Debunking the Myth of T-2/HT-2 Toxin Production.

is commonly detected in field surveys of head blight (FHB) of cereal crops and can produce a range of trichothecene mycotoxins. Although experimentally validated reports of strains producing T-2/HT-2 trichothecenes are rare, is frequently generalized in the literature as a producer of T-2/HT-2 toxins due to a single study from 2004 in which T-2/HT-2 toxins were detected at low levels from six out of forty-nine strains examined. To validate/substantiate the observations reported from the 2004 study, the producing strains were acquired and phylogenetically confirmed to be correctly assigned as ; however, no evidence of T-2/HT-2 toxin production was observed from axenic cultures. Moreover, no evidence for a ortholog, encoding a key acyltransferase shown to be necessary for T-2 toxin production in other species, was observed in any of the assembled genomes of the strains. Our findings corroborate multiple field-based and studies on FHB-associated populations which also do not support the production of T-2/HT-2 toxins with and therefore conclude that should not be generalized as a T-2/HT-2 toxin producing species of .