Influence of natural capsaicin on aflatoxins produced by Aspergillus aflatoxiformans in grains

Abstract

The growth of fungi in stored grains causes a significant decrease in the quantity and quality of the grains. Estimated storage annual losses caused by fungi and others such as insects were estimated to be millions of dollars. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the natural capsaicin (CAPs) as anti-aflatoxins (AFs) through applied in vitro to control for AFs produced by Aspergillus aflatoxiformans in yeast extract sucrose (YES) media, then with both contaminated wheat and corn grains to prevent and/or control the production of AFs. Also, this study has been extended to estimate the efficiency of CAPs as a fungicide by comparison with one of the commercial chemical fungicides (CCF). The results indicated that AFB₁ and AFB₂ were affected more than AFG₁ and AG₂ both in wheat and corn grain. At 7.5 ppm from CAPs, AFB₁ and AFB₂ had the highest percentage inhibition (63.5% and 59.1%, respectively). According to the results, the percentage of inhibition of AFs was increased with the increasing applied concentration from CAPs. Finally, this study proposes that natural CAPs may have a role as anti-AFs, so that could be used as an effective active natural material against AFs contamination of wheat and corn, and may successfully replace CCF and provide an alternative method to protect grains and control from AFs contamination, thus reduce of risk exposure to AFs.

Keywords:

• Capsaicin
• inhibition
• aflatoxins
• anti-aflatoxins
• grains
• Aspergillus aflatoxiformans

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Abd El Aziz A.M. to provide Aspergillus aflatoxiformans strain used in this study.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.