Occurrence of mycotoxins and microbial communities in artisanal infant flours marketed in C ôte d’Ivoire

AbstractThe aim of this study was to determine the microbial diversity and mycotoxin profile of artisanal infant flours commonly vended in public healthcare centres and retail markets in C ôte d’Ivoire. Thus, maize, millet, sorghum, soya and multigrain (mix of different cereals) flour samples collected from different localities were first, analysed for nutritional composition, then for microbial communities using high-throughput sequencing and for mycotoxins through UHPLC-MS/MS met hod. Firmicutes was the most abundant bacterial phylum and the dominant genera wereWeissella, Staphylococcus, Pediococcus. Potential pathogenic genera such asBacillus, Enterobacter, Acinetobacter andBurkholderia were also found. The fungal community was composed of two dominant phyla (Ascomycota and Basidiomycota) and 31 genera with  >  0.1% relative abundance. In samples from public healthcare centres,Candida, Hyphopichia, Trichosporon, andCyberlindnera were the most dominant genera according to the flour type while in samples from retail markets, they wereCyberlindnera, Clavispora, Nakaseomyces, Aureobasidium andCandida. Possible toxigenic generaFusarium andAspergillus were also detected. Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), Ochractoxin (OTA), Fumonisin B1 (FB1) and B2 (FB2) were the mycotoxins found in the analysed flours. AFB1 was detected in 100% of maize (range 1.2 –120.5 µg/kg; mean: 44.2 µg/kg) and 50–83.3% of millet flours (range 0.2–31.5 µg/kg; mean: 31.5 µg/kg). Its level in all ...
Source: World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology - Category: Microbiology Source Type: research