Incidence of mycoflora associated with some spices

The spices including black pepper, fennel and cumin are extensively utilized by majority of world’s polulation in response to multifold used as food, medicine, flavouring and colouring agent. In storage, seed borne contaminants not only deteriorate the seeds but also alter the physio-chemical properties of seeds leading to increase the chances of consuming toxic elements, produced by storage mycoflora. In the present investigation, composite samples of black pepper, fennel and cumin were mycologicaly analyzed by standard agar plating technique revealed the prevalence of altogether 15 fungal seed borne pathogens representing 12 genera with maximum four species of Aspergillus. A population of 12 fungal species associated with seeds of black pepper; 11 isolates existed on fennel while eight on cumin. The fungal isolates, Aspergillus flavus, A. fumigatus, A. niger, Rhizopus nigricans and Cladosporium cladosporioides were predominant on all three test spices. Chaetomium globosum restricted only to black pepper; Syncephalastrum recemosum to cumin while Torula herbarum was existed only on fennel. Aspergillus niger was predominant with greatest 23% incidence on cumin, while excluding Chaetomium globosum, other fungal isolates had moderate to low percent incidence on spices.