Screening of Seed Born Mycoflora of Wheat, Rice, Gram and Mustard
A. Kabir¹, Usha Singh¹, A. Sonia² and N. K. Singh³¹Department of Botany, Govt. Bilasa Girl’s P.G. College, Bilaspur India.
²Department of Microbiology, Govt. J.P. Verma Arts and Commerce P.G. College, Bilaspur India.
³Department of Botany E.R.R., Science P.G. College, Bilaspur (India).
Abstract: Various food grains are stored for different purposes. During storage these may be contaminated by a number of fungal species. During present study, a survey of fungal flora of food grains like wheat (Triticum vulgare), rice (Oryza sativa), bengal gram (Cicer arietinum) and mustard (Brassica campestris) have been investigated. Altogether, 12 species of fungi from wheat, 11 from rice, 10 from gram and 13 species of fungi were isolated from mustard. The fungi were Aspergillus niger A. flavus, A. terreus, A.sydowi, A. nidulans, Penicillium spp., Alternaria alternata, Curvularia lunata, Fusarium moniliformae, Rhizopus stolonifer, Chaetomium spinossum spp., Drechslera hawaiiensis, Helminthosporium spp., C. globossum. The most dominant species on the four food grains were Aspergillus niger and Penicillium spp. Fungi of the genus Aspergillus and Penicillium were present on 100% of grain samples tested. The spread and subsequent development of fungi on grains was found to depend on the period of storage and climatic conditions particularly temperature and rain fall. This was evident from the result that after harvest and storage of fresh grains, the number of fungal species and their population gradually increased in succeeding months.
Keywords: Food Grain; Storage Fungi; Czapec-dox medium; Seed fungi association; Fungal load Back to TOC