The complex metabolic interplay between cereals and mycotoxins: an insight between open field and in vitro cultures

Over the course of evolution, plants have developed multiple defensive strategies, including both a manifold arsenal of secondary metabolites and detoxification pathways, involving the biotransformation of xenobiotics and their compartmentalization or segregation. These responses intervene in most relationships between plants and biotic stress and they come into play in the perennial chemical warfare between mycotoxigenic fungi and cereals, the results of which impact food safety and security at a global level. The defensive metabolic responses of plants can be intended as the combination of multiple processes to many different exogenous stimuli, including the simultaneous environmental contamination by several mycotoxins, but the details of the interplay between this exposure and secondary metabolism are still to be fully elucidated in particular in the whole range of cereal crops. Therefore, four separate studies were conducted on a variety of cereals with the aim to better understand plant responses from a phytochemical perspective. Both open-field and in vitro studies were performed. In vitro studies, unlike those in the open field, allowed the evaluation of the reciprocal relationship between mycotoxins and the defensive mechanisms of plants, in a controlled environment.