ISOLATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF FUNGI RESPONSIBLE FOR SPOILAGE OF BREAD SOLD IN MAKURDI METROPOLIS

ABSTRACT Bread is one of the staple foods in the world and it is recognized as a semi-perishable commodity, bread is a food product that is universally accepted as a very convenient form of food that has desirability to all population both rich and poor, rural and urban. Bread samples were collected from five different locations (Watada, High-level, North Bank, Achusa and Wurukum) in Makurdi. This research work was carried out to isolate and identify fungi responsible for spoilage of bread sold in Makurdi metropolis. A total of ten (10) samples were collected within Makurdi metropolis. The samples collected were transported in a clean polythene bag to the Laboratory for analysis. Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) was prepared according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The plates were incubated in an upright position at 30˚C for 4 – 5 days. The same procedure was carried out for all the samples. The isolates were examined using the compound microscope. The morphology i.e. shape, structure of conidia, conidiophores, pigmentation, shape of sporangia, sporangiophores were recorded. The identification was based on the standard keys available. The results revealed that Rhizopus species, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger, Penicillin species, Mucor species and Candida species are fungi found to be responsible for spoilage of bread sold within Makurdi metropolis. The prevalence isolates with respect to locations showed that Wurukum have the highest fungi occurrence of 40(30.77%), followed by samples from Wadata 26(20%), North Bank had the fungi occurrence of 24(18.46%), High Level samples had 23(17.69%) while the least fungi occurrence was observed in Achusa 17(13.08%). The result further showed a highly significant relationship between fungi occurrence and sample locations [X2 = 67.532; df = 20; P = 0.000 (≤ 0.05)]. Based on this study, it is therefore recommended that government and non-governmental agencies should enlighten the populace on the benefits of hygienic handling, importance of proper environmental condition of bread storage to eliminate potential pathogenic/spoilage fungi from bread, government agencies should regulate bread processing and sales establishment as well as ensure strict compliance to sanitary laws and bread should be properly handled during and after processing to reduce spoilage fungi activity kept in required temperature that can distort the proliferation of pathogenic/spoilage fungi.