A checklist of fungi isolated from honey (2000–2022)

Abstract

Mycological studies focusing on fungal species thriving on honey related products have a series of critical applications ranging from the expansion of basic scientific knowledge, the exploration of their industrial utilization, understanding their contributions to food spoilage and even environmental pathogen monitoring. During the last two decades, several works dealing with the isolation and characterization of fungal species thriving on honey have been published. Nonetheless, a thorough summarization of these results has not yet been compiled. This work analyses and compiles a checklist of fungi isolated and identified/described from honey nectar, honey blossom and honeydew between the years 2000 and 2022. Based on this assessment, we detected that over one hundred and thirty entries have been reported from honey samples worldwide. Consequently, this work provides a checklist of such fungi, that will be of interest to mycologists, microbiologists, food scientists working on the topic, and also beekeepers.