Plant essential oils could act effectively against postharvest diseases, α-terpineol, a typical terpenoid of plant essential oils, exhibited strong antifungal activity in against Penicillium italicum, but the possible action mechanism remains undetermined. In present study, α-terpineol was evaluated for antibacterial activity against Penicillium digitatum along with the mode of their antibacterial action. The results showed that mycelial growth of P. digitatum was strongly inhibited by α-terpineol, with the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) of 2.00 and 8.00 µl/ml, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy observation revealed that α-terpineol obviously altered the morphology of P. digitatum hyphae by causing the loss of cytoplasm and distortion of mycelia. A rapid increase in the membrane permeability of P. digitatum was observed after treated with MIC or MFC of α-terpineol, evidenced by the release of cell constituents, the extracellular conductivity, and the extracellular pH. In addition, α-terpineol apparently induced a decrease in total lipid contents of P. digitatum cells, indicating the destruction of cell membrane structures after treatment. Based on our study, α-terpineol might affect the cell wall synthesis and lead to the disruption of cell wall. The cell wall disruption affected fungal morphogenesis, the integrity of membrane and leakage of intracellular components, these results suggested that α-terpineol treatment inhibited the growth of P. digitatum.

Mycotoxins are highly toxic secondary metabolites produced by fungi, which are seriously contaminating food and endangering human health. A variety of methods have been endeavored to remove mycotoxins from food, while photocatalytic technology has exhibited great potential for the degradation of these mycotoxins because of its advantages of high efficiency and low cost, with an emphasis on the degradations of aflatoxin and deoxynivalenol. This review updated the progress on the photocatalytic degradation of mycotoxins in food, then summarized the characteristics of new photocatalytic materials and associated factors and the degradation products of mycotoxins, and finally explained the possible degradation mechanisms and pathways. This review also provided a prospect for the degradation of mycotoxins by photocatalytic technology.

Because of its simplicity, reliability, and sensitivity, the drift tube ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) has been recognized as the equipment of choice for the on-site monitoring and identification of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). However, the performance of handheld IMS is often limited by the size, weight, and drift voltage, which heavily determine the sensitivity and resolving power that is crucial for the detection and identification of VOCs. In this work, we present a low-cost, miniaturized drift tube ion mobility spectrometer incorporated with a miniaturized UV ionization lamp and a relatively low drift voltage. The sensitivity and resolving power are boosted with the implementation of Fourier deconvolution multiplexing compared to the conventional signal averaging data acquisition method. The drift tube provides a high resolving power of up to 52 at a drift length of 41 mm, 10 mm ID dimensions, and a drift voltage of 1.57 kV. Acetone, benzene, dimethyl methyl phosphonate, methyl salicylate, and acetic acid were evaluated in the developed spectrometer and showed satisfactory performance.