Prior reports described thermal treatments or ethanol
concentrations that inactivated spores of some of the fungi
examined in our work. In water alone, spores of B. cinerea
and many other fungi, such as A. alternata and M. fructicola,
were killed by 2 minutes or longer exposure at temperatures
of 50C (Falik et al. 1996; Barkai-Golan 2001). Monilinia
fructicola conidiospore wall resembles that of B. cinerea
(Baker and Smith 1969). Spores of R. stolonifer were more
resistant than many other fungi and required several more
minutes to be killed in water at 50C
(Sommer et al. 1967;
Margosan et al. 1997). As would be expected, because of the
relatively short exposure period of 30 s in our work, only
slight reductions in spore germination of all of the fungi
were observed in water at 50C.