Study on Prevention of Afflatoxin Contamination in Groundnut by Accelerated Post-harvest Processes

摘要

Groundnut is one of important food crop commodities in Indonesia, which is susceptible to aflatoxin contamination. In tropical developing countries like Indonesia, Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus, both are cosmopolite fungals, growing in groundnut may produce aflatoxin B1, a suspected potential human carcinogen. Sampling of groundnut at some commercial level at 5 districts of 5 provinces showed different contamination levels at farm and market, viz. about 0-26.65 ppb and 6.60- 49.98 ppb, respectively. In this study, an experiment by introducing machineries on post-harvest processing of groundnut was carried out to observe the aflatoxin contamination compared to the traditional technologies that farmers have been applying. Machineries used consist of groundnut thresher, flat bed dryer, groundnut sheller and vacuum packing sealer. The aflatoxin content at groundnut was analyzed by thin layer chromatography (TLC) method. Result showed that speeding up the post harvest processing activities resulted in absence of aflatoxin contamination within the groundnut. In contrast, traditional processing technologies resulted in the presence of aflatoxin in high contamination level. This experiment also noted that the hermetic storage of groundnut showed better result than the vacuum pack storage.