Mycotoxin Risk in Transition: Climate Change, Emerging Diets, and Adaptive Mitigation Strategies

Climate-stressed crop mycobiomes as pre-harvest sentinels of human mycotoxin exposure: an AI-enabled One Health framework linking dysbiosis, exposomics, and toxicopathology

Climate change is altering the conditions under which crop-associated fungi colonize plants and produce mycotoxins. Current control relies on both pre-harvest management and post-harvest testing; however, field-level fungal-community changes are rarely used to guide where and when testing should be intensified. This Review critically compares evidence linking weather and crop stress, fungal-community composition, toxigenic strain activity, contamination during harvest and storage, human biomarkers, and organ-specific effects. On this basis, we propose the Crop Mycobiome-Exposome-Toxicopathology Axis as a testable One Health model, not as a validated diagnostic pathway. Heat, drought, rainfall sequence, insect injury, drying delay, and storage moisture can alter host susceptibility and fungal competition, but their effects differ by crop, fungal guild, and stage of the food chain. Evidence is strongest for climate-linked aflatoxin modelling, maize mycobiome-toxin associations, atoxigenic Aspergillus biocontrol, biomonitoring feasibility, and aflatoxin-related hepatocarcinogenesis. Direct field-to-human datasets remain scarce. We therefore conclude that crop mycobiome measurements may complement, but cannot replace, toxin assays and post-harvest controls. The priority is prospective, paired field-food-human research that tests whether mycobiome indicators improve prediction and intervention timing beyond weather and commodity testing alone.

Multifaceted Roles of Trichoderma in Sustainable Agriculture: Mechanisms, Applications, and Future Perspectives

Overall, this review presents the versatile function of Trichoderma spp.

Mycotoxins in aquaculture: a comprehensive review of global occurrence, multi-toxicological mechanisms, and sustainable mitigation strategies

Modified Mycotoxins in Food: Current Evidence, Key Uncertainties, and Priorities for Risk Assessment.

Modified mycotoxins represent a significant yet underappreciated challenge in food safety assessment. Unlike their parent compounds, modified mycotoxins arise from plant, fungal, animal, microbial, or processing-induced transformations. Their toxicological relevance depends on factors such as bioavailability, reconversion to parent toxins, and intrinsic biological activity. To critically assess the current evidence and establish priorities for risk assessment, we systematically reviewed original research articles published from 2015 to 2025 using the four core steps of risk assessment: hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. In total, 151 studies were analyzed through evidence mapping, keyword network analysis, and topic modeling. The literature is dominated by research on deoxynivalenol and zearalenone derivatives, while other toxin classes-especially those related to diacetoxyscirpenol and nivalenol-remain underexplored. Occurrence and analytical detection are generally better characterized than internal exposure, compound-specific potency, or quantitative risk characterization. The evidence suggests that excluding modified forms may underestimate mycotoxin risks in certain foods, but significant uncertainties remain regarding bioavailability, reconversion, relative potency, and the application of parent-equivalent approaches. Although research has advanced toward more mechanistic and exposure-driven methodologies, evidence integration remains insufficient for routine risk assessment. This review identifies critical data gaps and proposes a practical framework to prioritize modified mycotoxins in future food safety management and regulatory decision-making.

Pollution characteristics, enrichment patterns, and progress in detoxification research of mycotoxins in maize

A review on bioactive compounds mitigating climate change

This review examines whether bioactive compounds (naturally occurring secondary metabolites from plants, algae, fungi and microorganisms) can serve as sustainable, complementary tools for climate change mitigation across terrestrial, aquatic, agricultural and industrial systems, addressing the persistent technological, economic and political limitations of conventional energy decarbonization. A comprehensive literature synthesis was conducted across disparate disciplines including marine biology, soil science, animal nutrition, plant biochemistry, industrial biotechnology and atmospheric chemistry, systematically categorizing bioactive compounds by chemical class, source organism and mechanism of action, with critical evaluation of scalability, stability, economic viability and regulatory status supported by original tables and figures. The review integrated peer-reviewed literature from 1987 to 2025, extracting mechanistic data on specific enzyme targets (methyl-coenzyme M reductase for bromoform; ammonia monooxygenase for biological nitrification inhibitors), assessing scalability using Technology Readiness Levels (TRL 1–9), quantifying degradation kinetics (bromoform half-life <1 h in rumen fluid), and comparing life cycle assessment energy penalties for algal carbon capture (2.5–4.0 MJ/kg CO2) against conventional amine scrubbing (1.2–1.8 MJ/kg CO2). Halogenated compounds from Asparagopsis seaweeds inhibit rumen methanogenesis via competitive inhibition of methyl-coenzyme M reductase, reducing enteric methane by 80–95%; biological nitrification inhibitors suppress ammonia monooxygenase in soils, reducing nitrous oxide by 70–90%; condensed tannins reduce enteric methane by 15–30% and soil N2O by 30–70% but exhibit trade-offs including nitrogen immobilization and potential increases in N2O:N2 ratios; and dimethylsulfoniopropionate from marine phytoplankton influences cloud formation via sulphate aerosol production, though the net climate feedback remains debated. Critical barriers include bromoform volatility (TRL 6–7), brachialactone lability in soil (TRL 4–5), microalgal lipid production costs 10–100× petroleum, and carbonic anhydrase denaturation in flue gas conditions, while knowledge gaps persist regarding methanogen adaptation, ecosystem-scale effects and consumer acceptance. Bioactive compounds offer mechanistically specific, biologically mediated pathways for greenhouse gas abatement and carbon sequestration that complement conventional mitigation, but scalability (not intrinsic efficacy) is the central barrier; without breakthroughs in encapsulation, trait breeding and enzyme immobilization, these solutions will remain niche. Realizing their full potential requires transdisciplinary collaboration, robust life-cycle assessments, regulatory reform for feed additives and carbon crediting, equitable benefit-sharing under the Nagoya Protocol and integration into nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. With the 1.5 °C threshold already breached, the molecular machinery of the biosphere is an under-leveraged asset that must be engineered, scaled and deployed with rigor and humility.