The mycotoxin citreoviridin has been associated with the 'yellow rice' disease, which caused cardiac beriberi in Japan. In Brazil, the consumption of contaminated rice was suspected to be involved in a recent beriberi outbreak. In this work, citreoviridin was produced by Penicillium citreonigrum, cultivated in 500 ml yeast extract sucrose (YES) liquid medium for 8 days at 25ºC, and the toxin extracted with chloroform from the liquid medium and the mycelium. A total of 15.3 g of crude extract was obtained from 48 culture flasks, with an estimated citreoviridin contend of 5.54 g, 74.3% being present in the mycelia. Semi-preparative HPLC of the crude extract yielded 27.1% citreoviridin. The HPLC-purified citreoviridin fraction was fully characterised by UV/VIS, FT-IR, (1)H- and (13)C-NMR, LC-MS/MS and LC-MSD TOF, and purity confirmed by gravimetric analysis. Isocitreoviridin was also produced by P. citreonigrum, accounting for about 10% of the citreoviridin present in the crude extract, most transformed into citreoviridin after 10 months under freezing conditions protected from light. Citreoviridin was shown to be stable under the same conditions, although it can suffer isomerisation after a longer storage period. Isomerisation is a potential source of variability in toxicological studies and purity of the material should be checked before study initiation.
Keywords: Penicillium citreonigrum; characterisation; citreoviridin; production; purification.