Toxigenic fungi and contamination by AFB1 in Algerian traditional foods markets

This work focused on the realization of a mycological and mycotoxicological study of certain foods manufactured in a traditional way (couscous and spice of Capsicum annuum known locally under the name of sweet hror) and marketed in the city of Bechar. The physico-chemical analyzes revealed that all the samples were poorly hydrated where the average values of relative humidity ranged between 7.23% and 13.58%. For the pH, the values varied between 5.22 and 6.95. The enumeration of the fungal flora indicated that the couscous samples (coarse and fine) represented a contamination rate of 2.92*10² and 1.71*10² CFU/g respectively. While, the sweet hror samples represented a higher contamination rate (4.68*10² CFU/g), with a clear dominance of the genera of Aspergillus (46.42%) and Penicillium (26.28%). Otherwise, the mycotoxicological analysis showed us that 78.55% of the Aspergillus isolates of the group (flavus-parasiticus) tested were producers of aflatoxins (B₁ and G₁) and that 86.66% of the isolates of A. ochraceus and 40% of Penicillium species, were ochratoxin A producers. In addition, the detection of mycotoxins at the sample level revealed that 63.63% of couscous samples were contaminated with mycotoxins. While sweet hror was the most contaminated (78.57%). Furthermore, the quantification of AFB₁ by HPLC-FLD for 4 samples of sweet hror revealed only one contaminated sample (21.75 µg/kg). Generally, it can be admitted that the rate of contamination by AFB₁ was too high, which can be considered a real risk to human health.