The study of fungal contamination in three current packed spices in the markets of Tehran: brief report

Spices (flavorings) are contaminated to microbial agents such as filamentous and yeast fungi during production processing. Almost these are grown and harvested in warm and humid areas of the world where the growth of a wide variety of organisms is readily supported. The aim of this study was to assess the fungal contaminations of three current spices including turmeric, black pepper and cinnamon from some supermarkets in Tehran and evaluating of their hygienic quality. In this cross- sectional study that was performed in laboratory of Medical Mycology, School of Public Health in Tehran University of Medical Sciences from December 2012 to September 2014, 165 packed spices including 55 samples from each 11 valid brands of cinnamon, turmeric and black pepper were selected from different regions of Tehran. Culture was performed on many different fungal media from 10-1 to 10-4 dilutions of their samples. The fungal colonies obtained from cultures were studied by traditional laboratory methods. On the other hand, the number of unknown possible colonies was identified by molecular methods and then all identified colonies were counted. Totally, from 165 packed spices, 4317 colonies include 29 different fungal species were isolated and identified from cinnamon (1520), turmeric (1373) and black pepper (1424). The etiologic agents were mainly including Aspergillus niger (7.3%), Penicillium spp. (4.1%), Paecilomyces spp. (2.8%) and Aspergillus flavus (2.3%), respectively. Non-parametric Kruskal-wallis test indicated that there was no significant difference statistically among brands at each level. Also the present study showed P = 0.0003 among under study spices. The most contaminated spices were cinnamon, while turmeric had the lowest contamination rate. The obtained results of this cross-sectional study and the available proofs in community indicate that, there are the high levels of fungal contaminations in current used spices. Therefore, it is necessary to control the production units.