Accurate identification of fungi occurring on agrofood products is the key aspect of any prevention and pest management program, offering valuable information in leading crop health and food safety. Fungal species misidentification can dramatically impact biodiversity assessment, ecological studies, management decisions, and, concerning toxigenic fungi, health risk assessment, since they can produce a wide range of toxic secondary metabolites, referred to as mycotoxins. Since each toxigenic fungal species can have its own mycotoxin profile, a correct species identification, hereby attempted with universal DNA barcoding approach, could have a key role in mycotoxins prevention strategies. Currently, identification of single marker for species resolution in fungi has not been achieved and the analysis of multiple genes is used, with the advantage of an accurate species identification and disadvantage of difficult setting up of PCR-based diagnostic assays. In the present paper, we describe our strategy to set up a DNA-based species identification of fungal species associated with maize ear rot, combining DNA barcoding approach and species-specific primers design for PCR based assays. We have (i) investigated the appropriate molecular marker for species identification, limited to mycobiota possibly occurring on maize, identifying calmodulin gene as single taxonomically informative entity; (ii) designed 17 sets of primers for rapid identification of 14 Fusarium, 10 Aspergillus, 2 Penicillium, and 2 Talaromyces species or species groups, and finally (iii) tested specificity of the 17 set of primers, in combination with 3 additional sets previously developed.

中文翻译：

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鉴定与玉米穗腐相关的产毒真菌种类：钙调蛋白作为单一信息基因。

准确鉴定农产品食品上存在的真菌是任何预防和病虫害管理计划的关键方面，可提供有关领先的作物健康和食品安全的有价值的信息。真菌物种的错误识别会极大地影响生物多样性评估，生态学研究，管理决策，以及关于有毒真菌的健康风险评估，因为它们会产生广泛的有毒次级代谢产物，称为霉菌毒素。由于每种产毒真菌物种都可以拥有自己的霉菌毒素谱，因此正确的物种鉴定（尝试使用通用DNA条码方法进行尝试）可能在霉菌毒素的预防策略中起关键作用。目前，尚未实现用于真菌中物种解析的单一标记的鉴定，并且使用了多个基因的分析，具有准确的物种识别的优点，以及难以设置基于PCR的诊断方法的缺点。在本文中，我们描述了建立与玉米穗腐病相关的真菌物种的基于DNA的物种识别的策略，结合了DNA条形码方法和基于PCR的检测的物种特异性引物设计。我们已经（i）研究了用于物种鉴定的适当分子标记，仅限于可能在玉米上发生的分枝杆菌，将钙调蛋白基因鉴定为单一的分类学信息实体；（ii）设计了17套引物，用于快速鉴定14种镰刀菌，10种曲霉菌，2个青霉菌和2个Talaromyces物种或物种组，最后（iii）测试了这17套引物的特异性，并与先前的3套引物结合使用发达。