Abstract
During storage, a significant quantity of wheat is lost due to insect and fungal pest complexes, where insects possibly disseminate the mycotoxic fungal pests. We have studied the role Sitotroga cerealella, Tribolium castaneum and Rhyzopertha dominica in propagating mycotoxic fungi in stored wheat grains. We found that 85% of wheat collected from steel and brick-walled grain silos were contaminated with Alternaria alternata, Alternaria infectoria, Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus tenuissima, and these species were also isolated from the bodies of S. cerealella adults. Our results clearly demonstrated that the prevalence of A. flavus was higher when S. cerealella was co-infesting the grain along with fungal species. We have noticed that 75% of adult moths (both male and female) were attracted toward the fungal contaminated seeds as compared to sterilized seeds even after two weeks of incubation. This proportion increased to more than 87% in just four weeks after fungal infestation. This study suggests further investigation to understand the chemical basis of identified mutualistic association between A. flavus and S. cerealella, for efficient management of grain losses due to insect–fungal pest complexes.
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Acknowledgements
We are thankful to colleagues at the Department of Entomology, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (FAS&T), Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, and Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, for their valuable feedbacks and discussions regarding the development of earlier drafts of the manuscript. We are also grateful to the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Government of Pakistan, for providing financial support toward PhD studies of QS.
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Not applicable—This study is exempted from ethical approval by departmental ethical review committee (ERC—Department of Biosciences, CUI, Islamabad) as no human or endangered animals were used as test organism.
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Editorial responsibility: Jing Chen.
This work was a joint effort of F. Ahmad and Q. Saeed in terms of conceptualization and funding.
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Khan, A.A., Umar, U., Ejaz, S. et al. Insect-facilitated propagation of mycotoxic fungi in grain storages: association of Sitotroga cerealella Olivier with Aspergillus flavus link. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 20, 231–238 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-022-04084-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-022-04084-0