Comparative study of aflatoxin contamination of winter and summer ginger from the North West Province of South Africa

Abstract

The presence of mycotoxins in staple food can have adverse effect that result in ill health and associated socio-economic losses. Mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by certain fungi and can be found in staple food plants such as ginger. Ginger is a renowned medicinal plant that is extensively used for cooking and healing. However, this medicinal plant is with little information about its possible mycotoxins contamination. This study determined the occurrence and prevalence of Aflatoxin B 1 , B 2 , G 1 and G 2 and Ochratoxin A contamination in raw ginger sold around Mahikeng, North West Province, South Africa. Samples were collected purposively from various retailers over winter and summer. The analytical procedure optimized was based on immunoaffinity column cleanup (IAC), followed by High performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence (HPLC-FLC) detection. ELISA was also used for mycotoxin screening. On HPLC, the limits of detection and quantification for the four Aflatoxins were 3.9 × 10 −7 -1.4 × 10 -3 and 1.3 × 10 -6 - 4.7 × 10 -3 for samples collected in winter, and 3.7 × 10 −7 - 1.4 × 10 -3 , LOQ 1.2 × 10 -6 – 4.6 × 10 -3 for the summer samples. The average recoveries at three spiking levels ranged from 62 to 91% for the summer samples and 70–93% for those collected in winter. A linearity was observed for the analytes whose correlation coefficients were within the range of 0.9995 and 1.000 for the winter samples and 0.9995 and 1.000 for those collected in summer. The results showed that the contamination levels, especially for samples collected in summer were greater than the legally permissible limits. The t -test analysis shows that the mean and standard deviation of the four types of Aflatoxins considered were higher in summer than in winter. The findings of the study indicated that ginger, as for all agricultural commodities, are prone to mycotoxin contamination.

Survey of Aflatoxins and Ochratoxin A in Spices from Brazilian Market

“…There are related publications on mycotoxins incidence in spices, our results are similar with some papers, like Naz and coauthors [6] and Omotayo and coauthors [4], and in disagreement with others works like, Pesavento and coauthors [7], Jeswal and Kumar [8] and Shundo and coauthors [9]. Naz and coauthors [6] collected 200 different spice samples, 100 packed and 100 unpacked, from Pakistan, and analyzed for AFs contamination levels.…”

“…Omotayo and coauthors [4] studied AFs contamination in winter and summer ginger from the North West Province of South Africa. During winter the AFB1 ranged from 0.02 -0.74 ng/g, for AFB2, 0.04 to 3.44 ng/g, for AFG1, 0.002 -0.17 ng/g and for AFG2 from 0.002 -0.2 ng/g.…”

“…Spices are used to give flavor, aroma, and color to foods, during processing, as they usually remain on or close to the ground for drying, they may be subject to contamination with molds subsequently leading to mycotoxin production. There are numerous reports of finding AFs and OTA in spices [3][4][5][6][7][8]. There have been some reports on these toxins in spices purchased in Brazil [9][10][11].…”

Adverse Effects, Transformation and Channeling of Aflatoxins Into Food Raw Materials in Livestock

“…The impact of aflatoxins on human health (Theumer et al, 2018;Omotayo et al, 2019) is far the most important challenge, which we should keep an eye on in the whole feed and food chain (Zheng et al, 2018). This is the reason for why aflatoxin-related research including analytics is flourishing today.…”

Dataset on the toxic effects of aflatoxin and ochratoxin a on the human gastric smooth muscle cells

“…Ginger samples were chopped into pieces and covered in sample bottles and stored at 4 °C in a fridge prior to extraction and analysis to prevent the growth of mould and to avoid putrefaction of the samples Omotayo et al [1], [2]. All the samples were then extracted and analyzed according to Ref.…”