e-ISSN 2231-8542
ISSN 1511-3701
Nithiyaa, P., Nur Ain Izzati, M.Z., Umi Kalsom, Y., Salleh, B.
Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science, Volume 35, Issue 1, February 2012
Keywords: Aspergillus flavus, A. niger, A. nidulans, A. fumigatus, Fusarium verticillioides, F. semitectum, F. proliferatum, cornmeal
Published on:
Corn is a vital food component that serves as a nutritional diet element for human and feedstuff for livestock.Despite its vast importance, corn frequently faces contamination problem caused by a range of microbesespecially fungi. For the purpose of this study, cornmeal samples were collected from nine states in Malaysia,and were cultured onto Peptone Pentachloronitrobenzene Agar (PPA) to isolate the fungi. Single spore isolationwas done on Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) to obtain the pure culture. A total of 314 isolates of microscopicfungi were obtained, 284 isolates belonging to the Aspergillus species, namely A. flavus (241), A. niger (24), A.nidulans (14) and A. fumigatus (5). Another 30 isolates were Fusarium species, identified as F. verticillioides(14), F. semitectum (10) and F. proliferatum (6). The diversity of the fungi was determined by using Shannon-Weiner Index. The diversity index indicated that A. flavus was the most abundant, recorded as 0.203.
ISSN 1511-3701
e-ISSN 2231-8542