World Food Day 2024: Get to know Vukosi Edwin, PhD at University of Johannesburg (South Africa)
28 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 Vukosi Edwin, PhD at University of Johannesburg (South Africa).
Umqombothi remains one of the important traditional African products which is produced from both formal and non-formal sectors in South Africa. With umqombothi produced by formal sectors, the standard production protocols are followed for prevention of quality losses and improving food safety using defined starter culture microorganisms.
The formal sector also has some control measures for mycotoxins prevention such as the use good quality grains. However, a high number of consumers of umqombothi in South Africa rely on beer from the informal sector, which is characterised by spontaneous fermentation with the use of non-defined/characterised microbes. The spontaneous fermentation process is prone to fungal contamination which can produce toxigenic mycotoxins. Also, contamination of food by fungi is known to reduce its nutritional value, while the ingestion of mycotoxins has health effects on humans that ranges from mild to severe fatal diseases.
Recent studies have revealed the presence of several beneficial microbial populations that could be used to enhance the quality and safety of African food products. However, there is limited documentation and poor understanding of how fermentation can affect mycotoxin levels in umqombothi. Therefore, there is a need for characterization of microbial consortia during umqombothi production by the informal sector and how it influences mycotoxin concentrations on the final product.
The isolation, taxonomical characterisation, and conservation of beneficial microbes that can improve the quality of umqombothi in relation to mycotoxin reduction, will increase the knowledge required for development of standardized microbial-based solution for umqombothi production, particularly in the informal sector.
To contribute to the overall UP-RISE project objectives, the taxonomic network that will be generated could also be used to investigate the presence of genes that may be involved in the metabolic processes of mycotoxin reduction. Lastly, the optimized umqombothi produced using the strains showing the ability to affect the mycotoxin content, will be suggested to the informal sector for improving the quality and safety of the product.
Video: Vukosi Edwin
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