Dr Andrea Patriarca

Areas of expertise

• Food Quality
• Food Safety

Background

Dr Andrea Patriarca is an experienced researcher in Food Mycology. She applies her chemical and biological background in reducing food spoilage and mycotoxin contamination of crops and processed food.

Dr Andrea Patriarca completed her BSc and PhD in Chemical Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has been an Associate Professor at the University of Buenos Aires since 2014, where she started her teaching and research career in 1997. She joined Cranfield University in 2023 as Lecturer in Food Mycology.

 As a postdoctoral student, she performed research stays in University of Lleida, Spain; Technical University of Denmark; Cranfield University; obtaining grants and awards from Fundación Carolina (Spain) & Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Argentina) (2010), CONICET Young Researchers External Fellowships (2011), Thalmann Program, University of Buenos Aires (2013), Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation (2014).

She is a member of the Argentinean National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET) since 2008, currently in the category of Independent Researcher, and the Head of the Food Mycology research group at the University of Buenos Aires and the Institute of Mycology and Botany (INMIBO, CONICET).

Dr Patriarca is a partner of MYTOX-SOUTH, an international cooperation network on mycotoxin research. She has been selected for the 2023-2027 expert roster of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives.

Research opportunities

PhD projects are currently available for motivated externally-funded or self-funded students. Applicants are invited to contact me to discuss research objectives and areas of interest. 

Current activities

Dr Patriarca has focused her research on fungal spoilage of crops and processed food, mycotoxigenic fungi, fungal taxonomy and ecophysiology, secondary metabolite production, fungal plant pathology, crop diseases, and prevention strategies to minimise food contamination.

Her recent studies focus on fungi contaminating crops in pre- and postharvest stages, following their prevalence and toxigenic metabolites throughout the food chain.

In the last decade, her main projects have dealt on Alternaria and Fusarium contamination of cereals and vegetables. These involved the characterization of fungal populations from crops through a polyphasic approach, combining taxonomic, molecular and metabolomic data, with emphasis on toxigenic species, understanding how environmental factors affect mycotoxin accumulation, the role of climate change scenarios, and the risk assessment of mycotoxin contamination in key food chains. She is currently an international reference on Alternaria taxonomy, its secondary metabolite profile, plant diseases associated with this genus, and the natural occurrence of its mycotoxins.

She collaborates with food industries to reduce the risk of mycotoxins in their products through a holistic approach from field to processing. She provides consultancy to food companies and agricultural producers on problems related to fungal spoilage and mycotoxin contamination.

Her current key research areas are:

• Identification of fungal agents of fruit and vegetable disease.
• Polyphasic approach for the characterization of food spoilage and toxigenic fungi.
• Comprehensive approach from field to fork to reduce mycotoxin contamination.
• Effect of processing on mycotoxin incidence in food.
• Development of rapid techniques for mycotoxins detection.
• Environmentally friendly techniques to reduce fungal spoilage and mycotoxin contamination.
• Waste management and conversion into profitable by-products with a food safety approach.

Dr Patriarca has extensive experience in course development and teaching at BSc and MSc levels in Food Microbiology, Food Mycology, and Mycotoxicology. She has supervised postdoctoral, PhD and MSc students on food mycology, toxigenic fungi, mycotoxins, and food safety. She has been an internal and external examiner for postgraduate students in Universities from Argentina and Europe.

Most recent publications are listed below, for a full publications list please follow the ORCID link.

Clients

Publications

• Articles in journals
• Books