TITLE:
Assessment of the Aflatoxin Content of Maize Flours Produced in the Commune of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
AUTHORS:
Adama Sawadogo, Raoul Bazié, Hama Cissé, Latifatou Helbi, Cheikna Zongo, Aly Savadogo
KEYWORDS:
Aflatoxins, Maize Flour, Sanitaty Quality, LC/MS/MS, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
JOURNAL NAME:
Food and Nutrition Sciences,
Vol.14 No.10,
October
23,
2023
ABSTRACT: Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites present in various
foods, especially when production and conservation do not respect good hygiene
practices (GHP). In Ouagadougou, maize flour is produced and sold in different
structures by actors who do not always respect GHP. Thus, it is necessary to
regularly control the quality of these flours. So, this is carried out with the aim to assess the aflatoxin content of maize flours
produced in the municipality of Ouagadougou. For this, twenty-eight (28) samples were
collected from households, markets and supermarkets in the city of Ouagadougou.
Thus, LC/MS/MS analysis was used to
assess the aflatoxin content of the samples. The results obtained reveal
the presence of total aflatoxins (AFT) in 78.57% of samples analyzed with
levels ranging from 0.89 to 64.25 μg/kg. The prevalence of different types of
aflatoxins were 57.14% for aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), 46.43% for aflatoxin B2 (AFB2),
42.86% for aflatoxin G1 (AFG1) and 4.6% for aflatoxin G2 (AFG2). The results
also show that 80% and 60% of market samples, 70% and 30% of household samples
and 37.5% and 25% of supermarket samples do not comply with European Commission
standards for AFT and AFB1 respectively. For all the samples, 60.71% and 42.86%
of the samples are compliant according to the limits established by the
European Commission (EC) respectively for AFB1 and AFT. Regarding the results
obtained, producers and processors must be
supervised and trained in GHP for the production of better-quality
flours.