2010, Volume XIII, Issue 1

SUMMARIES OF SYMPOSIA AND CONFERENCES

Approximately 450 scientists, industry representatives, and other stake- holders in the worldwide effort to control mycotoxins gathered in Tulln, Austria, September 9–11, 2009, for the International Society for Mycotoxicology (ISM) conference entitled Worldwide Mycotoxin Reduction in Food and Feed Chains. The ISM Conference 2009 was the first of a series of international conferences and workshops planned in conjunction with Novel Integrated Strategies for Worldwide Mycotoxin Reduction in the Food and Feed Chains, a MycoRed project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program.

The conference focused on four major topics:

• Pre-harvest mycotoxin reduction—plant resistance and optimizing fungicide use; biocontrol approaches; good agricultural practices, predictive models, and mycotoxicological problems and relief strategies
• Post-harvest mycotoxin reduction—storage handling practices, preservatives and potentiators, food/feed processing for mycotoxin reduction, and cost analysis of aflatoxin risk reduction efforts in African countries
• Bioavailability and detoxification of mycotoxins—mycotoxin-detoxifying agents for feed/food, microbial degradation, reducing bioavailability of mycotoxins
• Advanced technologies to reduce and detect toxigenic fungi and mycotoxins—biodiversity of fungi, novel diagnostic tools, fungal and plant genomics, rapid and advanced tools for mycotoxin analysis, masked mycotoxins, and metabolomics

In addition to roundtable discussions of these topics, the extensive scientific program featured a variety of sessions, keynote lectures, posters, and oral presentations on mycotoxin control strategies ranging from traditional fungicides, good management and storage practices, and genetic techniques to novel approaches such as pulsed light and ozone treatment. The final two days of the conference also included sessions on new methods of decreasing animal and human exposure to mycotoxins and recent analytic advances such as rapid strip tests and multi-analyte immunoassays.

The full scientific program is available at the ISM website:
http://www.ism2009.at/

The next ISM Conference will take place in Penang, Malaysia, in December 2010. Additional ISM conferences are scheduled for 2011 in South Africa and for 2012 in the United States.

For more information about the International Society for Mycotoxicology, please visit the society’s website: http://www.mycotox-society.org/

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