Towards managing and controlling food safety based on contamination with fungi and its mycotoxins

Abstract

A significant portion of the agricultural produce in the countries and the world over become unfit for human consumption due to mycotoxins contamination of grains and cereals. The main toxic effects are carcinogenicity, genotoxicity, teratogenicity, nephrotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, reproductive disorders and imunosuppression. This study was done to identify the molds and aflatoxins that contaminate cereal–based baby foods and corn–based snacks products. The most frequent fungal genera found in the samples were Aspergillus, Penicillium, Alternaria, Fusarium and Cladosporium with frequencies of 41, 16, 10, 8 and 3%, respectively. Additionally, the numbers of contaminated cereal–based baby foods samples with AFB1, B2, G1 and G2 were 14, 2, 6 and 4%. Also, 34, 14, 18 and 8% of corn-based snack samples respectively. Ten essentials oils of (cinnamon, cumin, clove, fennel, garlic, lemon grass, marjoram, peppermint, rosemary and thyme) plants using in combating aflatoxigenic mold A. flavus growth and its aflatoxins production. The ten essential oils showed notable inhibitory effects on A. flavus growth and its aflatoxins production. Cinnamon and garlic essential oils caused complete inhibition to all types of aflatoxins at concentrations of 60 and 80μl respectively. There were some alterations produced by cinnamon, garlic and cumin essential oils at sub-lethal inhibitory concentrations such as abnormal cell shape, leakage of cell wall and the membranous organelles were disrupted.