Abstract
Parents’ practices that are associated with aflatoxin contamination and control in complementary foods were studied in Central Tanzania. A descriptive cross-sectional survey using interviewer-administered structured pretested questionnaire was conducted among 364 randomly selected parents of children aged between 6-23 months, and the mean age (SD) of the respondents was 30 (8.3) years old. The majority 33.2% of the participants harvest their crops in April followed by June which is 26.6%, March which is 21.2% and May which is 19% of all the participants. Most processing activities like dehulling, milling, drying, storage were analysed. The statistical packages SPSS (version 21) computer software packages were used to analyze the data. The results of logistic regression model for dehulling crops confirmed that respondents with less than or with US$ 22.8 as monthly income (OR=0.250, 95% CI: 0.111-0.564) were significantly 0.3 less likely to dehull crops (p<0.05) than respondents who earned more than US$. 22.8. On the other hand, petty trader participants (OR =3.712, 95% CI: 1.420-9.699) were significantly almost 4 times more with a tendency of dehulling the crops (p<0.05) than farmers. The study team recommends that parents should be trained on appropriate methods of drying, storage, and dehulling their crops after harvesting in order to control fungal and aflatoxin infestation. In addition, research on harvesting time, drying, storage, and dehulling practices of crops in Tanzanian is needed.
Highlights
Aflatoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by certain fungi, most importantly Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus, and they are widely recognized as a major health problem especially in hot, humid countries [1,2,3,4,5]
Due to food shortage and low knowledge on fungal and aflatoxins contamination, these families sometimes eat undehulled, unsorted and mouldy crops without washing or winnowing them exposing themselves to high health risks of aflatoxin contamination in their diet
The specific objective of this study was to identify practices used that can contribute to levels of contamination of aflatoxins in complementary food in the households with children aged between 6-23 months in Central Tanzania
Summary
Aflatoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by certain fungi, most importantly Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus, and they are widely recognized as a major health problem especially in hot, humid countries [1,2,3,4,5]. Major types of aflatoxins are B1, B2, G1, and G2; and metabolites of B1 and B2 are M1 and M2 respectively. AFB1 is the most potent of the aflatoxins. Aflatoxins have been rated as class 1A carcinogens by the International Agency for Research of Cancer [6,7]. They are heat stable and difficult to destroy during processing. Aflatoxins B1 (AFB1) and B2 (AFB2) produced by A. flavus and aflatoxins G1 (AFG1) and G2 (AFG2) produced by A. flavus as well as A. parasiticus can contaminate maize and other cereals such as wheat and rice, and groundnuts, pistachios, cottonseed, copra, and spices [8,9]
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