For each culture media, aw level and temperature assayed, growth was monitored by absorbance measurements at 530nm using the Multilabel-Reader Mithras LB 940 (Berthold Technologies, Bad Wildbad, Germany) after 1, 2, 4 and 10 days of incubation.
The absorbance of the corresponding uninoculated medium, used as blank was subtracted to the absorbance values of the inoculated media. After each reading, microplates were sealed and stored at -80ºC until they were analyzed for OTA content.
OTA production was detected using a previously described high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) screening method developed in our laboratory for fungi growing in microtiter wells (Abarca et al., 2014) . On each sampling occasion, one of the five replicate wells inoculated for each strain, culture media, aw level and incubation temperature, were randomly selected and their content was removed and extracted with 0.5 ml of methanol. The extracts were filtered and injected into the HPLC. The limit of quantification was 0.045 µg/ml for this mycotoxin.
The absorbance of the corresponding uninoculated medium, used as blank was subtracted to the absorbance values of the inoculated media. After each reading, microplates were sealed and stored at -80ºC until they were analyzed for OTA content.
OTA production was detected using a previously described high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) screening method developed in our laboratory for fungi growing in microtiter wells (Abarca et al., 2014) . On each sampling occasion, one of the five replicate wells inoculated for each strain, culture media, aw level and incubation temperature, were randomly selected and their content was removed and extracted with 0.5 ml of methanol. The extracts were filtered and injected into the HPLC. The limit of quantification was 0.045 µg/ml for this mycotoxin.