TABLE 2.
Summary of possibilities and examples for the reduction of the aflatoxin content of stored grains.
| Method | Effect | References | |
| Removal | Cleaning and sorting by size and density | Only small Brazil nuts (smaller than 36.6 mm length and 6.3 g weight) contained AFB1 | De Mello and Scussel, 2007 |
| Corn particles passed 5.16 mm sieve contained 46 times higher more toxin than the over fraction and lower density kernels contain 50 times higher aflatoxin | Shi et al., 2014 | ||
| Sorting by color | UV light, fluorescent and multi spectral analysis can be used to detect contaminated kernels | Pasikatan and Dowell, 2001; Vasishth and Bavarva, 2016; Stasiewicz et al., 2017; Tao et al., 2018 | |
| Removal of contaminated part by dehulling and polishing | Dehulling removed 92% of the initial aflatoxin content from corn kernel | Siwela et al., 2005 | |
| Aflatoxin residuals in corn after crushing and dehulling was almost negligible | Fandohan et al., 2005 | ||
| Dehulling decreased AF content of corn by 5.5–70% | Mutungi et al., 2008 | ||
| Dehulling and whitening of rice kernel resulted 96% decrease in AF content in polished broken grains and 79% in polished whole kernels | Castells et al., 2007 | ||
| Dehulling of corn kernels resulted in 88 and 92% reduction in AFB1 and AFB2 levels | Matumba et al., 2015 | ||
| Reduction, destruction | Thermal treatment for a long time | Heating at 100 and 150°C for 90 min decreased the AFB1 content of soybean 41.9 and 81.2%, respectively | Lee et al., 2015 |
| Oxidation by ozone | 2.8 and 5.3 mg/l ozone concentration applied for 4 hours resulted 76–84% decrease in AFB1 content of poultry feed | Torlak et al., 2016 | |
| 66–95% AFB1 reduction in peanut, corn and wheat kernel | Ismail et al., 2018 | ||
| Irradiation by ionizing and non-ionizing radiation | 25 kGy gamma irradiation resulted 43% decrease, microwave heating for 10 min at 1.45 kW resulted 32% decrease, direct solar irradiation for 3–30 h resulted 25–40% decrease in AFB1 content of poultry feed | Herzallah et al., 2008 | |
| 4, 6, and 8 kGy gamma irradiation doses resulted 15–56% reduction in aflatoxin content for corn, wheat and rice kernels | Mohamed et al., 2015 | ||
| 5 and 10 kGy irradiation doses resulted in 69.8 and 94.5% decreases in AFB1 content, respectively | Markov et al., 2015 | ||
| Pulsed light treatment (0.52 J/cm2/pulse in spectrum of 100–1100 nm with a xenon flash lamp) resulted 75–90% decreases in AFB1 and AFB2 contents of rice and rice bran | Wang et al., 2016 | ||
| 6 and 10 kGy gamma irradiation doses resulted 90 and 95% reduction in AFB1, respectively | Serra et al., 2018 | ||
| In peanuts, 5–9 kGy gamma irradiation doses result 20–43% decrease in aflatoxins, microwave radiation at 360, 480, and 600 W resulted 59–67% decrease, combined treatments have higher than 95% efficiency | Patil et al., 2019 | ||
| Destruction by cold plasma | Hazelnuts, peanuts, and pistachio nuts treated with air gases plasma for 20 min resulted 50% decrease in total aflatoxins, SF6 plasma application resulted only 20%reduction | Basaran et al., 2008 | |
| Atmospheric plasma generated with 400–1150 W power for 1–12 min resulted 46–71% decrease in AFB1 in peanuts | Siciliano et al., 2016 | ||
| High voltage atmospheric cold plasma applied for 1 and 10 min resulted 62 and 82% reduction in AFs levels of corn. | Shi et al., 2017 | ||
| Atmospheric and low pressure cold plasma reduced the AFB1 content of hazelnut by 72–73% | Sen et al., 2019 |