Incidence, legislations and strategies of control of mycotoxins in North African countries

Mycotoxins are natural food and feed contaminants mainly produced by filamentous and ubiquitous fungi of genera Aspergillus, Penicillium and Fusarium. Due to the high stability of mycotoxins, contamination can occurs in the field, during storage, processing and post-processing steps, under favorable conditions of temperature and water activity. These compounds pose serious economic and health problems worldwide and show different toxicological effects in humans and animals. North African populations are exposed to the risk of mycotoxins due to consumption of contaminated food. These countries are surrounded by Mediterranean Sea and have a climate characterized by high humidity and temperature, which probably favors the growth of molds. During the last decades, many studies have reported the occurrence of different mycotoxins in food commodities in North African countries. Tolerable limits for mycotoxins have been established in these countries but legislations do not include all mycotoxins. In addition, researchers try to establish strategies to prevent and reduce mycotoxin contamination, but studies still rare and not include all mycotoxins and toxigenic fungi. This review presents an overview of the main investigations about the occurrence of mycotoxins and toxigenic mycobiota in food commodities commercialized in North African countries and the regulation limits which are in force in these countries.The authors are grateful to the European Union (MYCORED KBBE-2007-2-5-05 project) and Tunisian government for the financial support