Abstract
Aflatoxin contamination of maize grain and products causes serious health problems for consumers worldwide, and especially in low- and middle-income countries where monitoring and safety standards are inconsistently implemented. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) also compromises the health of millions of maize consumers in several regions of the world including large parts of sub-Saharan Africa. We investigated whether provitamin A (proVA) enriched maize can simultaneously contribute to alleviate both of these health concerns. We studied aflatoxin accumulation in grain of 120 maize hybrids formed by crossing 3 Aspergillus flavus resistant and three susceptible lines with 20 orange maize lines with low to high carotenoids concentrations. The hybrids were grown in replicated, artificially-inoculated field trials at five environments. Grain of hybrids with larger concentrations of beta-carotene (BC), beta-cryptoxanthin (BCX) and total proVA had significantly less aflatoxin contamination than hybrids with lower carotenoids concentrations. Aflatoxin contamination had negative genetic correlation with BCX (-0.28, p < 0.01), BC (-0.18, p < 0.05), and proVA (-0.23, p < 0.05). The relative ease of breeding for increased proVA carotenoid concentrations as compared to breeding for aflatoxin resistance in maize suggests using the former as a component of strategies to combat aflatoxin contamination problems for maize. Our findings indicate that proVA enriched maize can be particularly beneficial where the health burdens of exposure to aflatoxin and prevalence of VAD converge with high rates of maize consumption.
Highlights
Aflatoxin contamination of maize is a serious health threat and burden for millions of maize consumers worldwide
Subsequent analyses of variance resulted in moderate to high repeatabilities at individual sites and across locations for aflatoxin contamination (AFTt) (0.45–0.71 and 0.61), pERt (0.32–0.56 and 0.42) and pFLt (0.23–0.76 and 0.54) (Tables 2–4 and Supplementary Tables S4–S6), indicating that the trials were of good quality
Least squares means for AFTt, pERt and pFLt at individual and across environments are presented in Supplementary Table S7
Summary
Aflatoxin contamination of maize is a serious health threat and burden for millions of maize consumers worldwide. Consumption of aflatoxin contaminated food is serious for children because it leads to compromised immune system and increased morbidity and mortality from malaria and other diseases, reduced efficiency of use for various macroand micro-nutrients, and stunting or underweight development (Williams et al, 2004; Wild, 2007). Aflatoxin is mainly associated with liver and other cancers, but chronic exposure to aflatoxin has been associated with increased occurrence of micronutrient deficiencies and increased burden of diseases (e.g., malaria and HIV/AIDS) from weakened immune system have been reported or postulated (Williams et al, 2004). We focus on human health concerns of aflatoxin contamination in maize, aflatoxin in grains other than maize, and in grains used in animal feeds are of huge economic and health concern
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