To determine the resistance of five different recently harvested corn hybrids to fungal growth and aflatoxins (AFs) production the following parameters were measured: 1) Macroscopic aspect of the grain and each hybrid classified as whole, damaged by insects (DI) or damaged by fungi (DF); 2) Fungal contamination of hybrids 3) Resistance to AFs production, through the culture of Aspergillus parasiticus, NRRL 2999 strain, on each hybrid grain studied and 4) Consumption of dry matter of hybrids by the fungal culture. It was observad that 38% of all corn hybrids had macroscopic damage, being 26.7% DI and 11.3% DF. The recently harvested hybrids showed fungal contamination by Penicillium sp. (14.3%); Aspergillus sp. (23.6%) and Fusarium sp. (57.1%). The production of AFs by the different hybrids cultured for 5 and 10 days showed difference only when compared to aflatoxin G2 cultured for 5 days. The average dry matter consumption of corn hybrids was of 1.25 and 2.69%, submitted to fungal culture for 5 and 10 days respectively.
corn; mycotoxins; aflatoxins
