Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Abstract:
In recent years there have been increased concerns due to mycotoxin particularly because of their role in human and animal health, productivity, economics of their management and trade. This has led to various countries developing the so called �maximum tolerated limits� for mycotoxins. While many developed countries have standards in place, Nigeria and indeed many African countries are silent on the limit allowed in all forms of food might for human and animal consumption. This partly because many of these countries have not conducted detailed survey on these products and in 2004 aflatoxin poisoning caused a fatal outbreak in Africa following the consumption of contaminated grounded maize. This outbreak had a negative impact on the development and food security status of the continent. Vegetable are often preserved by drying which is a cheap and sustainable means of processing vegetables for further storage to avert huge annual wastage. However, due to improper drying these products are prone to fungi and their by-product contamination. The present study evaluated the aflatoxigenic fungi and aflatoxin content of dried vegetables sold in Sokoto metropolis. The fungi was isolated and identified using the standard plate method while, total aflatoxin content was determined using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The fungi associated with the vegetables were Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus fumigatus and Mucor racemosus. Result of aflatoxin analysis revealed that dried Adansonia digitata leaves had significantly (p< 0.05) high aflatoxin content of 62.70 �g/kg and dried Hibiscus sabdariffa leaves had the lowest value of 11.60 �g/kg. Based on these results, dried Adansonia digitata leaves were selected for further studies. The fungi associated with the dried baobab leaves powder collected from different locations within Sokoto metropolis were Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus flavus and Rhizopus oryzae. Aspergillus niger had the highest frequency of occurence of 46.67%. The highest aflatoxin was 812 �g/kg was obtained from kwamberu1 sample and the lowest value of 18.17 �g/kg from Kwamberu 2. The results suggest that all the vegetables studied and A. digitata dried leaves powder had substantial content of aflatoxin and could serve as baseline data for creating awareness and enacting laws on the standard of its leaves powder thereby boosting it sells, creating job and wealth for sustainable development.

Keywords: aflatoxin, baobab, mycotoxin, vegetables, aspergillus niger

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