Abstract
Of various kinds of mycological character, the following characteristics were found to be the most common in aflatoxin-producing strains: Color of conidial heads green even in old culture; the reverse side of colony wrinkled and colored; presences of sclerotia, globose to subglobose vesicles, biseriate sterigmata and conidiophore with roughened walls; high productivities of pigment, total acid and kojic acid; low abilities of browning rice koji and of production of deferriferrichromes.
Sixteen strains were thus selected from 160 industrial strains as mycologically somewhat similar ones to the so-called aflatoxin strains, and their aflatoxin productivity, together with that of the aflatoxin strains, was investigated by the same methods as those described in Parts I and II. It was found that all of the industrial strains and four of the aflatoxin strains did not produce aflatoxin.
Thus, it was concluded that the mycological characters described above are the ones necessary to a fungus for the production of aflatoxin but that the fungus having these characters may not always produce aflatoxin.
