World Food Day 2024: Get to know Lungani Nyathi, a PhD student at the University of Johannesburg!
16 October 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 Lungani Nyathi, a PhD student at the University of Johannesburg.
Lungani’s research is titled “Efficacy of fermentation and other complementary approaches on overall food product quality and reduction of mycotoxin concentrations in selected food products”. It focuses on optimising the fermentation processes of traditional sorghum and maize-based foods from Africa, specifically umqombothi and akpan, and improving their safety and nutritional value.
By leveraging starter cultures and complementary techniques such as grain sorting, dehulling, and others, the study aims to reduce mycotoxin levels in fermented products and ensure consistent quality. This is expected to establish more reliable fermentation methods that mitigate the risks associated with spontaneous fermentation, such as the persistence of mycotoxins in final products and inconsistent product quality.
This research will assess the reduction of mycotoxins, which are toxic compounds produced by some fungi and are prevalent in cereals. It will also explore the bioaccessibility of mycotoxins using in vitro models to determine whether fermentation effectively reduces these harmful compounds and whether their metabolites have the potential to cause risks during digestion. This is crucial for enhancing food safety in communities where fermented cereal foods are a major dietary component.
In addition to safety considerations, this research will investigate the nutritional modifications that occur during fermentation. It will examine how fermentation impacts key nutrients such as proteins, minerals and bioactive compounds, with the goal of enhancing the health benefits of umqombothi and akpan.
The findings will have practical implications for improving the quality (nutritional, bioactive components, shelf-life, sensory qualities) and consumer acceptance of these foods, thereby contributing to their potential for commercialization and large-scale production. Holistically, this work supports efforts to strengthen food security, public health, and economic value in the informal African food sector.
Video: Lungani Nyathi PhD at University of Johannesburg
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