Hamid Moh. Al-Gabr, Chengsong Ye, Yongli Zhang, Sardar Khan, Huirong Lin, Tianling Zheng,Journal of Environmental Biology, 2013, 34:353-358

Mycotoxins are considered as the most hazardous fungal metabolites for human, animals and planthealth. Recently, more attention has been paid on the occurrence of this group of fungi in differentwater sources throughout the globe. In this study,Aspergillus parasiticusATCC strain was used asrepresentative strain producing aflatoxins in drinking water. This study aimed to investigate theactivation of fungi in drinking water and their ability to produce aflatoxins (B1, B2, G1, and G2) inwater under different ratios of C:N using different concentrations of total organic carbon (TOC) andtotal nitrogen (TN). Glucose and ammonium sulphate were used for changing the levels of TOC andTN in the selected water media. Similarly, the effects of different water pH levels from 4.5 to 8.2 onthe growth of this group of fungi and aflatoxins production were also investigated. The resultsindicate that the growth of fungi was highest, at C:N ratio of 1:1 as compared to other selectedratios. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the pH levels 5.5­6.5 showed best growth of fungi ascompared to other pH levels. Aflatoxin concentrations were measured in the water samples usingHPLC technique, but selected fungi were not able to produce aflatoxins in water at appliedconcentrations of TOC and TN mimicking the ratios and concentrations present in the natural aquaticenvironment.