Green and sustainable technologies for the decontamination of fungi and mycotoxins in rice: A review

Rice is a staple food globally and plays a key role in the food system of many countries in the world. However, rice is prone to contamination by mycotoxins such as aflatoxins, fumonisins, ochratoxins, deoxynivalenol, zearalenone, citrinin, sterigmatocystin, cyclopiazonic acid, patulin, gliotoxin and trichothecenes. These mycotoxins are produced by fungi such as Aspergillus, Fusarium, and Penicillium during improper pre-and post-harvest handling and propose an economic public health challenge. Mycotoxin contamination of rice has huge economic and public health implications as it affects health, compromises food safety, and reduces food quality. This review gives insight into recent findings on mycotoxin detection techniques, sustainable decontamination methods of fungi and mycotoxins, mechanisms of action of these decontamination methods, and their effects on the functional, sensory, and sensory, the nutritional quality of rice. LC/MS, LC/MS/MS, immunochemical methods, NIR, FTIR, Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, ELISA and electronic nose are among the techniques used for the qualitative-quantitative analysis of mycotoxins in cereals. In addition, decontamination strategies such as microwave, pulsed light, ozone, cold plasma, irradiation, use of plant antifungal metabolites and microbial biocontrol are increasingly becoming popular because they are effective, scalable, considered ‘green’ and sustainable, and have little or no effect on the functional, sensory and nutritional quality of rice. Future research should be focused on the development of a combination of treatments to improve the effectiveness and application of these technologies at an industrial scale.