Strains of Penicillium expansum cause rotting of many foods, among which they are the most common contaminant of apples. As P. expansum can form patulin it is also a food safety risk. The main purpose was to determine P. expansum adhesion ability, since most scientific literature describes bacterial adhesion, while moulds adhesion is rare. In the first part, the method of determining adhesion with crystal violet dye (CV) was optimized by choosing medium (malt agar and potato agar) and age of conidia (7 and 10 days) for preparation of inoculum and determining the wavelength (570 nm and 584 nm) for adherence quantification. In the second part, we studied the adhesion of P. expansum by checking the influence of selected intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Results showed that for adhesion monitoring it is better to use an inoculum prepared from a 10-day-old culture, as the adhesion was much greater, and that the culture medium on which the moulds grow prior inoculum preparation, does not affect adhesion. When comparing the results obtained by measuring the absorbance of released CV at different wavelengths no differences were found. Among the intrinsic factors, we found out that initial number of conidia had a major influence since adhesion was highest at 108 K/ml (K: conidia), and adhesion time (adhesion after 20 h was greater than after 40 h), while strain (P. expansum ŽMJ 497 type strain, P. expansum ŽMJ 464 wild strain) did not affect adhesion. P. expansum strains grow well on many materials that are also used in food industry and we compared adhesion on different surfaces (polystyrene, polypropylene, high-density polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, glass and stainless steel). The maximum adhesion was determined on the polystyrene. Adhesion of P. expansum on surfaces was also observed by scanning electron microscopy and it was found that the morphological properties are related to the type of surface. We can conclude that the KV staining method is suitable as a preliminary method for determining mould adhesion and that P. expansum adhere well to the surface, but further research is needed.
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