Smallholder farmers’ awareness and aflatoxins contamination of sesame seeds grown in Southern Tanzania

Abstract

Consumption of aflatoxins contaminated foods has led to detrimental health effects worldwide, with even more severe cases in African countries including Tanzania. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Lindi and Mtwara regions to assess awareness and aflatoxins contamination of sesame seeds. Subsequently, a total of 70 sesame seed samples were randomly purchased from the local markets for assessing aflatoxin levels using HighPerformance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS version 20 for descriptive and correlation analysis. Results show that the majority of the respondents (82.4%) were not aware of aflatoxin contamination of agricultural produce. Awareness was negatively correlated to the levels of education (p = -0.309**) and positively correlated with gender, whereby men were more aware than women (p=0.03). On the other hand, 37 out of 70 sesame seeds samples were contaminated with total aflatoxins at a range of 0.009 ng/g to 5.557 ng/g although none of these samples exceeded the East Africa’s (EAS) maximumlimit of 10 ng/gfor total aflatoxins. Furthermore, Aflatoxin AFB1 was detected in 13 samples, moreover, the concentration was below the EAS maximum limit of 5 ng/g. Though the contamination was below the maximum limits and limited to one agro-ecological zone and season, these findings provide useful insights on aflatoxins contamination of sesame seeds from the two main growing regions in Tanzania.