Research Publications (Food Safety)

Ingestion of food toxins such as aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) during pregnancy may impair fetal neurodevelopment. However, animal model results may not be accurate due to the species’ differences, and testing on humans is ethically impermissible.

Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, EarlyView. Aflatoxins are the most toxic natural mycotoxins discovered so far, posing a serious menace to the food safety and trading economy of the world, especially developing countries. How to effectively detoxify has persistently occupied a place on the list of “global hot-point” concerns.

In this study, three kinds of novel modified activated carbon adsorbent were prepared by different concentrations of sodium dodecyl sulfonate solution, and carried out by FTIR, XRD, TGA, SEM, and N2-adsorption-desorption analytical techniques. The adsorption mechanism of aflatoxins on three types of modified activated carbon had been systematically investigated by isotherm, kinetic, and thermodynamic studies.

The objective of this network meta-analysis was to determine the efficacy of different mycotoxin binders (MTB) to reduce aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) in milk. A literature search was conducted to identify in vivo research papers from different databases.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of epigenetic DNA methylation and CYPs expression in AFB1-exposed broiler liver and the protective effect of curcumin. Sixty-four one-day-old AA broilers were randomly divided into four groups, including control group, AFB1 group (1 mg/kg AFB1), curcumin + AFB1 group (1 mg/kg curcumin) and curcumin group (300 mg/kg curcumin).

Phenyllactic acid (PLA), a promising food preservative, is safe and effective against a broad spectrum of food-borne pathogens. However, its mechanisms against toxigenic fungi are still poorly understood. In this study, we applied physicochemical, morphological, metabolomics, and transcriptomics analyses to investigate the activity and mechanism of PLA inhibition of a typical food-contaminating mold, Aspergillus flavus. The results showed that PLA effectively inhibited the growth of A.

Aflatoxins (AFs) are natural toxic compounds produced by a specific type of fungi, which subsequently contaminate foods and animal feeds, potentially carcinogenic to humans. This study assessed the AFs awareness, prevalence and associated risk factors through a survey of the smallholder dairy farmers (SDFs) and livestock feeds and raw cow milk samples from three agroecological zones in Tanzania.

Aflatoxins belong to a group of highly carcinogenic mycotoxins, produced mainly by Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus in various agricultural food commodities. It is hard to eliminate them from food and feed due to their high stability. Aflatoxin contamination in food grains, particularly peanut and maize, continues to cause significant health concerns in the population of developing nations. They can be fatal to humans and animals.

The problem of aflatoxin contamination emerged gradually in the field of food safety. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is an ultra-sensitive and non-destructive spectroscopy technology with extensive application prospects in the detection field. In this paper, with the detection of AFB1 as the target, Au@Ag NPs substrate with uniform morphology and strong SERS effect was prepared.

Background Aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) is found in the milk of cows exposed to feed spoiled by Aspergillus fungi species. These fungi may produce the secondary metabolite aflatoxin B1, which is converted in the cow liver by hydroxylation to AFM1 and is then expressed in milk. AFM1 is regulated in milk and other dairy products because it can cause serious health issues, such as liver and kidney cancers, in humans and is an immunosuppressant.

Aflatoxins are among the main carcinogens threatening food and feed safety while imposing major detection challenges to the agrifood industry. Today, aflatoxins are typically detected using destructive and sample-based chemical analysis that are not optimally suited to sense their local presence in the food chain. Therefore, we pursued the development of a non-destructive optical sensing technique based on fluorescence spectroscopy.

Aflatoxin contamination in peanut kernels seriously harms the health of humans and causes significant economic losses. Rapid and accurate detection of aflatoxin is necessary to minimize its contamination. However, current detection methods are time-consuming, expensive and destructive to samples.

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) contamination in peanut oil can lead to serious food safety problems. Thus, the development of AFB1 decontamination technology is an urgent and necessary matter. Herein, a renewable and effective biomass-derived adsorbent, namely magnetic rice husk-based biochar (MRHB), was prepared and successfully used for the removal of AFB1 from peanut oil. The adsorption conditions, adsorption mechanism, reusability and cytotoxicity of MRHB were systematically studied.

The present work investigated the potential of fungal species from grain maize farms in Malaysia as antagonists against the indigenous mycotoxigenic fungal species and their subsequent mycotoxin production.

The present study strengthens the food preservative potential of Chamaerops humilis extracts viz. hexane extract, chloroform extract, ethanol extract, chloroform extract, and methanol extract based on their antifungal, antiaflatoxin, and antioxidant efficacy. The isolation of molds from peanuts were carried out by the suspension-dilution technique and inoculation on agar medium.

Determination of aflatoxins as a group of potent contaminations in many food products is a common analysis in food quality control laboratories. For quantification of the four most toxic aflatoxins (AFs) (i,e. AF B1, B2, G1, and G2) in food and feed, a standard method involving a liquid extraction step followed by immunoaffinity purification and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is often used.

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), millions of people depend on maize as a primary staple. However, maize consumers in SSA may be exposed to malnutrition due to vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and unsafe aflatoxin levels, which can lead to serious economic and public health problems. Provitamin A (PVA) biofortified maize has been developed to alleviate VAD and may have additional benefits such as reduced aflatoxin contamination.

Aflatoxin, with higher toxicity, is widely found in grains such as peanut and corn. This study proposes an unsupervised learning method to detect aflatoxin based on deep spectral features.

In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the concentration and health risk of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), heavy metals (HMs), and phthalate acid esters (PAEs) in peanut samples in Shandong Province, China, and 255 peanut samples were collected from 20 counties in 2020.

The aim of this study was to monitor the aflatoxin M1 contamination in raw milk and drinking milk in Hungary over a one-year period. A total of 474 milk samples of raw milk (n=278) commercial milk (n=196) were collected and analysed between September 2021 and November 2022. Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) determined the concentration of AFM1.

The uses of natural plant origin bioactive compounds are emerging as a promising strategy to detoxify aflatoxin B1 (AFB1). This study aimed to explore the potential of cooking, phytochemicals content, and antioxidant activities derived from garlic, ginger, cardamom, and black cumin to detoxify AFB1 on spice mix red pepper powder (berbere) and sauté.

Mycotoxins are toxic compounds produced by certain strains of fungi that can contaminate raw feed materials. Once ingested, even in small doses, they cause multiple health issues for animals and, downstream, for people consuming meat. It was proposed that inclusion of antioxidant-rich plant-derived feed might diminish the harmful effects of mycotoxins, maintaining the farm animals’ health and meat quality for human consumption.

Mycotoxins can be transferred to breast milk during lactation. Hence, the presence of multiple mycotoxins (aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, G2, and M1, alpha and beta zearalanol, deoxynivalenol, fumonisins B1, B2, B3, and hydrolyzed B1, nivalenol, ochratoxin A, ochratoxin alpha, and zearalenone) in breast milk samples was assessed in our study. Furthermore, the relationship between total fumonisins and pre/post-harvest and the women’s dietary practices was examined.

The major safety risk of maize grain is contamination with mycotoxins. In this study, a maize-coating formulation containing freeze-dried culture filtrate of Streptomyces philanthi RL-1-178 (DCF RL-1-178) was developed and evaluated to prevent the growth of mycotoxins during maize grain storage. In vitro studies using confrontation tests on PDA plates indicated that S.

This work established a novel nucleic acid aptamer sensor for the sensitive and selective detection of AFB1 (Aflatoxin B1), which has important implication for food safety. In a word, we synthesized MXene/MWCNTs/NiCo2O4 composite nanomaterials to improve the sensitivity of the aptamer sensor. The surface of the composite nanomaterials was modified with PDA (poly dopamine) in order to immobilize the NH2-cDNA-aptamer complex on the electrode surface by the Schiff base reaction.