Dr Andrea Patriarca

Areas of expertise

• Food Quality
• Food Safety

Background

Andrea Patriarca is an expert in food mycology with 25+ years of research in fungal spoilage of plant-based food products. She is an international reference in research on the fungus Alternaria, an agent of crop and postharvest diseases, and its mycotoxins. Her work, from regulated mycotoxins to emerging new Alternaria toxins, is driven by a mission to reduce fungal contamination in food products and extend their shelf life. Her ultimate goal is to minimize food loss and promote food safety.

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

Andrea obtained her PhD in Chemical Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she started her research and teaching career in 1997. She has been an Associate Professor and Head of the Food Mycology research group at the University of Buenos Aires and the Institute of Mycology and Botany (INMIBO, CONICET), and an Independent Researcher of the Argentinean National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET). She joined Cranfield University in 2023.

She has been a visiting scientist at the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Lleida and University of Extremadura (Spain), and Cranfield University. She has obtained 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), and Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation (2014).

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

Andrea’s research deals with 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 most recent projects focus on Alternaria and Fusarium contamination of cereals and vegetables. These involve characterising fungal populations from crops through a polyphasic approach, combining taxonomic, molecular, and metabolomic data with an emphasis on toxigenic species. She also aims to understand 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 applies her research practically, collaborating 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:

Fungal contamination in the food industry.

Identification of fungal agents of fruit and vegetable disease.

Comprehensive approach from field to fork to reduce mycotoxin contamination.

Effect of processing on mycotoxin incidence in food.

Development of rapid techniques for mycotoxin detection.

Environmentally friendly techniques to reduce fungal spoilage and mycotoxin contamination.

Waste management and conversion into profitable by-products with a food safety approach.

For a full publications list please follow the ORCID link.

Clients

• Grupo Arcor SA
• General Mills, Inc
• Tetra Laval
• Unilever PLC
• Chr. Hansen Argentina S.A.I.C.
• Molinos Rio de la Plata

Publications

• Articles in journals
• Conference papers
• Books