Fungal population, including Ochratoxin A producing Aspergillus section Nigri strains from Ivory Coast coffee bean

The mycotoxin contamination in foods has become a growing threat and aroused many researches in science area. According to the food control authorities, Ochratoxin A (OTA) is among mycotoxins priority of food contaminants. The current work focuses on coffee cherries quality environment in Ivory Coast. The neglecting of good agricultural practices would lead to recurrent contamination of ivorian coffee in mycotoxinogen fungi and mycotoxin. We investigated and sampled during the post-harvest drying process of Robusta coffee bean, brought from Ivory Coast in 2008 and 2009. Morphological identification of total fungal flora and the determination of OTA producers of Aspergillus section Nigri have been performed. The reliability of the overall evaluated fungal contamination is estimated at 97%, being 7.03 in one coffee sample package of 300 g. Strains were isolated on potato dextrose agar (PDA) by the direct plating technique, and were grown at 25°C. Morphological study was performed using macroscopic and microscopic morphological characters. From the two hundred and eighteen strains of fungi isolated, the following were identified: Aspergillus section Nigri, Aspergillus section Fumigati, Penicillium, Mucor, Fusarium amongst others. Aspergillus section Nigri was found to be the most important group representing 52% of the population. Within this section OTA production was evaluated on czapeck yeast agar (CYA) and quantify by High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Twenty percent of produced detectable OTA with concentrations ranging from 0.3 to 56 µg/g of agar medium. The objectives of this study is to define the risk contamination in post-harvest fungi on coffee