Mycotoxins Contamination in Animal Food and Feed

Many fungi, both field and storage fungi produce metabolites that are poisonous, sometimes fatal, to men and animals. Production of these mycotoxins depends on species or strain of the fungus and on the ecological conditions for its development, in particular food source, moisture, temperature, mechanical damage, hot spots, time duration, O2 concentration, CO2 level, nature of substrate mineral nutrition, chemical treatment, plant stress, invertebrate vectors, fungal inoculums, fungal strain differences and interaction of different microorganisms. Grains those are spoiled and unfit for human consumption or having poor quality are generally used for making animal food and feed. There are now over 400 recognized mycotoxins found in feed material and it has been reported that as much 25 % of the world-s cereal grains may be contaminated with mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are toxic, chemically diverse secondary substances or metabolites produced by wide range of fungi including Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium, Trichothecium, Claviceps sps. etc. recognition of the symptoms of mycotoxins poisoning in an affected animal can be quite difficult to do confidently because many of the symptoms of chronic but sub acute cases are the same as those resulting from a wide range of causes. Common symptoms include rough coat, poor body condition, low milk yield with poor quality milk components, foot lesions, poor reproductive performance, an increase incidence of abortion and inconsistent much with mucus tags. In present investigation 8 different compositions such as khali containing alsi, khali (mustard), chuni (arhar dal), chuni (urad dal), rice, wheat and gram bran mixture, hay and fine rice chaffs were collected from various storage conditions and animal feed centre and were tested for mycotoxin contamination. Isolation of associated fungi was made in Czapak Dox Agar, Malt Extract Agar and Potato Dextrose Agar media. More than 53 isolates belonging to 15 different genera were islolated and are Aspergillus flavus, A. candidus, A. terreus, A. glacus, A. fischeri, A. nidulans, A. niger, Absisia coryambifera, Alteranaria alternate, Cladosporium sp. , Fusarium sp. , Humicola sp. , Mucor pusillus, Rhizopus sp. and Trichohecium roseum. Mycotoxin contamination recorded on the basis of the fungi as listed by Jelinek et al (1989). At about 70 % samples were found with positive mycotoxin contamination,