Eurotium species (Anamorph: Aspergillus species)

A slow growing fungus that produces a yellow-green to greenish-gray or a gray-green to bluish-gray, or a deep olive-green colony with a yellow-brown to red-brown reverse within fourteen days, when incubated at 25oC (77oF). Orange-yellow cleistothecia (a round fruiting body without an opening that contains randomly placed asci containing ascospores) are abundantly produced. It is very common worldwide especially in the tropical and subtropical regions. It can be isolated from air, soil, garden compost, silage, course fodder, peat, desert soil, sand dunes, estuarine silt, salt marshes, mangrove swamps, polluted streams, saltwater, frescoes in a monastery, sugar beets, corn, rhizospheres of oats and barley, rice, groundnuts, spices and meat products, bird feathers, rabbit dung, paper, leather, cotton fabrics, stored copra and cacao beans, and foodstuffs. It is sometimes listed as producing mycotoxins in contaminated corn and cereal products which are toxic for mice and ducklings. It is rarely considered to be an animal or human pathogen.

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