Assessment of Aflatoxin Contamination in Malted Maize and Finger Millet at Msundwe Market, Malawi

Agness Kamphete, Lerisha Msowoya, Christopher Kalima Phiri
Agriculture Department, LakeView College, Malawi Adventist University, Malawi
Email: msowoyal@mau.adventist.org

Abstract: Mycotoxins such as aflatoxin have a great effect on both nutrition and economic activities. In the food supply chain, these need to be controlled by training farmers in the post-harvest handling of the crop hence improving the exports as well as nutrition impact. Grain crops are the most prone to the aflatoxin challenge. As one way of disseminating information on aflatoxin in malted maize and finger millet, random sampling was done on selected malt sellers of the two crops at Msundwe market under Mpingu EPA. The collected samples were analyzed to assess and quantify the aflatoxin levels in these crops. These crops were purposively selected because most local farmers use them as raw material for the production of beer hence posing a risk to the consumers. According to the results, fermented malt had high levels of aflatoxin of 2.45 ppb and 1.44 ppb for maize and finger millet respectively. While freshly, germinated malt had a low level of aflatoxin of 1.125ppb and 0.75ppb for maize and finger millet respectively. This is in agreement with the hypothesis that aflatoxin is available in the sample at market. These results will help to come up with an intervention that will help to train farmers’ proper methodologies of processing these crops to produce high-quality malted maize and finger millet.