Preliminary experiments showed that the amounts of OTA
absorbed by biomass were negligible (data not shown) compared to
those recovered from the culture supernatants. Recovery percentages
of OTA in MRS and YM broth were in the range of 92–107% and
88–113%, respectively. Bacterial strains showed low ability for OTA
reduction, ranging from 2 to 25% at all examined combinations of
pH and initial OTA concentration (Fig. 3a and c). Statistical analysis
showed that the ability of all the bacterial composites for OTA reduction
was slightly affected by the OTA initial concentration (p=0.04).
On the contrary, factors such as pH, type of bacterial composite, and
all their interactions significantly affected OTA reduction (pb0.05).
Specifically, the increase in pH of the medium inoculated with the
mixtures of Bacillus thuringiensis (BM), P. pentosaceus (PdM), and Lactobacillus sp. (LbM), showed a slight but significant increase in
OTA reduction (up to 25%), regardless of OTA initial concentration.
At pH 3.0, no growth was observed by all the studied bacterial composites
and thus no OTA reduction was reported (Fig. 3a and c).
Contrary to bacteria, yeast composites showed markedly higher
detoxification activity, achieving as high reductions of OTA as 65%