Mycobiota associated with strawberry fruits, their mycotoxin potential and pectinase activity.

Forty-three species and variety belonging to 15 genera were collected from 30 strawberry fruit samples on Glucose-Czapek's agar medium. Among them, and were the most frequent species recovered from 53.3%, 70.0% and 50.0% of the samples, respectively. According to the ITS rDNA sequence, we confirmed the morphological identification result. Moreover, aflatoxin biosynthesis gene was detected in , while gene was found in . Interestingly, we could not detect any aflatoxin or ochratoxin biosynthesis genes in the strain. The concentration of detected aflatoxin was 3.5 ppb produced by , while gave 4.1 ppb as ochratoxin. was the most pectinase producer among the selected strains, and the highest amount was obtained at 30°C after 6 days of incubation with initial medium pH 8.