World Food Day 2024: Get to know Kevin Omwomo, PhD at Federal University of Technology Minna (Nigeria)!
15 November 2024
Ensuring the right to food for all requires collective action to tackle hunger and poverty. This means prioritising the production and consumption of diverse, safe and nutritious foods, while building resilience against shocks, vulnerabilities, and stresses.
The academic community plays a crucial role in this mission. Research, data, technology, and innovation can be powerful tools for enhancing food safety and food security, as well as for transforming agrifood systems for a better future and a better life for all.
That’s why UPRISE is taking action by training 11 PhD students under joint EU-AU supervision to become future leaders and food safety ambassadors for Africa. These researchers will play a key role in supporting food safety risk assessment and management to reduce mycotoxin levels, by developing guides, toolkits, early warning systems and microbiome- based innovations.
Get to know Kevin Omwomo, PhD at Federal University of Technology Minna (Nigeria).
Kunun-zaki, is a fermented non-alcoholic beverage popular in the diets of Northern Nigerians and is prepared from cereals (millet, sorghum or maize) that are prone to mycotoxin contamination that can be carried into the beverage during processing. The beverage is served during cultural and social gatherings to quench thirst and for nutrition, as a weaning food for infants, contribute to household income, variety in the diet hence impact on food security.
Kunun-zaki processing is a household art with no optimized procedure, hence variations in its raw materials, processing methods, and lack of regulations that might compromise its quality and safety. Traditional fermentation has been shown to reduce mycotoxins in fermented foods.
Kevin’s research therefore aims to optimize the fermentation process to enhance quality along the kunun-zaki value chain by identifying steps in its processing for targeted interventions for reduction of mycotoxins hence enhancing its safety and quality.
The study will utilize a cross-sectional mixed-method survey design with questionnaires to obtain data from respondents along the kunun-zaki value chain including consumers, processors, sellers of raw materials and producers of raw materials. The major mycotoxins will be quantified in crops and kunun zaki using antibody-based rapid lateral flow method and positive samples validated using liquid chromatography in tandem with mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).
Toxigenic fungi isolated from the crops using the direct kernel plating procedure will be characterized. Critical Control Points will be identified by identification and description of the main quality hazards from the process workflow (operation units) of the standard average processes for the processing of kunun-zaki. Each stivoep in kunun-zaki processing will then be precisely described using the 5M approach as described by Ishikawa and Loftus, (1990). Optimized kunun-zaki with a potential effect of fermentation on mycotoxin reduction will be analyzed for mycotoxin content before and after fermentation using LC-MS, and high-resolution MS (HRMS) to map degradation products.
Cultivable microbial communities from optimized kunun-zaki and raw materials will be isolated. The microorganisms will be subjected to molecular characterization (repetitive element (REP)-PCR), identification (sequencing of 16S rRNA and 26S rRNA genes) and taxonomic networks typical of fermented foods reconstructed.
This work will contribute to improving and strengthening the quality and safety system along the value chain of kunun-zaki, an economic relevant and high nutritionally important beverage in the local diet of Nigerians, but is prone to mycotoxin contamination, thus compromising its safety and contributing to long-term adverse health effects of consumers.
Video: Kevin Omwomo, PhD at Federal University of Technology Minna (Nigeria)
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