Assessing the Possible Effect of Gamma Irradiation on the Reduction of aflatoxin B1, and on the Moisture Content in Some Cereal Grains

Abstract

Aflatoxin B 1 is the most potent hepatocarcinogen known in animals and it is classified by the International Agency of Research on Cancer (IARC) as Group I carcinogen meaning that it is a proven cancer-inducing agent. It also occurs in the environment contaminating a lot of different food and feed commodities. The aim of this study was to assess the possible effect of gamma irradiation on the reduction of aflatoxin B 1 in some cereal grains and the impact on nutritive values including, ash, &moisture. It was found that maize samples contain the highest level of aflatoxin B 1 than wheat and rice. Gamma irradiation is a suitable technique which reduces the levels of aflatoxin B 1 in cereal samples without affecting the nutritive values, at 4 KGy the reduction percents of aflatoxin B 1 were 15.54%, 22.25%, and 27.46% for maize, wheat, and rice respectively whereas at 6 KGy the reduction percents of aflatoxin B 1 were 32.39%, 43.84%, and 56.38% respectively and the 8 KGy radiation dose remove about 60.26% of the toxin in maize, 64.68% in rice and 69.29% in wheat samples. Higher radiation doses than 8 KGy are required to remove the toxin until it reaches the legal limit (5ppb) according to FAO.

Incidence and exposure assessment of aflatoxins and ochratoxin A in Egyptian wheat

“…It was noticed that by increasing the radiation dose the reduction of AFB 1 increased. Our results are considered similar to Mohamed et al [ 53 ] who found that gamma radiation at a dose of 8 KGy reduced AFB 1 in wheat samples by 69.29 %. In a similar study by Ghanem et al [ 54 ], the authors reported that AFB 1 was reduced by 85 and 69 % in unpeeled and peeled pistachio respectively.…”

Adverse Effects, Transformation and Channeling of Aflatoxins Into Food Raw Materials in Livestock

“…Several radiation sources have been evaluated thus far and many of them were found to be effective. For example, the advantageous effects of UV in liquid phase (Patras et al, 2017), gamma irradiation in corn (Markov et al, 2015;Serra et al, 2018), in other cereal kernels (Mohamed et al, 2015), in peanuts (Patil et al, 2019) and in poultry feed (Herzallah et al, 2008) have been reported in a number of publications. Direct sunlight was also effective in aflatoxin reduction in poultry feed (Herzallah et al, 2008) and, in addition to exposures to direct light, the applicability of pulsed light has also been tested and evaluated, and it has already been employed in new decontamination technologies (Moreau et al, 2013).…”

Physical and Chemical Methods for Reduction in Aflatoxin Content of Feed and Food

“…Gamma irradiation reduces both the number of fungi and the AFB1 content of naturally contaminated corn kernels: irradiation doses between 1 and 10 kGy can result in 69.8 and 94.5% mycotoxin reductions, respectively [ 55 , 56 ]. For corn, wheat, and rice kernels, 4, 6, and 8 kGy doses were found effective in 15–56% AF reductions by the increasing doses [ 54 ]. Higher than the 10 kGy dose was found to be useful in AFB1 reduction in soybean [ 57 ].…”