Furthermore, OTA production seems to depend on the environmental
factors which affect growth (Selouane et al., 2009). An indirect
approximation for the determination of putative OTA
presence in grapes is to determine the quantity of the fungi in
grapes and thus use this value as an indicative risk factor. Mateo
et al. (2011) reported the discrepancy between the expected
numbers of fungal cfu/g and the high levels of naturally contaminated
barley that occurred from PCR assays and suggested that this
difference could be attributed to the existence of a high number of
non-viable population (spores and/or hyphae) in the samples. Thus,
the aim of the present study is to determine the presence and load
of A. carbonarius in wine grapes of the most widely planted grape
variety in Greece, using a real time PCR assay.