Use of Loose Shelled Kernels to Estimate Aflatoxin in Farmers Stock Peanut Lots1

Abstract

Abstract Loose shelled kernels (LSK) are a defined grade component of farmers stock peanuts and represented, on the average, 33.3% of the total aflatoxin mass and 7.7% of the kernel mass among the 120 farmers stock peanut lots studied. The functional relationship between aflatoxin in LSK taken from 2-kg test samples and the aflatoxin in farmers stock peanut lots was determined to be linear with zero intercept and a slope of 0.297. The correlation between aflatoxin in LSK and aflatoxin in the lot was 0.844 which suggests that LSK taken from large test samples can be used to estimate the aflatoxin concentration in a farmer's lot. Using only LSK allows large test samples to be used to estimate the lot concentration since LSK can be easily screened from a large test sample. If LSK accounts for 7.7% of the lot kernel mass, a 50-kg sample will yield about 3.9 kg of LSK which can be easily prepared for aflatoxin analysis. Increasing the test sample size from 2 to 50 kg reduced the coefficient of variation associated with estimating a lot with 100 parts per billion (ppb) aflatoxin from 114 to 23%, respectively. As an example, a farmers stock aflatoxin sampling plan with dual tolerances (10 and 100 ppb) that classified lots into three categories was evaluated for two test sample sizes (2 and 50 kg). The effect of increasing test sample size from 2 to 50 kg on the number of lots classified into each of the three categories was demonstrated when measuring aflatoxin only in LSK.