Climate-Driven Regulatory Plasticity Reshapes Mycotoxin Risk and Control in Food Systems

Climate variability may alter mycotoxin risk not only by shifting fungal distribution and crop susceptibility, but also by influencing environmentally responsive regulatory processes that control fungal secondary metabolism. This PRISMA-informed semi-systematic review synthesizes molecular biology, fungal ecology, mitigation studies, predictive modeling, exposure assessment, and risk governance to evaluate regulatory plasticity as an interpretive framework for climate-associated mycotoxin risk. Regulatory plasticity is defined here as the dynamic reconfiguration of biosynthetic gene cluster activity through mechanisms such as chromatin remodeling, velvet complex signaling, oxidative stress responses, and metabolic network adjustment. Available evidence suggests that heat, drought, elevated CO₂, and oxidative stress can reconfigure biosynthesis in nonlinear and context-dependent toxin outputs, although direct multi-stress field validation remains limited. The framework helps interpret three recurrent challenges: threshold displacement, temporal mismatch, and regulatory compensation. These challenges are most relevant to preharvest and biologically mediated interventions, whereas postharvest approaches such as drying and hermetic storage remain comparatively robust but cannot reverse contamination established before harvest. We argue that climate-adaptive mycotoxin management should integrate dynamic risk assessment, multi-toxin monitoring, early-warning systems, and mitigation strategies validated under realistic multi-stress conditions.