Fungal isolates and metabolites in locally processed rice from five agro-ecological zones of Nigeria

This study reports the distribution of fungal isolates and fungal metabolites that naturallycontaminate locally processed rice from five agro-ecological zones of Nigeria. The fungal specieswere isolated by the dilution plate technique and identified by appropriate diagnostics, whilemetabolites were determined by a liquid chromatographic tandem mass spectrometric method.Aspergillus and Penicillium species were the predominant isolates found in the rice samples whileFusarium spp. were not isolated. The mean fungal count differed significantly (p < 0.05) across thezones and ranged from 9.98 × 102 cfu g-1 in the Southern Guinea Savannah to 96.97 × 102 cfu g-1in the Derived Savannah. For 16 fungal metabolites, selected from 63 positively identified fungalmetabolites based on their concentration and spread across the zones, an occurrence map wasconstructed. The Northern Guinea Savannah recorded the highest contamination of fungalmetabolites while the Sudan Savannah zone recorded the least.