02. Occurrence and health hazard status of aflatoxin in human food and animal feed of wheat from Pakistan: A review paper
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Abstract
Aflatoxins (Afs) are the most important and naturally occurring health hazard mycotoxin which is carcinogenic and mutagenic found mainly in cereal grain food and feeds. Disease caused by ingestion of aflatoxin through food and feed are called aflatoxicosis. They cause hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), or liver cancer mainly in humans and some animals. Considering its significant impact on human, animals and poultry health, the main aim of the present review is to provide a comprehensive overview on Afs affecting human food and animal feed of wheat from Pakistan. Afs are principal toxic secondary metabolites produced by toxigenic fungal plants (viz., Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus) on host crops either before harvest or post-harvest mainly during grain storage period. Research focuses that there are two main external factors e.g. humidity and temperature which affect the incidence of Afs producing Apergillus species. Warm and humid climatic condition prevails in most of the agricultural land of Pakistan. Humidity encourages Aspergillus to attack the wheat grains. Favorable condition for its growth is high temperature and high moisture content (>7%). The optimum temperature for Afs production is recorded as 300C. In Pakistan very little information regarding Afs status of cereal grains is available on toxicological data in general and wheat grains in particular. But few researchers highlighted the presence of Afs in wheat food and feeds. Based on their limited published work I found a mixed trend regarding the status of Afs in wheat food and feeds. Some analyzed samples were found above, and some were below the health hazard limit or permissible limit as proposed by European Union (EU) and FDA (US Food Drug Administration). Therefore, more research is needed to be carried out on the potential threats to human beings, animals and poultry after consumption of Afs contaminated wheat food and feeds.
Keywords: Aflatoxin (Af); wheat; food; feed; mycotoxin; aflatoxicosis