Abstract of research

PREVALENCE OF FUNGI IN LOCALLY PRODUCED CHEESE AND MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF ISOLATED TOXIGENIC MOLDS

ELbagory, A. M.1; Amal, M. Eid 2; Hammad, A. M. 1; Salwa, A. Dawood 1

Abstract

One hundred and forty samples of locally produced Tallaga, Kareish, Processed and Ras cheese (35 each) collected from dairy shops and supermarkets for mycological studies. Our results revealed that, the moulds and yeasts could be detected in all examined samples of Tallaga, Kareish, processed and Ras cheese with mean count values of 8.3x102±0.2x102 6.9x10±0.4x10,5.3x103±2.3x102 and 4.1x103 ±1.6x102 for moulds and 0.5x102±1.1x 10,1.4x102± 0.5x 102,6.5x1040±.4x104 and 5.4x1031±.1x103 for yeasts respectively. Various types of molds and yeasts were isolated at varying percentages from all examined samples. The isolated moulds were species of genera Asprigallus, Penicillium, Cladosporium, Mucor. and Rhizopus, while yeast genera were species of genera Candida and Rhodotorula. When the obtained results compared with the Egyptian and international standards, the examined Kareish cheese samples were found to be of lower quality than the other types of cheeses examined, although all types of the present study need to be improved microbiologically. In this study, rapid assessment of five isolates of A. flavus was accomplished using a primer pair for the Aflatoxin regulatory gene afl.R1 in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and only 2 isolates obtained from processed and Ras cheese (one each of) were positive the presence of the target gene.