The Impact Of Maize Weevil Attacks On Corn Commodity And Its Danger Upon Food Safety And Health
Ayyub Arrahman and M. Sudjak Saenong

Indonesian Cereals Research Institute Company


Abstract

Maize Weevil had high ability in damaging corn kernels within storage process. Maize Weevil attack caused storage materials quality and quantity decrease, even the damage might reach 85% and quality decrease until 17%. The attack resulted in dirt on the corn since there were so many feces and webbing of such insects. Feces and webbing are dirt in form of feces (insects excrement) and webbing (pieces of dead insect body) which mixed with each other so that the quality of the corn would decrease, cause an unpleasant smell, and even destroyed the taste of the crops. In the end it would decrease corn market value. Dirt on food would cause microorganism to grow and risk the food safety and health, either for human or livestock health. There were many toxin poisoning cases due to microorganism (mycotoxin) which grew on the food and caused death- for example which happened in India 1974 with 397 victims, 108 of them were died- also the case in Kenya 1982 and Uganda. In Indonesia this similar case also occurred in Lampung 2011 and in Central Java 2009 which caused 3 people died and 6 people in critical condition after they consumed oncom or soy pulp, while in 2012 similar case also occurred in Cirebon District with 9 victims. Supported by the fact that Indonesia was in tropical and moist condition, temperature of 27-40C (80-104F) and relative humidity 85%, it was conducive for such dangerous mycotoxin to grow. There were many kinds of mycotoxin resulted by contamination of microorganism, such as aflatoxin, zearalenone, trichothecenes, ochratoxin, and patuiin which were produced by many kinds of fungus. Nevertheless, the most frequent poisonous fungus to human and livestock came from genus Aspergillus, Penicillium dan Fusarium. The most known for being dangerous was aflatoxin. It was secondary metabolite, bofuran, nonpolar, stable towards hot, and resistant to physical or chemical treatment.

Keywords: Impact of Attack, Maize Weevil, Food Safety, Health

Topic: Integrated Pest and Disease Management

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