Aflatoxin producing fungi, such as Aspergillus, are common food contaminants, and various methods exist to detect their presence. Early detection of food contaminants is important and essentially required to prevent food spoilage during storage or transport, and thus reduce the economic impact caused by rejection of consignments. In this study, we have developed a probe based qPCR for detecting...

Humans and animals are exposed to aflatoxins, toxic carcinogenic fungal metabolites, through consumption of contaminated food and feed. Aspergillus flavus, the primary causal agent of crop aflatoxin contamination, is composed of phenotypically and genotypically diverse vegetative compatibility groups (VCGs). Molecular data suggest that VCGs largely behave as clones with certain VCGs exhibiting ...

A new reliable, fast, and simple method for the detection of aflatoxigenic Aspergillus strains, consisting of the addition of a cyclodextrin (a methylated beta-cyclodextrin derivative) to common media used for testing mycotoxin production ability, was developed. We propose the use of this compound as an additive for fungal culture media to enhance the natural fluorescence of aflatoxins. The pro...

The fungal population and distribution of aflatoxin-producing fungi in 30 samples of imported almond powder products purchased from retail markets were examined in this study. Total counts of fungi ranged from under 1.0 x 10 colony-forming units (CFU)/g to 8.5 x 10(3) CFU/g as determined with the dilution plating technique. The predominant fungi in the mould-contaminated almond samples were Asp...

Aflatoxin concentrations in agar media were estimated with a direct technique that quantifies the fluorescence of agar containing aflatoxins. Tubes containing 5 ml of an agar medium inoculated with spores of aflatoxin-producing Aspergillus isolates were incubated for 3 days at 30 degrees C and set in a carriage specifically designed to carry culture tubes in a scanning densitometer. Fluorescenc...

The anti-aflatoxigenic potentials of the leaves of Psidium guajava, Ficus benghalensis, Gardenia radicans, Punica granatum and Ziziphus jujuba Mill. were investigated. Poultry feed inoculated with Aspergillus flavus was treated with plant leaves powder and stored for the period of six months at 28 °C and 16% moisture level. At the end of each month, aflatoxin (AFT) concentrations were determine...

the aim of this study was to investigate the mold contamination of main raisins varieties produced in khorasan razavi province with aflatoxin-producing fungi and determine amount of aflatoxins. for this purpose 50 samples were collected from different markets in kashmar, khalil abad, bardaskan, mashhad and quchan (10 samples from each city). the result showed that from 50 raisin samples, 44 sam...

Analytical grade (AG) and industrial grade (IG) of three-food grade antioxidants butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and propyl paraben (PP) were analyzed to prove their fungitoxic effect on Aspergillus section Flavi strains. The effect of interactions among 10 antioxidant treatments at water activity levels (0.982, 0.955, 0.937 a(W)) for 11 and 35 days of incubation ...