Prevalence of Toxigenic Fungi in Common Medicinal Herbs, Spices and Food Materials

 Out of 65 medicinal herbs and spices screened, 60 were contaminated while 5 were free from fungal contamination.  Analysis revealed that 45.31% of the samples have a fungal load above 1×10 cfu/g which is the permissible limit set by World Health Organization.  A total of 191 fungi were isolated in which Aspergillus and Penicillium were the predominant microorganism. Among the various fungal isolates 21 were aflatoxin producing Aspergillus sp. and 9 citrinin producing Penicillium sp.  On further screening for natural contamination with mycotoxins, AFB1 was detected only in one sample i.e. Arachis hypogaea (peanut).  Though toxigenic fungi were isolated from 33% of the samples, mycotoxin was not detected from any of the medicinal herbs.