Distribution and Metabolism of Citrinin: A Review

Citrinin was first isolated by Hetherington and Raistrick in 1931 from a culture filtrate of Penicillium Thom. Other species of Penicillium as well as several species of Aspergillius also produce citrinin (Timonin and Rouatt, 1944; Krogh et al., 1970; Mislivec and Tuite, 1970; Ito et al., 1973; Pohland and Mislivec, 1976; Stoloff, 1976; Nelson et al., 1980; Mislivec, 1981). It is a potentially important mycotoxin; it had been found as a natural contaminant of peanuts (Diener, 1960), corn (Mislivec and Tuite, 1970), rice (Saito et al., 1971); wheat, rye, barley, and oats in Canada (Scott et al., 1972); barley and oats in Denmark (Krogh et al., 1973); naturally rotted apples containing Penicillium expansum (Harwig et al., 1973); and Indian groundnuts infected with A.flavus.P.citrinum and A.terreus (Subrahmanyam and Rao, 1974).