Study the Occurrence of Aflatoxins in some Crops and Dry Fruits in Iraqi Markets

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the fungal species and aflatoxin contaminations in crops and dried fruits samples from Iraqi markets after collected at one kilogram with 15 replicates from each of wheat, barley, corn, rice, peanut, figs, apricot and raisin in polyethylene packages. Samples were prepared by grinding and cultured on optimum medium for culturing of contamination molds, and extracted the samples to detect the aflatoxins present by used the HPLC system. The results were indicated that’s all collected samples from the crops or dried fruits were contamination with mold species at different levels of counts from log 2.46 to 5.67 CFU/g at each wheat and peanut samples respectively. The results also indicated that Aspergillus niger, A.flavus, A. paraciticus and Fusarium oxysporium. was  a dominant mold when compared with the other molds species. Aflatoxins analysis was showed as aflatoxin B1 only in concentrations ranges between 22.0-93.7ηg/g in dried apricot samples to 161.0-782.0 ng/g in peanut samples, and were not detected the other aflatoxin types in all collected samples.

Keywords: Aflatoxins; Crops; Dry Fruits; Iraqi Markets.