Some species produce mycotoxins in cereal crops that can affect human and animal health if they enter the food chain.

A number of different schemes have been used, and up to 1,000 species have been identified at times, with approaches varying between wide and narrow concepts of speciation (lumpers and splitters).

Panama disease affects a wide range of banana cultivars, which are propagated asexually from offshoots and therefore have very little genetic diversity.

In 2021 it was discovered that Fusarium xyrophilum was able to hijack a South American species of yellow-eyed Xyris grass, creating fake flowers, fooling bees and other pollinating insects into visiting them, taking fungal spores to other plants.

In humans with normal immune systems, fusarial infections may occur in the nails (onychomycosis) and in the cornea (keratomycosis or mycotic keratitis).

[17] Mass casualties occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s when Fusarium-contaminated wheat flour was baked into bread, causing alimentary toxic aleukia with a 60% mortality rate.

Symptoms began with abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and prostration, and within days, fever, chills, myalgias and bone marrow depression with granulocytopenia and secondary sepsis occurred.

Fusarium sporotrichoides contamination was found in affected grain in 1932, spurring research for medical purposes and for use in biological warfare.

The caves subsequently closed and the threat subsided, but the installation of an air conditioning system in 2000 caused another outbreak of the fungus which is yet to be resolved.

[22] Fusarium may be part of microbiota including digestive as well as oral/dental, there have been rare cases of Fusariosis presenting as a necrotic ulceration of the gingiva, extending to the alveolar bone has been reported in a granulocytopenic patient.