Potential of Citrullus colocynthis L. Schrad. Immature Seed Extracts as Food Preservative against a Fungal Mycotoxigenic Contaminant

'e world of plant extracts and natural compounds have long been regarded as a promise land for the individuation of healthyalternatives to chemical preservatives, against microbial contamination, in food and feed commodities. A plethora of aromatic andmedicinal plant species have been studied from decades to explore their antimicrobial and antioxidant properties, in order to bothvalidate their ethnobotanical use for healing microbial illnesses and assess their suitability as food preservation agents. In fact, afterterrestrialization and during the following evolutionary pathway, plants had to develop chemical compounds—constitutive and/or induced—for defence against specific pathogens, therefore becoming a potential source of new natural products usable withantimicrobial purposes. Aside from the most common contaminants that could occur in foodstuff, mycotoxigenic fungal speciesrepresent a big concern, mainly in cereals and derived products: aflatoxins in particular are the most dreaded among such toxicand cancerogenic secondary metabolites, and the control of the main producerAspergillus flavusis currently one of the mostpursued goals in the field of food safety. As aromatic and medicinal plants have a long history of use in the Mediterranean basin forboth food preservation and pest control in crops, the exploitation of native species for the control of mycotoxigenic phyto-pathogens is almost rationale. 'e present work provides novel insights into the possible use ofC. colocynthisseed organic extractsas antimycotoxigenic additives, demonstrating, for some of them, a feasible application as crop and food protectants with specificregard to aflatoxin contamination. Additionally, the evaluation of their cytotoxic potential and nitric oxide production on humancell lines has been reported for the first time